Ethics in the Workplace

Abstract

Technology is really changing the way to do business. It’s not exception in at the workplace. Business owners can take advantage of electronic technology or physical surveillance to monitor employees from anywhere during work hours. Although there are some advantages to monitor what employee does daily work, there are some negative sides of it. Employers should take it very consider to choose right tool or right way to monitor their employees.

It’s really up to what type of businesses to use what type of equipments to do monitoring. It is very common to see the grocery stores, banks or restaurants to put out video surveillance. The main purpose is for security. Do they use it for monitor employees too? It’s probably not the case. For professional services, we are talking about working on the computers and the managers are monitoring employees’ using company’s high speed internet to shop and browse the web, log on the social network or shop online. “Fifty –nine percent of all 2004 web purchases in the United States were made from the workplace.” Base on Baltzan, Phillips (2009).

The results of electronic monitoring may cause lower job satisfaction too because people think the quantity of work is more important than the quantity. As Baltzan, Phillips (2009) stated. That said people try to make a large amount of production. But they don’t care about if the productions are good or not. It’s all just because of the pressure of job monitoring. A lot of time the employer should trust employee at some level. Employer should give employee has a little privacy during work. If employer’s exceeds the bounds, employee will feel the employer invade his/her privacy. In this case, the employee may end up looking for another opportunity.

“Employers are allowed to monitor their employees' communications, within reasonable limits. But employers must make sure that their monitoring does not violate their workers' privacy rights. And, on a practical level,...