How the Growth of Electronic Monitoring Has Changed Employee Expectations of Privacy in the Workplace

The issue of privacy is a big concern in the workplace. With the expanding of new technology, many employees are concern about his or, her privacy in the workplace. Employees have the right to go to work knowing that his or, her employer will not invade their privacy. The rights to privacy in the workplace only provide limited protection for workers against monitoring and breach of confidentiality. The National Work Rights Institute states, under the federal law, "the limited protection the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 provides to employees' has been reduced because the statue has been outdated."

In Brian Trent’s article, Technology and Tomorrow: A Challenge to Liberty, Trent describes how electronic surveillance has increased and how it will continue to spread amongst people. In Craig Silverman’s article, Smile, Big Brother’s watching, Silverman explains that the amount of time and surveillance that corporations conduct over employees is increasing, but having some negative effects. Both of these articles explain how electronic surveillance will increase so much, that almost everyone will be able to be seen when not in the open [monitored]. In this essay I’ll be going more in depth to describe both articles and I’ll explain whether I agree with their arguments and why.

E-mail has rapidly become a staple of the modern office. Currently, two-thirds of employees in medium and large companies in the United States now have Internet access, compared with fifteen percent only two years ago. The availability of e-mail allows for messages to be widely and rapidly distributed, improving efficiency and reducing cost. In addition to being one of the components of the new workplace, e-mail is also the center of a hot privacy debate. Part of this is because, unlike regular mail, which is difficult to monitor, e-mail can be scanned with ease, allowing employers to engage in monitoring at an unprecedented rate, and raising the specter of a workplace free of privacy. As this relatively new technology gains ever increasing prevalence, certain questions

As indicated by some people, the privacy right ought to be extended to workplaces. In the meantime, other individuals feel that this extension would encompass an unnecessary incursion into the managing rights of the management. In a working environment, the right to privacy of employees is a primarily controversial legal topic. This is even more of a concern or of an issue during this age of increased dependence on electronic mail and computers to do business. Because of innovation technology, employers have been enabled to monitor working environment correspondence that happens by means of PCs, for example, messages and Internet utilization. A majority of the employees feel that such observing abuses their privacy rights. Nevertheless, the law does permit it. Some employee activities like private discussions and actual physical spaces at the workplace such as the locked desk drawers are under more privacy protections. Hence, there is a great need for the employers to consider circumstances under which he or she wants to conduct an investigation.

The Federal Privacy Act restricts the collection of information and regulates access to Information for federal employees and covers private employers who have federal contracts requiring specific record keeping obligations. The Federal Wiretapping Act/Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits the intentional interception or disclosure of any wire, oral, or electronic communication where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. There are two exceptions: (1) if one party to the communication has consented, electronic monitoring is allowed, and (2) a business use exemption permits telephone extension equipment used to monitor communications within the ordinary course of business. In addition to the federal privacy laws, many states have adopted comparable statutes that may impact an employee monitoring program. A great

Privacy in the workplace is very hard to get. Advancements in technology have been made that allow companies to monitor every aspect of an employee use of their systems. This is very evident if you have a job that involves you to be on the telephones. Companies are able to listen to each phone that is made, see every website that you have visited and read any email you have received. For example, I used to work at AMEX call center, and they were able to monitor each call through a system called N.I.C.E.. Through this system the company was able to monitor my calls for quality control reasons. However, if I made a phone call for personal reasons they

In this article Evans summarized privacy law in the American workplace, and also scholar Mathew Finkin painted a dramatic picture of the surveillance under which many many American employee work. Moreover, Finkin mentioned in this article that 34% of American employee are monitored continuously with regard to their email and internet usage privacy. In addition, He also pointed that The problem of employee privacy and productivity becomes more significant as the boundaries between formal and informal places of work blur. Employee monitoring can also be conducted in other ways that were not possible until very recently. For example, some cellular telephones have built in global positioning systems that enable employers to track the

The paper is a brief insight into electronic surveillance in the workplace. It focuses on what video surveillance is; and what methods are used, such as monitoring phone usage, video surveillance, monitoring email, internet usage, GPS surveillance of company vehicles and cell phones; and why these methods are adopted within the workplace. It also focuses on the legal risk of electronic surveillance with the concerns of invasion of privacy and its effect on the of workplace protocol and guidelines.

Workplace Surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers do but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees and the employer about the employees right to privacy being violated. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The employees believe the act of workplace surveillance as a hateful act that violates their right to privacy and liberties.

An employee’s privacy rights in the workplace come down to the word ‘Reasonable’. The employee’s rights in the workplace are very different than it is in their personal lives. An employee cannot expect the workplace to be private, nor their electronic communications to be private as well. Within the workplace, employers have the right to reduce liabilities within the scope of the law to which they must adhere. For example, employers have the right to ensure that email communication is being used for work-related purposes (Gidin, 1999). Federal laws provide employers the right to monitor communications, retain records, and conduct surveillance given that they provide proper notification

As more and more advancements are made in the wide world of technology, workplace surveillance seems like a logical step. However as with anything, there are pros and cons which should be considered. I think finding a balance that best serves the interests of success for businesses using it and the productivity of employees without creating an oppressive workplace is very important.

According to the survey of Internet Usage at Work, a quarter of workers spend an hour or more online at sites unrelated to their work, 22% said 30 minutes to an hour was distributed to entertainment. Nearly 10% promised they never did something not relevant to their jobs (Sharma & Jatinder, 2003). Thus, surveillance in workplace can monitor workers’ performance and reduce the waste of time. Furthermore, monitoring employee’s work has a positive effect on work distribution. Surveillance also can achieve the goal of fair work distribution and show how an employee’s performance is evaluated (Mason, Button, Lankshear, Coates, & Sharrock, 2002, cited in Watkins, Coopman, Hart, & Walker, 2007, p. 175). As a result of which, the employee’s enthusiasm is stimulated and the productivity of business will be significantly improved. The opponent argue that excessive monitoring, however, can do harm to employees, because privacy can be compromised if the disclosure of employees’ information was not authorized, and it may cause leak of private information (Ball, 2010). The significance of appropriately managing this issue recently drawn the public’s attention by the brutal cyberattack perpetrated against Sony information in late 2014. Sony employees’ private information was broadcasted to the third party (Ellis, 2014,

Workplace surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers’ do, but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers’ to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees’ and the employer about the employees’ right to privacy being violated. The employees’ believe the act of workplace surveillance to be hateful that violates their right to privacy and liberties. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers’ in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The workplace surveillance is helpful in improving the performance of workers or it is contributing towards degrading the performance of workers and their work relationships.

Privacy in the workplace exists only to a certain extent essentially because the organization has the right to search and seizure their property and the employees which utilize it. Therefore, I believe employees generally are limited to the amount of privacy they have on the job. Generally, much of the equipment, devices, and resources utilized at work are the property of the employer and therefore they have the right to monitor what employees are doing. In essence, employers have every right to invade employee privacy while the employees are utilizing the organization's equipment and resources. Further, employee privacy is limited because essentially employees are trying to safeguard the organization from litigation and the erosion of the organization’s reputation.

As technology advances, so do the monitoring possibilities in the workplace; as a result these possibilities will raise the privacy issue in the workplace. Nowadays, employers can monitor and track many aspects of their employees ' jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the