(855) 4-ESSAYS

Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Employee privacy

            The computer age has changed the way we do business. File cabinets have been squeezed down into a hard drive. The knowledge in millions of books can be accessed on a single desktop computer. Letters have become obsolete through e-mail. With this advancement in technology comes the development of state-of-the-art monitoring equipment. Employees have recently started to examine their employees" e-mail. It is morally acceptable for an employer to read his or her employees" e-mail, because an employer must make sure his or her employees are working, not giving away sensitive information about the company and not causing harassing work environment. .
             .
             One of the key aspects in business is productivity. If employees are not productive, output diminishes while costs for labor remain the same. The employer has the right to get what he or she pays for. Viewing employees" e-mail shows the employer how much time is spent writing mail for business use or personal use. A study performed by the IRS found that "51% of employees" online time is spent on non-business activities such as sending personal e-mails" (Internet Usage). A study by Vault.com showed that 32% of employees sent five to ten personal e-mail messages per day, and 57% employees believed that this "decreased their productivity" (Muhl). The employee has the duty to give a full days work for his or her compensation. These numbers show that a company of 100 employees loses over twelve-thousand man-hours per year resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars lost due to personal e-mail. The outcome of lost productivity can result in lay-offs and business closures.
             .
             Another way a company can lose money is through corporate espionage. The stealing of a company's secrets has been going on for centuries. An employee can access the company's mainframe and send vital information all from his or her desktop computer. In the military, classified information can be sent out in an e-mail for enemies to capture.


Essays Related to Employee privacy

1. Privacy

... or transmitting proprietary information. In response to these threats the business community is increasingly turning to monitoring computer usage, restricting employee access to certain Internet content, and a range of other activities that restrict employee privacy and freedom with respect to computer use and electronic information. This raises the question of to what extent can employees monitor ... case decided by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was the first case concerning employee privacy with regard to company e-mail. Smyth v. Pillsbury (1996) dete...

  • Word Count: 2249
  • Approx Pages: 9
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. Workplace Privacy

... for potential discrimination- (Doyle, para 1). The Law There are several things that both employers and employees can do about workplace privacy. The law both protects and punishes employers as well as employees. When dealing with telephone usage, employers may monitor employee conversations with customers. "Federal law states that once the employer realizes the call is personal, they must stop monitoring the ... only if it is proven that a notice was given to the employee that all personal calls will be rewarded. Without this proof, the employee would win in this case because it is leg...

  • Word Count: 1823
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

3. Privacy and Computer Ethics

... level of monitoring or protection of the employer's network while also ensuring that the security measures that are adopted do not breach the fundamental privacy interests of employees. The right of an employer to monitor an employee's computer is an ethical issue that is subject to individual interpretation. Some would call it a responsibility. Others would call it an invasion ... never been greater. Unfortunately, most employers that engage in digital surveillance monitoring, do so surreptitiously. When workers do not know they are being monitored, the right of privacy is presumptive...

  • Word Count: 1508
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

4. Employers and Employee Rights

... answer to this question lies on the hands of the low-wage workforce. Sally Ramage on her book Privacy-Laws of Civil Liberties on 2007, writes about a complain a female employee sent to the American Civil Liberties Union, "I waited for the attendant to turn her back before pulling down my pants, but she told me she had to watch everything ... Although, there may not be any federal laws that prohibit lifestyle discrimination states have addressed job-related discrimination based on an employee's off-duty conduct and 29 states prohibit discrimination against smokers, employers still continu...

  • Word Count: 2476
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

5. an analysis of employee monito

... , the easiest way for a company to avoid legal issues is to make monitoring known company policy. As long as the company can prove that the employee does not have reasonable expectation of privacy they are not breaking the law. So, if the company creates this policy the monitoring of employees will be very welcomed by stockholders. Kantian ethics state that all people ... deserve to be respected. Under this theory monitoring employees is definitely an invasion of their privacy and does not respect their autonomy. The use of an employee monitoring system is designed to help improve overal...

  • Word Count: 2124
  • Approx Pages: 8

6. Privacy in the Workplace, A Case Study

... a less effective means of determining the source of the problem. The pros to this measure of action are that there will be no invasion of the privacy by the management on what person things an employee does on his or her specifically assigned computer. It will also cause no dispute in the workplace because nothing will change in the surveillance of the ... the source of the problem. If no one is watching over the actions of each specific employee it will be almost impossible to ever find the specific employee's that are using their assigned computers for non-work related measures. This ...

  • Word Count: 794
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

7. Employee Privacy in the Wired Workplace

... surveillance of employees is not a new phenomenon, electronic surveillance allows employers to monitor workers with unprecedented efficiency. In his book The Naked Employee, Frederick Lane describes offline ways in which employers have been permitted to intrude on employees' privacy for decades, such as drug testing, background checks, psychological exams, lie detector tests, and in-store video surveillance. The difference, ... by supervisors; the programs can even scan for keywords tailored to individual companies (128-29). Some experts have argued that a range of legitimate concerns ju...

  • Word Count: 1243
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: Graduate

8. E-mail Privacy

... heavily on you. Key personal information should not be sent through e-mail. Your information may not be private, even when you think it is. E-mail communications should have the same privacy protection as a telephone call, or a sealed envelope sent through the United States Postal Service. You would not expect someone to read a personal letter addressed to you, why should e- ... . Many employers find it necessary to monitor information sent and received for security purposes. A MacWorld survey found that approximately 25 percent of the businesses contacted admitted eavesdropping on emplo...

  • Word Count: 607
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

9. The Importance of Maintaining Privacy

... enclosures around their patios" (Schwartz, 743). Therefore, the differentiation between the more or less civilized communities specify the level of how much privacy can be gained. Interestingly, the situation is not localized only societies to societies but also in a daily life, the more status person gains ... in a different places (Schwartz, 742) and they have to have more privacy because their probability of loss of reputation is higher than others. Another example is that high level of managers can easily go into the employee's rooms without knocking the door but the employees can o...

  • Word Count: 1291
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

Got a writing question? Ask our professional writer!
Submit My Question