Workplace Privacy

Workplace privacy describes the extent to which employers monitor and collect information on the activities, communications and private lives of workers. Existing discussions of privacy, including discussions of workplace privacy, too often rely on a vague and broad notion of privacy that cannot properly informed detailed analyses of specific privacy issues.

As a result, such analyses often rely heavily on ad hoc considerations and intuitions, and analyses of different privacy issues do not add up to a coherent view on privacy.

One thing that is still lacking in the privacy literature is an adequate operationalized notion of privacy that affords a distinction between different types of private affairs, privacy rights, and privacy intrusions.

The increased use of technology in the workplace has created new concerns for both employers and employees in the area of privacy.  The reasons for the vast expansion in the use of technology in the workplace are far from surprising.  Use of email and the Internet can immensely reduce operating costs through automation of human tasks, facilitate communication on innumerable levels, clearly increase efficiency in almost all tasks, allow for geographic and other business expansion, and less obviously, it can even reduce the amount of real estate and inventory that companies require. While this technology can be lauded for the ways in which it has helped business, it also raises concerns that previously did not exist.  

This course will explore how employers have technological access to both work-related and personal information about their employees, why employers want the information, what they do with it and why employees should be concerned, what legal framework addresses such privacy concerns, how employers can protect themselves from privacy suits, and finally, what employees should and can be doing to protect their privacy while at work.

Upon completion of this course, you should be able to

1. Understand the importance of Workplace privacy
2. Have a depth of knowledge on how workplace ethics works
3. Highlight ethical solutions that should be in place as regards Workplace privacy
4. And many more.