Ethical Principles for the Information Age

Question: Discuss about the Ethical Principles for the Information Age. Answer: Introduction Hypothesis statement of this essay is Employees shall have e-mail privacy in an organisation. The basic e-mail privacy is very important concern for employers and staff in an organization. With technological advancement at the workplace, employers have to face new concerns about privacy. Everybody uses e-mail in the workplace as in todays workplace it is need for employees and employers. The essay is also aimed to evaluate issues associated with employee email privacy policy such as issues related to unauthorised access of office email id by employees. An employee has the legal right for their privacy concern. But there are certain codes of conduct that are necessary to be followed by employees with regards to use of company email address (Joe et al., 2016). At the same time, essay is also focused to evaluate employers rights with respect to private email. In general, it is not an ethical conduct of employees to read and writing personal e-mails at office time and venue. Privacy is related to the personal information the person keeps with himself and it also refers to the things the person does without the interference of others. Privacy issues can arise in all aspects of life (Moon, 2015). There can be lots of issues for the privacy as in todays world everybody is using advanced technology such as internet. These technologies are beneficial as well as harmful at workplace or in society. According to Australian Law, privacy concept is related to the information privacy, bodily privacy, and privacy of communications. The privacy of communication is closely related to employees email privacy in organizations. Changing technology is a benefit as well as a new concern or problem or issue for the employers and employees. There is a problem for the privacy of the e-mail of the employees or personal information. They are saving in their computer or using their personal mail id in the workplace (Friedman et al., 2015). This can be a problem for the employees. There can be an issue of hacking problem or hacking of the personal documents from computer. Technology has both advantages and disadvantages for companies and its staff. Privacy is a big concern for employer and employees. Employees want privacy regarding their email and other issue related to internet. It is a part of company policy, whether it allows employee to access private email and internet or not (Lisa, 2015). Many organizations do not allow their employees to use their personal email. Employee cannot use the official email id for their personal purpose. Many times, it becomes a challenge for employee sustain on their job, if they shared any confidential information through email. Employers have right to monitor the working of the employees for business purpose and for assessing the productivity of the employer. Many organizations legally allow employees to use email during office time through agreement. Many organizations do not allow employee to read and write email, while working at work-place (Severson, 2015). In general, the email and internet usage at office are not secured. The employers assess what work has been done by employees through employees. At the office time, employee can send only business related email to other. On the basis of many court decisions, employee should not use the personal email at the office time, because it is against the ethical code of practice of industries. Usage of private email message depends on the company policy, that it permits to employee or not (Bredeson, and Goree, 2012). There is no specific rule and right related to the reading and writing of the personal message. Many court decisions were favourable for the employer, as employer sued regarding the privacy of email. An employee can read and write the email message but these would not be under the security protection, all the personal information can be read by employer. Technology enabled the employers to monitor all activities of the employees at work. But employees feel violated because of privacy concern. Employee privacy at workforce has become a legal controversy. Now a day, every company follows the strictness towards the privacy regarding the use of internet at the office time. Mostly in organizations, email and other accessed websites are monitored for the purpose of security of the company related information. In many organizations, use of internet, other than their work is prohibited. Confidentiality of information in the workplace is divided into three categories such as employee information, management information, and business information. It is important for every organisation to keep privacy of employees personal information secure. Lack of privacy can give right to anybody to misuse their personal information or their mail id. If there is no privacy of employees information, this can result labour turnover problems in the company (Chiapponi et al., 2016). In these kinds of organisation, nobody wants to work, where there is lack of privacy of their documents or personal information. Lack of privacy can affect the organisation, as some employees may leak important information to other companies for their own benefit. Many countries or states have laws for the privacy concern of employees in organisations (Parekh, and Parekh Sanjay, 2016). Lack of privacy can also lead to employee committed frauds that is harmful for company image and growth. This can deteriorate company image or reputation in the market. Disclosure of employee information can lose the investor confidence, and employee trust towards the organisation. Advanced Technology is used in the organisation for the successful business in the whole world. These technologies have advantages and disadvantages. Many objections take place for the privacy concern in the workplace between employees and employers. There can be positive and negative objections. These technologies are used in the organisation to keep a watch on the behaviour of the employees. This is done to evaluate the performance of the employees. This is important in the organisation. If there will be no watch on the employees then, they can use their personal mail id and can waste their time in chatting and this will distract the employees from work (Hartemo, 2016). Privacy is important in the organisations. But at the same time, over-monitoring of employees can lead to creation of less employee-friendly work environment that is bad for organization growth. Conclusion By the evaluation of hypothesis statement, it can be concluded that the privacy is important in the organisation for both the employers and employees and except in certain situations, employees shall get email privacy. Organisation must focus on the privacy of employers and employees working in the organisation. Their personal information should be kept with a secured password, so that no one may misuse their secret information or the companys confidential information. Lack of privacy can affect the organisation as labour turnover may increase in the organisation. Privacy has both positive and negative effects. With discussion of email privacy in the organisations, one can give the overview that the privacy is important in the organisations. It helps to avoid any kind of misuse of information of the employees in the organisations. This had some negative and positive effects. It is duty of employees to avoid use of official e-mail id for personal purpose. It is also required from them to avoid reading and writing personal e-mail id during official time. At the same time, it is duty of organization to avoid over-monitoring of employees activities, as it is illegal under employee surveillance laws (Snchez et al., 2012). Organisations major focus behind privacy policy of organization should be to ensure confidential information of employees and business information secure. Ethical issues include email privacy in the work place. It is necessary for every organisation to ensure privacy on personal or business information of the employees. With the increase in advanced technology, there are benefits as well as limitations. To avoid these limitations, the organisation should focus on the privacy concern of the employees and employers working. In todays world, internet is the daily routine in everybodys life, as without internet no work can takes place in the organisations (Taylor et al., 2016). In most of the organisations the company gives their own personal mail id for the work. This helps to evaluate the performance of the employees and keep safe of the personal information of the employees with the secured password. In the organisations, the employees should not use their personal mail id. To avoid these all things the privacy is important on the work place. Code of ethics applies to employees professional work. Australian Computer Society provides to be honest with everyone within the organisation or outside the organisation, having knowledge, skills that can be helpful for the organisation, working with loyalty in the organisation, No fraud done in related to the personal information of employees in the organisation, respecting members in the organisation. It also includes giving priority to work other than anything else in the organisation and giving priority to secure the information of the organisation, employees and employers (White, and Wills, 2016). 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