Ethics, Privacy, and the Workplace Essay

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Technology / Privacy / Workplace

There is a rapidly increasing use of technological monitoring in the workplace, and while technology in general has been highly beneficial to companies, the use of some technologies has raised privacy and ethical concerns among employees. This paper reviews the available literature when it comes to workplace monitoring of employees and the ethical implications of that monitoring.

Is Privacy in the Workplace a Dying Notion?

The right to privacy is a nice idea, and in some instances and circumstances in the United States an individual can reasonably expect to have his or her privacy respected. Websites, for example, notify users frequently that their privacy is important and it is being protected. However, when it comes to the workplace, in an age of increased reliance on electronic technology, management has been able to "…monitor virtually all workplace communications" that employees have access to.

Findlaw asserts that while employees may believe this is a violation of their privacy rights -- "…it is usually allowed under the law." In fact most employee activities while in the company property -- in particular when using the company's computer -- are not protected by personal property laws. However, employers have the legal right to monitor websites visited by workers, but employers are not legal when they monitor voice mail messages and live phone conversations (Findlaw).

There are some limitations on employers' legal right to monitor workers' telephone involvement, Findlaw points out. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) does limit to some degree what the employer can and cannot do. For example, management may not tap into an employee's voicemail and if employers "…read, disclose, delete, or prevent access to an employee's voicemail messages" (Findlaw).

Karin Mika, writing in the Cornell HR Review, reports that "Limitations are few and far between" in terms of what an employer can monitor. Everything is open season for employers, Mika asserts,"…especially if the employer has a posted policy regarding the types of monitoring that go on" (2012). On the other hand, when employees try to take the employer to court or otherwise challenge the employer, they are "rarely successful" because courts are known to "uphold disciplines and discharges" as long as the particular incident was a result of the company discovering "…an activity that had some relationship to work duties" (Mika, 2).

When an employee has a job that entails keeping up with customer communication online but in fact that employee has been found to be surfing the Internet -- because employers have a legal right to monitor a worker's online activities -- that employee should "reasonably expect to be disciplined" (Mika, 2).

Certainly an objective person could discern that the employer was well within his ethical and legal rights to discipline the worker for not performing expected duties and responsibilities. There are exceptions, however, to the policy of disciplining a worker for the mentioned in the paragraph above.

For example, a) Mika explains that the employee may have been cruising the net during off-hours, or maintaining a personal blog during lunch hour; b) the employer may not have a written or posted policy that specifically prohibits "using company equipment for personal use" (an example of that would be when the employer allows a company email account to be used by employees for personal communication); c) when the employer acquires information through a forwarded message from another worker (bringing legally private communication into the attention of the employer; and d) if the employer gets information about an employee in a process that had nothing to do with job duties, that too, is an exception to the employee being punished.

An example of "d" in the above paragraph would be when an employer somehow accesses a Facebook chat in which the employee is saying negative things about the company, Mika continues. Though it seems unfair and a stretch, "it does happen," Mika writes on page 5. The employer generally has the response that if the information "…disparages the reputation of the employer or puts the employer in jeopardy of liability, then the employer should be able to discipline," or even fire the employee (Mika, 5).

Is it ethical to discipline an employee for criticizing the company? That is a valid question because the National Labor Relations Board has in the past upheld the rights of an employee to "engage in dialogue critical of management without fear of reprisal" (Mika, 6). The pivotal question here is: were the critical statements intended to bring improvements to the work situation, or were they "disparaging, derogatory, or nonproductive? (Mika, 6).

There is a fine line here as to whether the employee should have the right to vent a little in a public forum, like Facebook, Mika continues.

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When the lines are spelled out clearly, the understanding of what is accepted and what is not, but there are issues here with the First Amendment and free speech, as well. Clearly there are ethical questions to be approached and answered.

How does Consequentialism enter into the picture?

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism takes the position that "…morality is all about producing the right kinds of overall consequences." But what does that really mean? In the case of the employee who was disciplined because of something he said in a chat room on Facebook, whose consequences turn our better? And what are we talking about in terms the right consequences: the company, the individual, society, or perhaps the other employees (because they see how the rules are enforced?).

There is more to Consequentialism than what has been reported here. Is the point of morality to: one) "spread happiness and relieve suffering"; two) create freedom in the world; three) to promote freedom? Those are lofty aspirations, seemingly beyond any issues with employee rights. But when we look at "Plain Consequentialism," it narrows the philosophy down quite a bit. "Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one with the best overall consequences." One of the points of Consequentialism is that when results bring happiness, then the results are good.

In this case, the employee could easily believe that his position is morally right because he enforces all rules uniformly. If everyone knows the guidelines and one person violates them, happiness isn't going to be a natural reaction from the employee that was punished, but overall there will not be cloud in the air over the workforce as to what the rules are precisely. They will be informed, and enlightened, by disciplinary actions taken against someone who doesn't meet the standards set.

How does Deontology play a role in this employee issue?

The theory of Deontology posits that obligations and duties should be taken into consideration when faced with an ethical dilemma (Davidson College). In other words it is ethically proper to uphold duties that a person is accountable for; keeping promises is typical of the values that Deontology puts forward because keeping promises is ethically correct. Hence, if the employee in question knew that he would be breaking understood rules, or would be embarrassing the company if he took his complaints into a public forum, under Deontology, he would accept his discipline. By following the Deontology principles, a person should be more able to make consistently good decisions, because they will generally be based on what he understands is the right thing to do.

The word Deontology comes from the Greek words for "duty" (deon) and for science (or study) of (logos). Deontology is found "within the domain of moral theories" that have to do with a person's choices of what is right to do, what one ought to do. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Deontology is the opposite from Consequentialism. For one thing, the SEP explains that consequentialists hold that "choices -- acts or intentions -- are to be morally assessed solely by the states of affairs they bring about" (SEP, 2007). Hence, in order to determine what particular "states of affairs" would be considered "intrinsically valuable"; in other words, once a consequentialist (according to this explanation) has determined what valuable state of affairs would be ideal, he may then work to bring it about. And the choice that is morally right according to the consequentialist, will be "the good" (SEP)

Why is Consequentialism criticized, and considered an anathema to Deontology? The Stanford Encyclopedia explains that some consequentialists actually refrain from doing things, back off from certain kinds of acts, in order to keep one's duty to be morally upright. Also, all acts are either required or forbidden, and there is "no realm of moral indifference" (SEP, p. 2).

But when it comes to Deontological theories, there are agent-centered theories that help in understanding these theories. Under agent-centered theories, an agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a certain "agent" (say, the employee who wound up being punished for speaking out against the company on Facebook) to "take or refrain from taking some action…and does not necessarily give anyone….....

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