In their quest to formulate and implement policies, some employers find themselves in conflicting situations with their employees. The conflict arises when there is a breach of ethical guidelines which are stipulated to manage the operations of the employees and the workplace in general. One of the most common areas where the issue of ethics arises is on the privacy of employees. There are policies which can be driven by external factors such as the risk exposure of the employees as regards the insurance coverage and privacy involving social interactions on social media. This discussion entails the identification of ethical issues in different scenarios over the policies imposed on employees.
The ethical issues guiding the use of the social media are looked at in a narrow perspective and there are difficulties in determining the ethical breach when one is using the platforms. It is important for the employer to monitor the operations of the employee on social media. It is true that the postings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be related to the employee’s employer. Most business organizations are interested in maintaining a good reputation within the public sphere. For a company with technological competitors, it becomes inevitable to regulate the communication of the employees with the rival companies as the employees may be tempted to share confidential information with the competitors. However, people should be given chance to control their own information in the online platforms and the companies should be put to task to explain the amount and nature of data they have on each user of their platform (Romm, 2018). In the context of monitoring the employees’ activities on the social media platform, it is rightful to assert that it is within the ethical principles as the employer aims at ensuring the reputation of the company through morality is safeguarded.
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There are ethical issues that emerge in relation to the monitoring of employees by employers and insurance companies. The privacy of each employee should be viewed with the utmost regard. This is due to the fact that private information is prone to manipulation, distortion, and blackmail. Importantly having control of employees’ information such as the time they take to sleep, the rate of heartbeat is seen as exposing the employees to a state of inadequate ethical neutrality which can cause harm to their reputation and respect. The electronic monitoring of the employees in most instances viewed by the companies as a mode of increasing productivity. However, most employees feel threatened and work in fear. Therefore, ethics should be seen as an arrangement of value to guide given actions and decisions focusing on what should be worth looking at and what should be discarded.
The state at which the employers watch the actions and infringe on the privacy of the employees leads to a panoptic phenomenon which is a threat to the state of the organizational or business ethics. There are ethical issues posed by the action of the company to monitor the daily operation of the employees in that there is a threat to personal security, spontaneity, and dignity. Another ethical issue emerges on how the confidential information obtained from the employee will be treated. For instance, can the personal information gained through the gadget be used for the purpose it was meant to perform. With this, it is unethical for the company to use the gained information for other purposes, for instance, the insurance company should not use the employees of its customers for its competitive advantage. The same issue is seen as the reason for the European Union to fine Google $5 billion as the company used its Android operating system to block out its competitors (Reuters, 2018). This is a contractual phenomenon which should not be breached through an extension to other uses.
References
Reuters (2018, July 18). European Union hits Google with record $5billion fine in Android antitrust case. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/european-union-hits-google-record-5-billion-fine-android-antitrust-n892326
Romm, T. ( 2018, June 27 ). California is on the verge of passing a sweeping New online privacy law targeting Facebook, Google and other tech giants. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/06/27/california-is-verge-passing-sweeping-new-online-privacy-law-targeting-facebook-google-other-tech-giants/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.808fdc93859f
Saylor.org (n.d). The Business Ethics Workshop . Retrieved from: https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/textbooks/The%20Business%20Ethics%20Workshop.pdf
