The privacy rights of employees in workplace
Employee right refers to the ability to receive just treatment from employers. Human Resource professionals deal with overseeing most activities involving employees, for instance, hiring, wages, employee benefits, paychecks, and firing. This implies that human resource personnel have free access to employees’ personal information. This information may include one’s race, political views, religion, sexual preference, health information, sexual preferences, and criminal records (Nash & Estreicher, 2010). This information may be sensitive and employees may want to keep it private, thus a need for privacy in this case. There are principles that govern HR policies to protect privacy rights of employees at workplace. These principles aim at limiting collection of information, keeping personal information accurate and secure.
Privacy right at work place is an increasingly controversial legal issue especially in this generation of increased reliance on computers. Employers (HR) are required to put in place best practice in order to maintain privacy at workplace. The general governing principle is that HR should know which information to collect and retain from employees and whether that information is free to be passed to others. The other principles include; when to give employees’ information to third parties. This principle helps employers to create a trusting relationship with employees and by so doing; the two parties can live happily to have a productive workforce. In line with this, the HR should not give a list of its employees to another organization for market purposes. However, there are some circumstances, which can necessitate an employer to unveil such information to a third party (Nash & Estreicher, 2010). For instance, when the information is needed by an inspector to carry out his duties of inspection, employers will be required to provide the information. At some instances, the information may be needed by government agencies and when this is a requirement by law for such an agency to access the information, then the employer may provide it. The employer may also give the information to a permit holder or it is needed for reference.
The other principle is about access to email and internet. Use internet and email may also raise privacy issues at work place (Nash & Estreicher, 2010). Login codes may make employees think that their web browsing activities are private not knowing that those activities can be scrutinized by their employer. This principle helps to ensure that both employers and employees need to understand the responsibilities that apply to internet use and email.
Recommendation
Therefore, in order to give them employees a right to privacy, employers should provide a notice to their employees about disclosure of any personal information. Doing it behind their knowledge deprives them the right. It is recommendable for employers to clearly explain to their employees the appropriate way of using email and internet at workplace (Hansson & Palm, 2005). Employers should also outline the possible consequences that come as a result of misusing web browsing. Employers should also let their employees know the means of monitoring internet use, by informing them how they will be monitoring it and how frequent they will be doing so. Additionally, employees also need to understand their role at work place by doing the right thing at a right time so as to produce the expected output. This will avoid such cases of being monitored.
References
New York University Annual Conference on Labor (1997- ), Nash, J. R., & Estreicher, S. (2010). Workplace privacy: Proceedings of the New York University 58th Annual Conference on Labor. Austin [Tex.: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, Kluwer Law International.
Hansson, S. O., & Palm, E. (2005). The ethics of workplace privacy. Bruxelles: PIE-Peter Lang.
