Introduction
Information Communication Technology (ICT) has shaped different aspects of business performance by automating processes to create better and more efficient systems for completing workplace tasks. In this regard, technological use has changed how workplaces are organized and redefined techniques used by employees to complete organizational tasks (McStay, 2020). However, its continued use in the workplace poses significant ethical challenges to both employers and employees due to privacy concerns. Ethical challenges relating to employee privacy come from a concept known as “functional creep,” which describes a situation where managers acquire pieces of information that they did not initially intend to obtain in the course of implementing automation processes. For example, organizations that set up a security system to prevent unauthorized access of persons in the workplace may acquire data that allows them to monitor employee attendance. Similarly, supervisors could obtain biometric data about an employee when they sign in to work every day.
The increased use of social media applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, in the workplace environment, has also heightened concerns regarding privacy concerns in the workplace. This is because employers can easily obtain data from their employees’ social media pages to track their behaviors (Bhave et al., 2020). Indeed, about 75% of employers have admitted to monitoring their employees’ emails and web activities, while an additional 77% of the “Google” their employees (OIPC, 2018). A further 39% of managers have admitted to looking into their employees’ social media pages for surveillance reasons (OIPC, 2018). These activities pose significant ethical challenges in data management. More importantly, they influence human resource decisions without the knowledge of employees. For example, 43% of employers have admitted to using data sourced from the social media pages of potential recruits to inform their hiring decisions, while 19% of them have acknowledged using the same data to inform their promotion practices (OIPC, 2018). These statistics suggest that the widespread use of social media in the workplace potentially exposes employees to privacy breaches.
The aforementioned concerns stem from the unlimited access that employers have to gain access to data relating to employee activities and behaviors using surveillance tools, such as social media pages, cameras, and microphones that are often installed in workstations. Stated differently, the ethical problem to be investigated stems from the unfettered access to information that management has and their use of the same data to influence organizational outcomes. This problem is notably common in organizations where employers have to install security cameras for security purposes.
Privacy violations have several ramifications on businesses and employees because they could potentially abate the contravention of employees’ rights. Indeed, the concept of “privacy,” which has traditionally been considered a sacred issue has become a topic of debate in today’s increasingly complex business and technological world. In some quarters, it has created disagreements between employees and employers, with the latter arguing that workers who do not wish to be monitored should quit (OIPC, 2018). Comparatively, employees believe that they should have absolute rights over their data and all forms of privacy intrusion should be rejected. This study suggests that addressing the ethical challenges brought by the adoption of new technology need to occur through a re-balancing of employer and employee rights using the deontology approach, which supports the morally equal treatment of people.
Analysis of Ethical Concern
Violations of privacy in the workplace are one of the most pressing issues facing 21st-century workplaces that rely on the extensive use of information technology tools. However, it is difficult to discern the prevalence of privacy concerns without understanding the potential vulnerabilities of ethical breaches because of ICT use. These details are provided below and they help to describe processes and procedures adopted in the workplace that increase the risk of privacy violations.
Potential Vulnerabilities to Ethical Breaches
Location-Based Tracking: Current technological tools being used by various organizations could provide the real-time location of employees through GPRS tracking and the identification of frequency signals across a wide geographical area. Indeed, as explained by OIPC (2018), many organizations have gadgets that can provide real-time coordinates of an employee by providing the longitude, latitude, and altitude of their current location. Similarly, managers can use the GPRS coordinates of company cars issued to employees to know their whereabouts without their consent. Additionally, some organizations use RFID chips, which are ordinarily installed in an employee’s badge to carry out surveillance activities (OIPC, 2018). Coupled with the use of an RFID reader, employers can know an employee’s attendance record and geographical positioning at any given time.
In some organizations, concerns have also been raised regarding the use of device identifiers, which, if linked with a company’s Local Area Network (LAN), could provide real-time coordinates of an employee, thereby allowing employers to track their movements throughout the organization. Location-based tracking processes could also be utilized through digital means, such as tracking employee movements using the Internet Protocol (IP) address and media access control (MAC) networks, to know an employee’s whereabouts (OIPC, 2018).
Monitoring Activities: Surveillance is a key part of organizational processes because managers need to make sure that current processes and systems are secure. Typically, most organizations use software to undertake this activity and some of them can monitor employee activity as well. For example, personal internet usage software has been used to measure employee engagement and activities in the workplace (OIPC, 2018). Additionally, firms could generate data relating to employee activities when auditing the capabilities of a specific system in an organization. For example, software programs could be used to measure employee engagement, thereby allowing managers to generate information that could be used to indirectly predict their performance.
The proliferation of social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter among businesses and customers has also created a new way to monitor employee behavior. First, employers have expressed concern that the use of these social networking sites reduces employee productivity, thereby prompting a ban on their use in some firms (Marwick, Fontaine, & Boyd, 2017). However, other organizations have adopted a moderate view of its adoption and allowed its restricted use (Marwick et al., 2017). Nonetheless, the broader increase in social media use in organizations has created ethical concerns regarding the monitoring and surveillance of employees’ private data to inform workplace decisions. This statement is linked to research studies, which have shown that many employers monitor their employees’ social media pages to inform their decisions regarding hiring, promotion, and even loan approval processes (Holland & Tham, 2020). The extent of the use of such data to make key decisions draws attention to the rights employers and employees have in the complex world of data management.
Employee Rights
Employees have a right to be protected from privacy breaches by their employers. However, these rights are subject to state laws and restrictions on communication (Ciochetti, 2020). For example, employers have a right to listen to conversations between their employees and customers but they need to inform all parties that such a recording is happening and outline its intended purpose. In some circumstances, employers could monitor such conversations to improve sound quality only, but in complex circumstances, employees and customers have to consent to such recordings before they start (Harvard Education, 2020). Workplace policies may also allow managers to record their employees in common workplace zones but employees have a right not to be recorded in other areas, such as restrooms and break rooms. These freedoms are guaranteed under several laws that are relevant to workplace safety, such as The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP), which protects employee rights against surveillance from their employers (OIPC, 2018). From their application, managers are supposed to stipulate to their employees how and why they are collecting the information outlined above.
Employer Rights
Employers have a right to collect information about their business operations and, being that employees are a critical resource for companies, they also reserve the right to collect information about them as well. They may have different motivations for doing so but business reasons are among the most commonly cited (Harvard Education, 2020). For example, some employers have justified their need to monitor employee activities to protect trade secrets. Others have affirmed their rights to undertake surveillance activities to avoid liability. For example, they can use video recordings to argue their cases in court. Issues involving employee harassment and discrimination have been adjudicated on these grounds. The process has mainly been predicated on the use of various ethical theories to inform their judgments or solve emerging ethical dilemmas.
Theoretical Underpinning of Potential Ethical Outcomes
Ethical theories equip managers with the tools to solve ethical dilemmas using a framework that would best advance their organizational goals. According to Crane et al. (2019), managers can borrow from four major categories of ethical theories to solve their ethical dilemmas: deontology, utilitarianism, rights, and virtues. The field of deontology focuses on upholding the rights of an organization to its shareholders and stakeholders when solving an ethical problem. Therefore, ethical dilemmas are solved based on the need to maximize the duty of an organization to the aforementioned parties. Utilitarianism adopts a different view of solving ethical dilemmas because it argues that correct ethical solutions are those that have the maximum value for the greatest percentage of people.
The “rights” approach to solving ethical dilemmas is based on the principle that people’s rights are of the utmost importance when addressing ethical challenges. Therefore, the correct ethical solutions to adopt in an organization are those that protect these rights (Crane et al., 2019). Lastly, the virtuous approach to ethical leadership is based on the principle that ethical actions should be examined based on the character of the people who propose them (Morris & Morris, 2016). Therefore, unlike other ethical theories outlined in this paper, it does not focus on people’s actions, but rather on their character traits. These ethical theories can be used to predict the outcome of the ethical challenges posed by the use of information communication tools in the workplace.
If the “rights” ethical theory is used to solve the current ethical dilemma, arguments would be weighed against the need to balance the rights of both employers and employees. The decision regarding whose rights should be emphasized over the other rests with an organization’s culture and the prevailing legal environment. Comparatively, if the utilitarianism theory is used as the basic theoretical underpinning to solving the ethical dilemma, it would mean that the “greater good” involving the collection of private data would have to be prioritized over all other interests. In other words, it would demand that concerns about employee privacy be balanced with the need to maximize value for a greater percentage of people. In this context, employees’ interests would be prioritized because they are the majority of people in the workplace and their privacy rights are deemed to supersede those of management.
The best legal outcome would be realized if the deontology approach is used to solve the ethical challenge because it supports the morally equal treatment of people. Stated differently, it addresses the ethical dilemma by perceiving both employees and employers as being intrinsically valuable to the organization, thereby providing a solid foundation of respect for both parties (Crane et al., 2019). Legally, it provides a consistent foundation that considers the rights of employers to access information and employees to protect their privacy as being important to protecting the health of their broader relationship. In this regard, it promotes the law of non-contradiction because the framework for analyzing the rights of employees and employers is consistent.
Areas of Law Addressed
Constitutional Law: The US constitution contains several legal provisions regulating how employees’ privacy concerns should be addressed in the workplace. However, the 4th amendment is perhaps the most relevant to the present study because it is the source of all privacy laws adopted in the workplace. The amendment states that the constitution should protect the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Ohlin, 2019, p. 18). This legal provision protects citizens from unreasonable intrusion by authorities in their private lives. Similar limitations have been associated with the First Amendment right that governs personal autonomy. Alternatively, the Fifth Amendment rights relating to personal protection against self-incrimination are similarly associated with the same privacy concerns.
While the above law is relevant to all parties at the federal level, organizations pay more attention to state laws and common jurisprudence provided by relevant courts to guide the formulation of their privacy policies. These legal bases of operation provide the criterion that private organizations follow when formulating their privacy laws. Relative to this assertion, Ciochetti (2020) says that the courts often use two criteria for reviewing privacy issues in the workplace (a) whether an employer had a legitimate right to access information (b) whether an employee should have reasonable expectations on privacy rights. These preconditions are further balanced with relevant employment laws.
Employment Law: Employment law governs the relationship between employers and employees. The common law principles governing its application are borrowed from state and federal laws but their end goal is to safeguard the interest of workers. Given that the privacy and ethical issues associated with ICT use in the workplace potentially amount to a breach of employee privacy, it is integral to understand the provisions of employment law that govern the subject. Different states have various legal provisions governing employee privacy, including legislations that are relevant to the use of information obtained from social media. Twenty states in the US have such laws and they outline conditions and penalties that govern processes affecting employee privacy (Ciochetti, 2020). For example, the employment law for the state of Columbia specifies that employers should not punish employees for refusing to disclose personal information (Ciochetti, 2020). Additionally, the laws of the state forbid employers from failing to hire workers because they fail to provide personal information. Therefore, employers and bound by these state laws when managing employee data.
Torts: From a broader overview of employment laws influencing employee privacy rights in the workplace, several torts are relevant to this discussion. They include “intrusion on seclusion” and “false light” (Ciochetti, 2020). Inclusion on seclusion is a relevant tort in US common law that is relevant to the present ethical dilemma because it states that intrusion should be deemed to have occurred only when employees expect “reasonable” privacy. Applying the relevant legal principle to the invasion of privacy concern highlighted in this paper would demand that employees demonstrate to a court of law that their employers “obtained unwanted access to data.” This tort also emphasizes the need for employees to demonstrate the “intent” of the employers to obtained unwanted information. In other words, it bears responsibility on the employer to demonstrate that he or she lacked the requisite legal means for seeking permission from their employers to access data.
“False light” is one of the least studied torts relating to employee privacy rights. It states that employers should not portray their employees in a “false light” – by creating a bad impression of their character based on the information they collect about them. In this discussion, there is a reasonable assumption that the employer has publicly given out information relating to their employees. However, this statement is not to be confused with publishing employee details because defamation cases require an examination of whether the communication was made to one person or a set of people (FindLaw, 2020). Nonetheless, the application of the “False Light” tort to the current ethical dilemma depends on state laws, which mostly borrow their legal statutes on privacy protection from the Second Restatement of Torts – Section 652e, which states that companies can be subjected to liability based on contraventions of the “false light” tort if the following conditions are satisfied:
- An employee gives publicity to matters concerning their employees based on the data they collect from the application of information security systems
- An employer depicts the conduct of their employees in a “false light”
- A reasonable person would consider the invasion of privacy as “highly offensive”
- An employer acts in “reckless regard to falsifying claims about their employees based on the data they have about them (FindLaw, 2020)
Collectively, the areas of law highlighted above suggest that solutions aimed at addressing ethical challenges regarding the use of ICT in the workplace need to be consistent with the torts, constitutional, and employment laws highlighted above.
Conclusion and Recommendations
In this paper, the concept of privacy in the workplace has been conceptualized from an ethical and legal perspective with its link to relevant torts, constitutional, and employment laws discussed. Recommendations are drawn from the deontological ethical theory to establish a balance between an employers’ rights to secure organizational objectives and respect the privacy of workers involved. Nonetheless, the insights highlighted in this paper show that the increased use of ICT in the workplace has increased privacy concerns regarding the information collected from employees and their potential uses in the firm.
Data collection appears to be an inevitable consequence of the use of various types of software and applications in the workplace environment and it changes the power balance between employers and employees. While this paradigm shift has the potential to cause significant privacy breaches that could influence the power balance, the ethical concerns discussed draw attention to three issues that should be considered when evaluating the legality of such actions. First, all parties need to have a common understanding regarding why and how employers collect employee data. Secondly, they need to have a common vision for developing procedures that have been taken to protect the integrity of the information gathered to prevent any party from using them for any other purpose other than the intended goals. Additionally, there needs to be a critical evaluation of the role that employees play in making decisions regarding the generation and use of private data.
Subject to the theories highlighted in this paper, proposals to address ethical issues brought by ICT use in the workplace needs to be confined within the need to create a balance between employer and employee rights. The first step of reconciling these rights is understanding that both parties largely share a common vision for the organization based on their perceptions of products and markets. Therefore, a monitoring program should be developed to address their interests and it should demonstrate high levels of accountability and integrity to both parties. From the perspective of the employer, the program should allow them to carry out their oversight and supervisory activities without inhibitions. Doing so will help them to improve resource efficiency and undertake periodic employee performance reviews.
Comparatively, from the perspective of the employees, they should expect reasonable protection from privacy intrusion by their employers, knowing that the information collected from them will not be used for any other purposes other than those originally intended. The failure to satisfy both conditions that protect the rights of both parties is likely to cause conflicts between both parties with widespread implications on operational performance.
Additionally, minimizing future liability exposures associated with the ethical issues highlighted should be done by building a culture of integrity, which will form the foundation for addressing all other future ethical challenges that arise in the workplace. Nurturing a culture of integrity would help to improve the ethical climate and encourage more employees to uphold high levels of commitment towards doing “what is right.” Broadly, the ethical issues highlighted in this paper could help to prepare organizations to cope with the challenges of embracing information technology tools in the workplace. They are aimed at providing clarity regarding policies that can be adopted in the organization to safeguard the interests of both employers and employees. Additionally, managers or government agencies could use the findings of this study to guide them on how technology can be integrated into the workplace.
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