MANAGING PEOPLE AT WORK

Managing people at work

Managing People at Work

Introduction

In a number of cases that developments in technology have enhanced the work conditions and alleviated work. Simultaneously contemporary technologies have caused fresh issues for employees. Numerous surveillance technologies violate upon the employee privacy (Ottensmeyer, 1991, Pp. 519-526). As technological developments take place the sophistication levels in techniques utilized by companies also increases. The abundance of these practices of surveillance has directed to an augment within the frequency of employee-employer arguments related to the data compiled by the monitoring of workplace. Majority of the former workplace privacy discussions have been focused on particular practices like surveillance of e-mails or testing for drugs. This paper critically discusses the influence of workplace surveillance on managing people at work from the perspectives of both employers and employees.

Discussion

Employee surveillance could be carried out in numerous methods, and workers in almost each sector are subject to approximately disturbing surveillance by supervisors. Contemporary developments in technology have made possible surveillance. Exemplars comprise of smart ID badges, CCTV cameras, which could be utilized for tracking a worker's movements within the workplace infrastructure, digital assessment of destination of calls and pattern of telephone use, and a number of systems, which observe computer transaction of employees approximately in a detailed manner (monitoring of internet usage and e-mail, random screen-shots, etc.).

As within this discussion 'Privacy' is a vital concept therefore, it is significant for having a lucid idea regarding the meaning of this term. A privacy of an individual concerns the extent to which others might possess information regarding that person and sensory access to that person. Therefore, to begin with the discussion we could utilize the definition by Ferdinand

Schoeman that:

“A person has privacy to the extent that others have limited access to information about him, limited access to the intimacies of his life, or limited access to his thoughts or his body” (Schoeman, 1984, Pp. 3).

The term could relate not just to an individual's mind and body although even his / her possessions. Nonetheless, not all types of sensory or information access to an individual and his/her possessions could become the subjects of bona-fide privacy claims. An individual could lawfully claim that this is a privacy issue that what he/she is doing at his/her home, even though an equivalent claim regarding the color and make of vehicle that he/she drives will not be lawful. These are the grounds for the limited “territory” (zone or sphere) near a person are referred to as his/her private space. This idea is intended for capturing the notion that the privacy concept is merely applicable inside distinct borders that enclose that individual (Agre, 1994, Pp. 101-127).

Issues of privacy emerge in numerous social settings. Commercial data mining, within public places the video surveillance, and for the purpose of law enforcement the tapping of phone calls (Bain, 2000, Pp. 2-18) some issues of privacy that are not related to workplace primarily. Nonetheless, within literature it has normally been claimed that places where people work are an exclusive case, ...