Majority of the working class people will spend a greater percentage of their lives in at the workplace. As expected, there might be a number of issues that may arise in the workplace due to human nature. For instance, employees may be tempted to misuse company time and resources to perform personal tasks within working hours. To curb these unethical behaviors, the human resource team and top management come up with ethical decision-making tools to act as solutions when the behaviors arise. Ethical decision making goes a long way in projecting the values and objectives of a particular organization (Collins, 2011). Therefore, certain parameters should be considered while coming up with the solutions. These include universalism, employee rights, utilitarianism, and fairness. This paper will examine the importance of putting these parameters into consideration while solving a particular ethical issue or dilemma.
All the parameters mentioned above are essential in decision making as they complement each other. Universalism ensures that there is uniformity in making decisions. In as much as a problem might be unique to a contest, there exists similarities in issues arising in the workplace. The measures used to curb these problems should be uniform to avoid issues of biases coming up. Universalism does not just apply to a single organization, but also to a pool of companies operating in the same field. This way, employees of company XYZ will not feel they are being oppresses by the rules in their organization as opposed to company ABC. Universalism also reduces the chances of a high employee turnover. Universalism translated to fairness. As the decisions are being made, certain theories need to be considered. These include utilitarianism which focuses on the greater good of the organization. Utilitarianism looks beyond the companies employees and also considers social responsibility. Employee rights should also be minded. Every employee has a right to be treated fairly and justly (Collins, 2011).
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Having the above in mind, a company may then go ahead and make policies to solve ethical problems in an organization (Ferrell, & Fraedrich, 2015). An example of one such policy is the monitoring of employees during working hour to ensure they are using the company’s time and resources effectively (Rosenblat, & Kneese, 2014). Monitoring can be done in a number of ways. First, the organization may install camera all over the building and watch the actions of the employees. Second, to minimize on personal phone calls made, the company can come up with a way of getting the list of calls made. Also, company cars can be tracked to find out which routes they frequent. The issue of employees wasting company time and resources results in low productivity, making the company profits go down. Moreover, the human resource team will be compensating a team of employees that have not earned their salary. It is therefore essential to come up with measures that ensure all employees are working towards achieving the organizations objectives and not their own selfish desires.
According to Rosenblat, & Kneese, Monitoring employees may serve as a way to improve the quality of service within and without an organization. For instance, a company may invest some money in hiring another company that ensures all staff members have proper phone handling etiquette. Good customer service skills play a role in client retention and referrals. Another example is monitoring how and where the employees dump their waste. It would be wrong for the company employees to pollute the environment as this sends a wrong picture to the people in the region. These people may be taken aback when they think of employing the services or buying goods of that company as they do not protect the environment. The policy of monitoring employees thus becomes socially responsible as it ensures that the population around is comfortable with the values of the organization and that their needs are being met (2014).
As mentioned earlier in this paper, employees are often tempted to use company resources for their own selfish reason. A staff member may decide to use the company phone to make calls to a loved one or a friend and spend hours on end chatting instead of attending to customer needs or performing their tasks. Staff members can also decide to spend a lot of time browsing the internet for entertainment or furthering their studies during working hours. They may also decide to spend long hours on break as opposed to the time allocated for these breaks. Focusing on other issues during working hours reduces the focus of achieving the organizations goals. Furthermore, by not attending to customer needs creates a bad image of the company and drives clients away (Thiel et. al ., 2012).
All these small unethical problems cumulate to a bigger issue of productivity. Most of the company time is used for other reasons except working towards the overall goals of the organization. At the end of the day, productivity is lost and profits reduces. Other issues include reduced moral of other employees. This is specific to scenarios when some employees have access to certain services, such as the internet, while others do not. Another disadvantage of misusing an organization’s time and resources is the premature wearing of equipment. This comes as an extra cost to the company as it is forced to pay for maintenance regularly. Lastly, if property is mishandled, disputes may arise of who is responsible for the destruction. Such disputes often cause tension or hatred between colleagues making the working environment not conducive. Therefore, the monitoring policy may prove to be effective in such scenarios (Eivazi, 2011).
By installing cameras all over the building, the compliance officers are able to monitor actions of the employees. With this in mind, employees may not want to be penalized for such unethical behavior and might minimize their time wastage. Monitoring phone usage may also reduce the number of calls made out for personal reasons. Cameras also reduce the disputes arising over who is responsible for having destroyed a company’s property. Having clear guidelines that stipulate the break times also ensures that the employees do not prolong their breaks. Further to having cameras, the human resource team and the top management can work with immediate team supervisors in streamlining the behaviors of the employees. Supervisors are better equipped in communicating with their team members and can easily enforce a rule (Eivazi, 2011).
When enforcing this policy, it is important to ensure that the parameters of ethical decision making are considered to avoid making the problem worse. Eivazi (2011) points out that employees may feel that installing cameras or tapping into their computers may be a violation of their privacy. Wasting company time and resources is an insult to the employer, but also creating an unbearable working condition is not just to the employees. An employee may be wrong to create posters or fliers for a personal event during working hours. However, the management may allow an employee attending night classes to use the internet for studying strictly during breaks. Therefore, the human resource department and top management should communicate the reasons of enforcing this policy beforehand. It is also important to be consistent with the measures taken.
An organization may have a remarkable and outstanding employee. However, the employee may be found to use company equipment to conduct personal business. How this situation is handled will determine the employee’s future performance. The organization may not want to stop the employee from misusing the company equipment as he/she is a performer. But allowing this may translate to other employees carrying out the same activities, and reducing the overall productivity (Posey, Bennett, Roberts, & Lowry, 2011). One way of handling such a scenario is having a talk with the employee. The employer should be careful in relaying the warning so as to not demoralize the employee. The session should be more of a discussion than a confrontation that may lead to an argument. The employer should listen to the employee’s reasons for doing so and from the reason, deduce the best punishment for it.
Despite having a remarkable employee misuse company time and resources, the consequences should be fair to all. Doing this ensures that some employees do not feel superior over others. Applying the theory of utilitarianism also ensures that decision arrives at is just and works for the greater good of the organization. For example, in the above scenario, the decision of having the employee face consequences ensures that the others are not tempted to engage in the same activity. Lastly, the decision arrives at should be at per with the employee rights to discourage them from taking legal action. The employer should always remember that a policy is meant to correct and not intimidate. Enforcing a wrong policy works just the same as the unethical behavior in reducing the productivity of the employees (Collins, 2011).
One of the greatest setbacks of the monitoring policy is that it reduces trust between the employer and the employee. The employees will often feel diminished and unappreciated and this may result in them looking for other employment opportunities elsewhere. Another limitation of monitoring is that it increases the stress levels of the employees. They may feel they are being observed always and this increases the pressure to perform tasks in a certain manner. Their sole objective will be to meet targets and less focus will be put on the quality of their services. In the end, the organization may still be on the losing side (Collins, 2011).
In conclusion, employee monitoring appears to be a sensible policy. If done in the wrong way it causes more harm than good. However if effected in the correct way it may create a perfect working atmosphere for both the employee and the employer. One way to ensure that it is effected correctly is by having clear code of ethics guidelines that are communicated to the employees as they begin their employment in an organization. Training can also be offered to the employees to communicate these guidelines more effectively. This way, they become more accustomed to the rules and regulation of the company from the onset.
References
Collins, D. (2011). Business ethics: How to design and manage ethical organizations . John Wiley & Sons.
Eivazi, K. (2011). Computer use monitoring and privacy at work. Computer Law & Security Review , 27 (5), 516-523.
Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases . Nelson Education.
Posey, C., Bennett, B., Roberts, T., & Lowry, P. B. (2011). When computer monitoring backfires: Invasion of privacy and organizational injustice as precursors to computer abuse. Journal of Information System Security , 7(1), 24-47
Rosenblat, A., & Kneese, T. (2014). Workplace surveillance . Retrieved from https://www.datasociety.net/pubs/fow/WorkplaceSurveillance.pdf
Thiel, C. E., Bagdasarov, Z., Harkrider, L., Johnson, J. F., & Mumford, M. D. (2012). Leader ethical decision-making in organizations: Strategies for sense-making. Journal of Business Ethics , 107 (1), 49-64.
