The Ethics of Workplace Privacy

The Ethics of Workplace Privacy

“The Issues the Company Faces if Mary cannot Institute a Workplace Privacy Policy.”

Workplace privacy is an increasingly contested issue in modern organizations following the increased need for organizations to optimize utilization of the available resources and avoiding competitive threats. Organizations should have privacy mechanisms in place to safeguard the organization from possible adverse outcomes (Parks, Xu, Chu, & Lowry, 2017).As a HR manager, Mary is obligated to institute the policy detailing the best practices that creates certainty and security oforganizational resources and information.The employees could be motivated by a lack of an elaborate workplace privacy policy to access and share unauthorized classified details about the organization, thereby exposing the organization to threats of data breach exposing the confidential information to competitors. ACME company could also face the issue of misappropriation of organizational resources that would attract unnecessary costs. For example, a lack of guidelines related to the use of company phones and the internet can prompt workers to use them to make personal consumption.

“The Ethical Challenges Associated with Executive Leadership, Mary, and the Employees”

The ACME company employees, executive leadership, and Mary face ethical challenges relating to workplace privacy. As the HR manager, Mary’s ethical challenge relates to ensuring that the best practices are implemented without lowering the level of employee morale. The main issue facing Mary relates to ensuring that appropriate strategies and policies are established to secure the organization from the adverse effect associated with allowing employees “free reign” to company property. The approach may involve activities that may not be acceptable to the management and the employees. For example, the installation of surveillance devices to monitor the activities of the workers.

Executive management’s ethical challenge relates to maintaining organizational productivity. The primary management obligation is profit maximization (Hahn & Kim, 2016) and therefore pursues strategies that are in support of the agenda. At ACME company, executive management’s main ethical issue relates to employee’s motivation. When employees feel that they are overly monitored, their morale reduces, exposing the organization to reduced productivity. On the contrary, the management has the responsibility of ensuring optimum and effective utilization of organizational resources and ensuring employee privacy, making Mary’s initiative to install privacy measures an ethical dilemma..

The employees face the ethical challenge of employee’s privacy rights. The employees may feel that the installation of surveillance mechanisms is a violation of their privacy rights a prompting them to resist any organizational initiatives aimed at improving workplace privacy. Employee surveillance creates distrust between the employees and management thereby making it an ethical dilemma for Mary on the appropriateness of the latest technology to enhance workplace privacy.

“The Consequences Associated with the Organization’s Culture and Objectives, from the HRM Perspective”

ACME’s organizational growth objective is supported by Mary’s ability to cultivate an innovative culture and adoption of the latest technological advancements. The culture and objective pose far-reaching consequences to the organizational operations, especially the HR operations. First, the innovative culture ensures that an organization remains competitive by making it possible to uncover unexplored potential or adjust to changes in demand. Second, innovation and adoption of the latest technology improve the efficiency of organizational operations, making it possible to eliminate unnecessary and ineffective processes. In the light of workplace privacy, innovation, and technological advancement ensures that employee supervision is conducted more efficiently to help reduce unacceptable behavior such as laxity, theft, and misuse of organizational resources thereby improving productivity. The technology also supports human resource decision making such as firing, promotion, among others, as it provides relevant information about employees that the HRM may consider in making such decisions.

“The Best Way for Mary to Convince Executive Leadership That It’s the Ethical Decision to Make, Concerning Workplace Privacy”

            Mary faces the challenge of making ACME’s executive management town-up the workplace privacy policy. The privacy policy can’t work without the backing of themanagement since the employees are likely to follow their leaders. As such, Mary should prioritize bringing the executive on board by informing and convincing them that the privacy policy is a necessity.First, she can succeed in realizing the objective of persuading the executive by considering their views before formulating the policy and incorporating relevant opinions in the policy document. When the management feels that their opinions are considered, they are more likely to accept the policy. Second, a major reason why the executive may be opposed to the workplace privacy policy is the lack of relevant information about the technology and its value to the organization. Mary can thereforearrange for a training program for the management through workshops, retreats, seminars, among other platforms, to educate them on the benefits of adopting the workplace security policy. During the training, evidence of places where the systems have been applied and worked efficiently should be provided. Where possible, a tour to an organization where the privacy measures are implemented can be arranged to give the executive first-hand experience of what to expect.In so doing, the managers would be prepared to act as change agents through the implementation process of the policy, thereby reducing possible resistance. Mary can also assure the executive that the privacy measures would not jeopardize the employees’ right to privacy.

References

Hahn, Y., & Kim, D. (2016). Corporate social responsibility: A comparison analysis. The Journal of Business, Economics, and Environmental Studies (JBEES), 6(4), 13-17.

Parks, R., Xu, H., Chu, C. H., & Lowry, P. B. (2017). Examining the intended and unintended consequences of organizational privacy safeguards. European Journal of Information Systems, 26(1), 37-65.