CASE STUDY Email and Internet Surveillance at Work The case of Richard Chang may be an extreme…
CASE STUDY
Email and Internet Surveillance at Work
The case of Richard Chang may be an extreme example of what can happen when employees are exposed to surveillance in the office, but it is nevertheless representative of a number of problems that have begun to enter the modern workplace. As reported in the Guardian newspaper in 2005, senior managers in the U.K. building society Abbey had been receiving anonymous malicious documents, causing them to draw up a list of 600 suspects in the company. Among others, they put Chang under surveillance, secretly checking his emails, computer, and even fingerprints on his water bottles. When called to what he thought was a routine meeting with his superiors, Chang was instead subject to a gruelling two-hour investigative interview in which he discovered the full extenyt of the firm’s surveillance of his life. He returned to his desk, wrote a suicide note, climbed onto a balcony on the fifth floor of his building and leaped to his death.
Employers have access to their employees’ emails and companies are increasingly cracking down on employees who misuse the Internet, write jokes or smutty comments about colleagues or simply abuse company time while surfing the web. In 2003, a U.K. survey found that 31% of employers had dealt with between two and five disciplinary cases related to email abuse in the past year. One case even reported punishing as many as 10 workers for Internet and email abuse. On the face of it, there are good reasons to suggest that employers are well within within their rights.
Source: Adapted from Business Ethics, 2016.
1. From the case study above, we know that there are common issues such as individual / personal privacy at the workplace. Describe about Richard Chang privacy as an employee at workplace. [15 marks]
2. Privacy has become an issue in the global era. Differentiate FIVE (5) differences between privacy and surveillance at the workplace. [15 marks]
3. Employer needs to respect employee privacy as a human right. Discuss why discrimination in employment is unethical. [15 marks]
4. There are many common issues at workplace. Discuss any FIVE (5) recommendation to improve ethical practices at workplace. [
