Surveillance and Eavesdropping

Answer

Surveillance and Eavesdropping

There have been rising concerns of employers about workplace threats. Some of the vital justifiable risks that employers face include data breaches, identity, and property theft, violence or inappropriate behavior, drug use, viewing of pornographic content, and several other engagements of the employees that may not be acceptable in the firm. Moreover, like Martin, Wellen, and Grimmer (2016) note, employers are concerned about the loss of productivity by the employees when at work due to engagement in non-work-related activities. Several employers have cited the use of office technology for personal activities while at work, such as the internet for handling other works or office phones for making calls to friends and relatives other than communicating with customers. Employers endeavor to minimize risks that call for the need to monitor employees when they are at work. However, according to Chory, Vela, and Avtgis (2016), organizations must strike a balance between the organization's business interests that are considered valid with the reasonable expectations that employees have regarding privacy. In this bid, many firms have put in place varied strategies to attain their goals while avoiding the legal risks of liability for invasion of privacy.

Analysis of the Risk

Employers are increasingly developing concerns over matters relating to identity and property theft, workplace violence, misuse of company resources for personal purposes, lowered productivity, and increasing costs of litigation. For these reasons, employers have embarked on ways of monitoring everything going on in the workplace, which exposes the employers to multiple risks of liability regarding the invasion of privacy. Several gadgets and software are now in the mainstream market that makes monitoring so discreet that the affected party never gets to realize what is going on (Yost, Behrend, Howardson, Darrow & Jensen, 2019). Given the ubiquitous nature of the technology, every firm, regardless of the size, is now embracing ways to monitor employees. In the backdrop of it all, many employers are widely unaware of the probable laws that govern privacy. As xxx notes, the ignorance could partly be due to negligence on the side of the employers, but perhaps, majorly given the fact that there are no clear laws in many states that govern the same.

Moreover, with the increasing use of technology, there is a risk of misuse of the information the employers collect. While most employers disclose to the employees from the onset that they are monitored, many decide to keep this a secret. Such a situation is arguable from two perspectives (Yost et al., 2019). The employer who discloses the intention of the firm could as well state that without having to install the gadgets in the real sense, as the knowledge of the same would make the employees adhere to the expected standards.

In a similar measure, the employer who decides not to disclose the same to the employees would, instead of attaining the required expectations, collect the information from the unguided employees, but not achieve the required standards of performance in the firm. Technology, in the argument of Al-Hitmi and Sherif (2018), is the key magnifier of the risks the firms continually face, as it makes it possible to track emails, telephone use, internet, and even their working process. Moreover, this is possible to undertake without the employee noticing that they are being monitored (Nirmal, Koul, Atul, Tejaswita & Mayura, 2016). At some points, unfortunately, some employers may engage in monitoring for reasons other than the success of their business. Also, the information gathered from surveillance could land the wrong hands. Therefore, employers who opt to embrace the practice are exposed to liability risks.

Current News Event about the Risk

In “Employee privacy at stake as surveillance technology evolves,” an article by Amy Delgado published on 14^th August 2018 by the CBS News, the author delves on the implications of employee surveillance and the risk it poses. The author starts by acknowledging the fact that employers always could monitor employees in multiple ways, including company emails and phone calls. However, the situation has changed in the current times, and the key reason is the advancement in technology. Today, employees can listen, track, or watch employees when at their workplaces (Chory, Vela & Avtgis, 2016). The article then goes ahead to explore some of the reasons employers have put in place serious surveillance measures on their workers.

Unequivocally, employees do not completely accept the situation and would wish for a change in any way possible. Unfortunately, while some states have now started to put in place some regulations to prevent or regulate the monitoring of employees, most still do not have any federal laws that bar employers from monitoring their employees. According to Delgado (2018), bills prohibiting employers from demanding access to the Facebook pages of their employees have been passed in only three states, namely, Delaware, Maryland, and Illinois. Given the lack of regulation, even the employers remain blissfully oblivious of the how far they car get regarding employee surveillance. Consequently, there is a wide window for legal implications on the matter.

Strategy Employers Apply to Avoid Legal Implications

While the practice of employee surveillance poses an excellent liability risk to the employers, which could eventuate lawsuits and penalties to the firm, employers are increasingly becoming aware, and can now easily avoid the same. Most courts, regardless of the difference in privacy claims by jurisdiction, tend to consider the question by engaging in fact-specific analyses (Nirmal et al., 2016). The laws that govern electronic monitoring are somewhat inconsistent and indirect. Nonetheless, electronic monitoring remains under the broad state rules that fall within both common and statutory law, and in some ways, the state and federal constitutional provisions. According to Ajunwa, Crawford, and Schultz (2017), the two primal dictates of the law relating to workplace monitoring include the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) and several state common laws protecting against privacy invasion.

The strategy every employer is currently applying to help avoid any legal implications of their practice on matters of privacy and monitoring is the disclosure-policy. In this strategy, all firms that intend to carry out any surveillance disclose it under their company policies and terms and conditions, which every new employee is required to read through and sign before they are fully incorporated into the company (Kaupins & Coco, 2017). This way, the firm averts any lawsuit that may result from their surveillance practices since they sought the consent of the employee at the beginning.

Ethical Balance

Employees, like any other human, need personal space, which makes it unethical for employers to eavesdrop in their affairs when at the workplace. The ethical balance between the expectations of the employees and the needs of the employer comes in, where the employees ensure diligence and adherence to company policies (West & Bowman, 2016). In such cases, there is no need for the employer to put in any measure to monitor employees. However, without diligence, it is warranted that the employers put in place surveillance measures to ensure the employees perform.

Conclusion

It is every employer's wish that their firm attains optimal performance, and they are ready to put in place any measure that can help them ensure such. Some firms continually engage in unacceptable practices to ensure success. In the case of surveillance and eavesdropping, employers tend to violate ethical dictates of privacy, as they invade their employees' privacy. While surveillance may not be necessary at some points, employers may still need to carry on with the practice.