This paper reviews privacy rights in the workplace and how both employer and employee benefit from it using utilitarian and Kantian approaches. The right to privacy is viewed as an essential right by most people and there is growing empirical evidence that employees believe this right is not forfeited upon entering the workplace.  Employees should have the right to work in a safe and secure environment.  In order to create this consistency, employees should expect to have monitoring of employees that is universal within their organization and that there are clear guidelines on email and web monitoring.  Employees should not expect to be reminded every year of these practices, however they should be informed on their hire date of such activities that take place with email and web and/or electronic monitoring. Privacy is an essential part of complex social practices by means of which the social group recognizes and communicates to the individual that his existence is his own.

Individuals naturally reject the utilitarian notion of the greatest good for the greatest number when assessing privacy concerns. Their focus is on the importance of themselves as individuals, and not on trading off individual rights for the sake of the group. The issue of privacy rights underscores one of the major shortcomings of utilitarian thought, for in dealing with privacy, we are dealing with an interest that cannot be measured or quantified.  Thus, utilitarian cost/benefit analysis does not attach the importance to privacy rights that most workers do. To try to correct some of this imbalance, employers need to consider the principle of reversibility and put themselves in the employee’s situation when assessing information gathering policies and their effect on employee privacy rights. The main arguments in favor of electronic monitoring are utilitarian however. Employers claim that electronic monitoring can be used as a training tool to increase employee productivity, and that the benefit to the organization outweighs any harm to the employees.

From a Kantian point of view, it can be argued that electronic monitoring violates the principle of respect for individuals in that it uses employees solely as a means to an end.  Sometimes the employer does not use electronic monitoring for its stated purposes, but simply to intimidate employees into working faster.  Employers must take into consideration the same variables as with information control issues to insure that employee privacy rights are adequately protected. The internal control by auditors will provide information to management and human resources of those employees who violates those policies. The course of action should be handled directly by management and human resources at the same time those consequences should be reported by the auditors to ensure fairness. This gives management the tools and information necessary to correct those actions and policies that better reflect the Kantian Theory. 

Employers do not have the right to monitor employees because they hire employees on trust that their work will be done ethically. Employees have shown they have not acted ethically and businesses must insure that they have processes to reduce risk with inappropriate emails and web. Every company has a different universe; Kant’s theories cannot apply to multiple universes, they only apply to one single element. It’s up to the human race, not entities to bring about a universe, which is bound together, not separated. Companies will not implement consistent consequences within their own organization. Companies, which do not implement standards and consistent patterns, find themselves in trouble financially. Their highest value, making profits, is put at risk. Government needs to step in to insure that there are laws and rules because if a company does not have consequences then they could possibly act unethically as they did during the industrial revolution. In most cases when businesses act unethically, companies look at the risk involved and determine the necessity of following such laws and rules.

In conclusion, the author understands that there are different circumstances that do not allow every employee job mobility, however you can’t have universal and moral laws if you have to adjust them to specific needs of a single or small element within the system.  It is both parties’ responsibilities to act and create ethical consistent, which can be general.  The employee has more power than the employer on the actions that take place.

Reference:
Boatright, John R. (2003). Ethics and The Conduct of Business. Upper Saddle River:
                  Prentice Hall

http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Man/2689/

http://www.epic.org/privacy/