Many employers today are worried about challenges related to workplace violence and other improper employee behavior, property and identity theft, data safety, pornography viewing, reduced productivity, and on the job injuries and job accidents. However, employers are responsible to their staffs to safeguard the confidentiality and privacy of the collected and maintained personal data during employment. Together with the increasing litigation cost, employers are compelled to seek sufficient ways to reduce these threats. Thus, they use electronic surveillance to monitor workers to hinder misconduct, injuries and other kinds of losses, which I support.
Employers have the right to monitor their workers to protect their business interests and assets. Since tools such as computers that employers provide are their property, employers are allowed to monitor how their property is used (Office of Justice Programs, 2013). Employees, on the other hand, have a right to ensure their personal information is protected and employers must not infringe on their privacy. By law, employees are protected in situations that pertain to the usage of their personal e-mails and personal electronic devices (Office of Justice Programs, 2013). Employers cannot monitor the personal devices and data of workers without first informing workers.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
There ought to be limitations where employers’ surveillance rights are restricted to business or company property only, not on the private e-mails and personal devices of workers. Consequently, employers must balance their business interests with a sensible anticipation of privacy of their workers while safeguarding against dangers. While employers possess a legitimate business case for performing electronic surveillance in the workplace, they must articulate the business case for electronic surveillance as a sensible way of safeguarding lawful business interests. Besides, employers must communicate those interests to workers to ensure they acknowledge the necessity of surveillance and why it is in their best interest, for instance, to safeguard them from identity theft. Effective and lawful surveillance can eliminate challenging staff conduct, such as data misappropriation and theft before it threatens the business interests of the employer.
By law, employers are obliged to offer a safe workplace for their staffs and to gather and maintain specific sensitive and private data about them. Besides, employers must take sensible measures to safeguard their assets. Lawful business interests and common sense must guide employers when adopting measures to reach these different goals. Employers can handle challenges involved in surveillance by creating and distributing to workers clear written notices that their telephone calls, internet use and e-mails are subject to surveillance without any further caution. Informing employees regarding electronic surveillance eliminates workers’ sensible privacy expectation.
Thus, while employers can monitor employees using current technologies, they must stay within their lawful business interest to ensure that they do not infringe on the privacy of their workers. Nevertheless, workers have reasonable fears regarding the invasiveness of surveillance and the safety of the collected and stored data.
Reference
Office of Justice Programs. (2013, July 30). Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) . Retrieved April 10, 2018, from https://it.ojp.gov/PrivacyLiberty/authorities/statutes/1285
