Critical Thinking Application 6-A: What Privacy Do We Have in the Workplace? Sub

Question

Critical Thinking Application 6-A: What Privacy Do We Have in the Workplace?
Submit a well-written response containing 300-400 words (not including the title page or references. Cite all sources in APA format. Cite at least two sources, including at least one peer-reviewed journal article and eeoc.gov.

Should the company be allowed to ask such questions? Thinking of all the issues that you consider when taking a position, or if you aren’t sure what your position is, what additional information do you need? How would the company prove the “job relatedness” of such a test? (Review chapter 3 or go to www.eeoc.gov for discussion of this term.) When must the company prove “job relatedness” of the test? In the state of Tennessee, can a company use political information to make decisions about people? Should employers be restricted in their use of Web-based information to make decisions of job candidates and current employees?

Explanation / Answer

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 module 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.

1. Should the company be allowed to ask such questions?

No, the company should not be allowed to ask these types of questions. The U.S. Privacy Protection Commission specifically states that all information acquired should be relevant. Questions such as "I looked up to my father as an ideal man" would not be relevant in any Homeland Security Job. There would be no job description that would ever require questions about whether your father was an ideal man in your eyes. Family questions such as this should have no bearing.

The foundation of effective human resource management-requires that all employment decisions be based on the requirements of a position. The criteria used in hiring, evaluating, promoting, and rewarding people must be tied directly to the jobs performed. For example, a policy that all office managers must be female would violate job relatedness because gender is irrelevant to the job. Conversely, hiring only young females to model clothing designed for teenage girls is a job-related practice and thus reflects sound human resource management. Central to the principle of job relatedness is person-job matching.

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