Day 157 Employee monitoring system and ethics

Employee monitoring system and ethics

In the modern workplace, it is becoming more and more common for the management team to introduce the ‘employee monitoring system’. Such system works efficiently on controlling non-work related activities for the employees, and also provided a considerable protection of the information security to the company. However, the debate of whether using this system is ethical or not for the business has never ended.

In my opinion, the three essential factors that required us to consider on evaluating this issue, which includes: the purpose of the data collection, the standard of actual application and the user’s acknowledgement. At first, we have to understand the reason behind this system. According to the report presented on 2005 Global Security survey “It is clear that many security breaches are the result of human error or negligence resulting from weak operational practices.” (Deloitte, 2005) The lack of employee’s awareness on information security forces many company to introduce the monitoring system. In fact, the employee monitor system serves the common good for the business, and puts restrictions equally to every employee. If the system can properly balance between the security requirements with employee’s privacy rights, then it is likely to be an ethical application. For instance, the company has to determine the appropriate level of information collected (privacy); ensure the data is free from error or bias (accuracy); clearly identify the purpose of the data collection and ownership of the information (property); make the information only available for specific management team member (Accessibility). At last, in accordance to the requirement from Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) (2014) the company should notify the employee about the system and only proceed with their consent. Once the company has successfully performed all these terms, we shall justify the employee monitoring system is complied with the ethical requirement.