Discussion : (7a) the major workplace privacy issues include the collection and
ID: 456094 • Letter: D
Question
Discussion: (7a) the major workplace privacy issues include the collection and use of employee information in personnel files, integrity testing, drug testing, and monitoring of an employee’s work, behavior, conversations, and location by electronic means.
Please respond to all of the following prompts:
(Read the Ethics in Practice Case on page 543 of the textbook). Read the ethics in practice case Titled: Give me what I want or I’ll tell the president! Then answer the entire questions below 1 thru 4.
ETHICS IN PRACTICE CASE: Give Me What I Want or I’ll Tell the President!
Place yourself in the role of a personnel director for a bank. It is company policy that neither personnel files nor copies of files are to leave the personnel office. The director of accounting and computer services is due to give his employees their yearly employee evaluations and has sent a memo to your secretary requesting copies of his employees’ evaluations from the previous year. Your secretary shows you the memo. You are upset that the director would send such a memo to your secretary, because he should be aware of the policy concerning employee files.
So you decide to call the director and tell him that he is welcome to read the evaluations of his employees from the previous year in the personnel office. He tells you that he does not have the time to come to personnel and read the files and that he will speak to the president of the bank about this issue. The working relationship between you and the director has been addressed by the president before, and she has told the two of you that you need to be able to work out problems such as this between yourselves.
The dilemma is whether you should go against company policy in an effort to avoid another lecture from the president, and let the director take the copies of the evaluations to his office, or adhere to the bank’s policy on protection of employee privacy.
Answer the following questions:
1. What are the main ethical dilemmas in this situation?
2. Should you report the director’s threat to step over you to the president?
3. What would you do in this situation?
4. If you had to come up with a definition of privacy in the workplace, what would it be?
The answers need to be complete and accurate as possible. Please!
Explanation / Answer
1. There are two main Ethical Dilemas in this scenerio, the Privacy Act and the companies policy of privacy. The privacy act is meant to keep personal information confidential, unless it deals with people who are working directly with that information. The privacy act was broken by the actions of taking confidential information from the office. Getting the information of the Annual reviews is a violation because they dont know what their using that infomation for.
2. I would definitely report the director’s threat to step over me to the president because the director is going against the company policy and I believe that some corrective action must be enforced to resolve this issue. I believe that if employees within a company happen to be in a conflict with one another then they should try to resolve the issue together and listen what each employee has to say.
3. If I was in this situation I would not provide the document to the director if he wants to acquire the personnel files he will have to comply with the company policies. I would sent an email informing him of my decision and why I undertook this decision, therefore I would have the discussing in inscribed to show the president before he would reprimand me.