The contemporary workplace emphasizes on strict monitoring of employees and operations. The provision of technology has reduced the margin between genuine workplace monitoring and the abuse of privacy rights of the employees. As much as employers need to monitor transactions in a workplace, it is a moral and ethical obligation to create private space for the employees of an organization. The dominance of electronic surveillance at the workplace infringes on the private space of the majority of the contemporary workforce. Undue drug tests, generic tests, and tapping of office emails and telephone lines are serious unethical practices perpetrated in the present-day workplace. The legal apparatus only protect the privacy rights of parastatal employees.
Various Unethical Practices That Infringe the Employee's Rights to Privacy in the Contemporary Workplace
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The use of electronic surveillance at the workplace to spy on an employee is unethical conduct and it abuses the privacy rights of the employees. The invention of electronic surveillance was on a genuine course of ensuring credible and reliable monitoring at workplaces. However, contemporary employers have transformed into using surveillance gadgets to spy on employees. The majority of the employers in the modern markets place much emphasis on installing cameras at the workplace to facilitate monitoring of events (Chrysochou & Iglezakis, 2019, p. 2). The phenomenon has led to the extreme application of surveillance technology and the private space of employees is immensely reduced. It is ethically obnoxious to infiltrate the private space of employees in the realm of monitoring business operations.
The contemporary workplace continues to abuse the privacy of employees through undue drug testing. Most of the organizations that use heavy machinery in their line of operations insist on undertaking frequent drug tests to ensure that employees are sober and fit for work. However, many employers use the issue of drug tests to invade the private lives of various members of society. It is unethical for employers to conduct unwarranted drug tests on employees. Besides, drug tests should be performed on the advice of a physician. Impromptu drug tests in the workplace are unethical and are not geared to the best interest of the organization. The action of conducting frequent drug tests on employees depicts the level of mistrust between the employer and the workforce (Tredinnick & Laybats, 2019, p. 6). Besides, it is immoral to subject employees to drug tests without their consent or free will. In the contemporary setting, the frequency of drug tests has risen, and employees only conform to the practice to secure their jobs.
Genetic testing is also a practice that continues to abuse the privacy rights of the contemporary workforce. The tests aim at analyzing the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of various employees. The genetic tests are performed on a workforce to analyze the possibility of syndromes and other undesired traits in an employee’s genes. Genetic testing in the workplace is unethical because it exposes information which employees would not have disclosed at free will. Besides, judging an employee's relevance based on genetic composition is unethical because genetic composition is not a personal choice. Besides, most of the genetic tests conducted do have a reliable biological base on which can support the results obtained in genetic tests (Tredinnick & Laybats, 2019, p. 5). It is morally wrong to force employees to perform genetic tests as an evaluation of their appropriateness in a specific job. It is unethical to use genetic information in evaluating one's ability because human beings do not choose or control over genetic composition.
Moreover, the contemporary workforce emphasizes on accessing and evaluating the medical information of various employees. Medical information is private and should only be shared between a patient and a physician. However, the contemporary job market requires that employees should produce medical reports that depict detailed medical information as a qualification to join a workforce. It is unethical for an employer to develop an interest in the medical information of the members of a workforce (Connolly, 2018, p. 4). It is against the specifications of medical practice to expose an individual's health information with or without their consent. It is immoral for contemporary employers to medical reports as a criterion for choosing a productive workforce. Medical information should solemnly be the responsibility of a patient and should only be disclosed by the patient at his or her free will.
The privacy of employees in the contemporary workforce continues to be infringed through the interception of emails and telephone calls used in-office communication. The employer intercepts the various channels of communication available in present-day workplaces to monitor the communication between employees at work. It is unethical to intercept communication processes because it could lead to unintended abuse of employee's privacy (Waldman, 2019, p. 3). Besides, employees are not comfortable communicating in an environment whereby all emails are read, and phone calls are intercepted. It is immoral and unethical to deny workers the privilege of communicating freely without the fear of interception.
In addition, the majority of work facilities assigned to employees are fitted with tracking devices to monitor the utilization of the various facilities. For instance, employers could assign vehicles to various employees in an organization to help in facilitating the mobility of the employees. Fitting such vehicles with trackers to monitor the movement employees is unethical and malicious conduct by the employer (Mangan, 2019, p. 1). Tracking employees depicts a high sense of suspicion between employers and employees, and such situations are unfortunate because they project the employees as untrustworthy and irresponsible.
Legal Provision on the Rights of Employees' Privacy
The contemporary legal provision on the rights of employees' privacy is limited to government institutions only. The government has jurisdiction over only the employees' working in parastatals. The constitution limits the access of employee's medical and genetic information. However, these provisions only apply in parastatal cases. It is against the constitution to subject employees in parastatal to drug tests or genetic tests. Unfortunately, the contemporary versions of constitutions in the world do not protect the privacy right of employees working in private organizations. (Connolly, 2018, p. 3). It is a constitutional lacuna in many jurisdictions of the world as the responsibility of handling employee information is preserved for the employer.
The current US constitution leaves millions of employees working in private sectors vulnerable to infringement of their right to privacy. The law allows private employers the privilege to manage employees’ information with an assumed goodwill (Waldman, 2019, p. 3). However, the law limits private employers on the aspect of using personal information to defame an employee. The actions of a private organization to gather medical information of the employees is assumed by the existing law as geared to the good of the organization.
Interventions to Ensure That the Ethical Value of Employees' Privacy Is Respected
Several actions would ensure that the unethical act of infringing employees' information seizes in contemporary workplaces. One of the approaches to instill employees' privacy is by ensuring that the employee is aware of any personal information that the employer could have collected and the reason for the collection of such information. Employees should not be kept incommunicado regarding their own privacy (Mangan, 2019, p. 2). Besides, the disclosure of any employees' personal information should be done with his or her consent. The employer should always seek permission from employees before using or disclosing their personal information. The employers should also exercise a pragmatic balance between an organization's need for information and the personal need for the private space of employees.
Another intervention to ensure the unethical abuse of employees' privacy is stopped is by ensuring that employers only possess employees' personal information that is required for a stated purpose. This statement implies that employers should only inquire about employees' personal information on conditions that warrant the acquisition. Besides, the employer's action of deriving personal information from employees should follow the due process of the law (Mangan, 2019, p. 1). At no given condition should an employee be forced to produce private information against his or her will. Moreover, the employees' personal information collected should be accurate and updated to avoid the possibility of defamation. The employee should confirm any personal information that an employer would want to apply or disclose as being accurate and harmless.
Moreover, employers should allow employees to access their private information and evaluate it and acknowledge or challenge its accuracy. Although the law does not provide for the limitation of employers' access to employee's private information, the employers are expected by society to respect the right. They need the privacy of employees should be observed by any conscious employer (Connolly, 2018, p. 1). Employers develop a mechanism of evaluating the necessity of employees' information against the privacy rights of the employees.
Conclusively, the contemporary workplace violates the employees' rights to personal space. The increased electronic surveillance in workplaces limits the privacy of employees in the present-day workplace. It is unethical and against the basic human decency for employers to administer drug tests or genetic tests without a justified reason for the act. It is against workplace ethics for employers to use employees' medical information as a qualification for a job. The current law protects the privacy rights of employees working in parastatals. The law does not provide for the rights privacy of the employees working in private organizations. The unethical act of violating employees' right to privacy can be corrected by ensuring that employees are aware of the type and amount of personal information that an employer could have and the justification for having such personal information.
References
Connolly, R. (2018). Information Privacy Concerns and Workplace Surveillance: A Case of Differing Perspectives. In Social Issues in the Workplace: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice (pp. 933-950). IGI Global.
Chrysochou, C., & Iglezakis, I. (2019). Employees' Protection: Workplace Surveillance 3.0. In Cyber Law, Privacy, and Security: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1329-1348). IGI Global.
Mangan, D. (2019). Beyond Procedural Protection: Information Technology, Privacy and the Workplace. European law review, (4), 559-571.
Tredinnick, L., & Laybats, C. (2019). Workplace surveillance.
Waldman, A. E. (2019). Privacy Law's False Promise. Washington University Law Review, 97(3).
