Workplace Privacy

1 Pages 330 Words

The question of workplace privacy is a tricky one; in order to come up with a workable solution, one must balance the separate, and often conflicting, needs and expectations of employers and employees. In this essay, three types of workplace privacy issues will be discussed: e-mail and other office communications, employee drug testing, and the use of background checks.

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 arise, mainly, "How do we balance employee expectations of/right to privacy, with the rights of employers to observe employees to ensure quality, prevent leaks of proprietary information, and limit exposure to litigation?"

Employers have a strong interest in monitoring the communications of their employees. Employees engaging in illegal acts, distributing proprietary information or sending sexually explicit or harassing e-mails are a serious threat and liability to the employer.
However, employees should be given some measure of privacy. Privacy, along with being a human right, facilitates the free creation and distribution of ideas. If there were no private space within a company, it would most certainly have a chilling effect on the possibilities for free speech and creative thought. Employee mo...