A Comprehensive Report on the Ethics of Workplace Surveillance

This report investigates the ethical dimensions of workplace surveillance, a growing concern in today's digital business environment. It begins by defining workplace surveillance and outlining the current lack of specific legal regulations governing employee privacy. The report then poses key research questions regarding the ethics of surveillance, its impact on business performance, and employee comfort levels. A comprehensive literature review explores various aspects of surveillance, including its effects on employee morale, privacy, and trust. The review also examines different surveillance techniques, such as telephone tapping, video surveillance, and email monitoring, as well as their effects on both employees and business performance. The report further details the research methodology, outlining the use of interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and case studies to gather data. Finally, it includes a project plan, consent form, and pilot questions to provide a structured approach to the research.

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THE ETHICS OF SURVEILLANCE IN THE WORKPLACE
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Abstract
Surveillance in the workplace has become an issue of major concern which needs to be
addressed as soon as possible. Currently, no laws have been developed to regulate the privacy of
employees in the working environment. The Issues of privacy which arises in the working
environment are governed by the federal laws and regulations. However, Federal privacy laws
only regulate access to private information and employee private information collection without
their consent, including the employers having federal contracts and obliged to follow some
record keeping duties. Technology advancement in the workplace monitoring has become
intricate. Although organizations have supported surveillance practices to protect the company
assets, there is a general argument of whether it is ethical to have surveillance in the workplace.
This progress in technology is beneficial to the employers but may affect the privacy of
employees. Use of surveillance in the workplace has led to mistrust between the employer and
the employees, low quality and higher quantity in terms of productivity and employees
reservation.
Key Words
Surveillance, workers, workplace, ethics, reservation

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Contents
1. Background..................................................................................................................................4
2. Research questions.......................................................................................................................6
3. Literature Review........................................................................................................................6
3.1 Overview of surveillance in the workplace............................................................................6
3.1.1 Morale.............................................................................................................................6
3.1.2 Lack of Privacy...............................................................................................................7
3.1.3 Mistrust............................................................................................................................7
3.1.4 Employee Reservations...................................................................................................7
3.2 Surveillance in the workplace techniques..............................................................................7
3.3 Effects of workplace surveillance on employees...................................................................8
3.4 Effects of workplace surveillance on business performance.................................................9
4. Research Methodology..............................................................................................................10
4.1 Interviews.............................................................................................................................10
4.2 Surveys.................................................................................................................................11
4.3 Questionnaires......................................................................................................................12

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4.4 Case Studies.........................................................................................................................12
4.5 Selected Methodologies.......................................................................................................13
4.5.1 Interviews......................................................................................................................13
5. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................14
6. Project Plan................................................................................................................................14
7. Consent Form.............................................................................................................................14
8. Pilot interview questions............................................................................................................14
9. Pilot survey questions and design..............................................................................................14
10. References................................................................................................................................15
11. Appendices..............................................................................................................................16
11.1 Appendix A........................................................................................................................16
1. Background
Majority of today’s businesses have become digital necessitating the provision of internet
facilities to staff in the workplace. Facilities provision, for example internet, has led to the use of
various means to monitor and prevent facilities provided from being misused. The techniques
used in monitoring and surveillance include CCTV and other electronic means. This has led to
rise in many issues concerning both the employee’s and employer’s privacy. The employees
should be allowed a certain degree of privacy in the workplace but this should be moderated with
the employer’s right to efficiently run and protect their businesses against result arising from
actions of the employees (Watkins, Coopman, Hart, & Walker, 2017, p. 172).

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The new technology has enabled the employers to check and monitor their employees
through various means all which make use of the internet. This monitoring is unregulated and
unless tamed by the policies of the company, then the employer will continue having the right to
monitor most of the communications and activities within the workplace.
Surveillance becomes useful in monitoring the code of conduct of both the employees
and the employer to ensure no offences are done by either party and in case this happens then it
is dealt with following the proper channel of communication and hence maximize production in
the business by providing an environment suitable to both the parties. Employers may also keep
electronic records for use in evaluating the employee’s performance and for reference in case
evidence is required, for example, in a court of law. The various methods of surveillance used
include:
Telephone tapping which is used to monitor employees' phone call conversations. The
phone calls number, the idle time in-between the calls and the duration taken in each call, all go
into a log for company analysis automatically.
Video surveillance: It provides a video of employee’s activities passing through a central
location being monitored by another person. The video is recorded and kept for reference in
future and this is believed to be the most accurate way of monitoring employees since it is an
unbiased means of evaluating employee’s performance.
Email monitoring which enables employers to monitor the email chats of their
employees. Even if the email messages are deleted by the employees, they can still be recovered.

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Location monitoring can be used to monitor employees who do not work in one location.
Employers can check their location. This is commonly done by those who have majored in the
transport industry.
Key logging: This is a process through which the keys being typed on the keyboard by
the user are recorded in order.
To conclude, it is crucial to moderate the rights and interests and adapt the
proportionality principle. Businesses should exercise morality while using the monitoring
techniques. Therefore, it is crucial to formulate policies and procedures concerning the employee
and employer relationship so that they can understand the expectations from each other. This
helps set a certain standard to be followed.
2. Research questions
1. Is surveillance in the workplace ethical?
2. How does surveillance in the workplace affect the performance of business
organizations?
3. Do employees feel comfortable while working under such circumstances?
3. Literature Review
3.1 Overview of surveillance in the workplace
Surveillance in the workplace refers to monitoring of the employees activities by the
employer in order to maximize productivity. Organization’s surveillance can take either

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technological or social forms. The main reason as to why organizations monitor their employees
is to protect their assets and improve productivity, but the depth of surveillance says a lot about
the company’s trust on its employees.
Surveillance in the workplace affects the employee as explained:
3.1.1 Morale
Surveillance in the workplace makes employees have a feeling of being monitored and evaluated
constantly by their employers. Whatever form of surveillance used, a feeling of mistrust between
the employer and the employee is created. It also leads to increased stress since employees feel
being under great pressure to produce well and maintain their productivity.
3.1.2 Lack of Privacy
Surveillance in the workplace denies employees their privacy. For example cameras installed in
restrooms and other private areas create embarrassing situations since employees expect privacy
in these areas.
3.1.3 Mistrust
Employees most of the time feel that surveillance in the workplace implies that the management
does not trust as they perform their jobs. This may also make the employees feel a decreased job
sense of satisfaction.
3.1.4 Employee Reservations
Employees under constant monitoring may remain in the office. This true since the purpose of
the monitoring may not be clear to the employee. Employees are in constant worry that they will
make a mistake and be recorded through surveillance and thus face disciplinary actions.

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Employees may not perform their tasks if they aren't sure what may be expected of them. When
using surveillance in the workplace, it is advisable that the employees beware of what is being
watched. Formulating policies on internet usage also provides guidance for employees and hence
relieve uncertainty.
3.2 Surveillance in the workplace techniques
Advancement in technology has availed numerous means of monitoring employees in the
workplace. These techniques involve the software and hardware devices installed in machines
and devices within the work environment to monitor and record the employees’ actions. The
commonly used method in workplace surveillance include telephone call tracking, computer
tracking, mobile devices tracking, email monitoring, social media tracking and video recording.
Improvement in technology also allows organisations and proprietors to utilize tools of
surveillance such as Smartcards to track workers and hence regulate their have access to certain
departments and places. Facial recognitions and the scanners of finger prints are also being used
in workplace surveillance. Video surveillance in places such as hospitals, located different
places, help the employer’s to check their employees safety as well as the patients’ health.
3.3 Effects of workplace surveillance on employees
Workplace surveillance has merits for instance improving productivity and security
among the employees. On the other hand it has demerits such as mistrust and fear on employees.
The society is concerned about this issue and professionals have come up with their own views
about surveillance. The main issue of concern is whether or not to undertake surveillance in the
workplace and whether the business productivity will increase. The other issue of concern is
which actions are to be monitored and the acceptable methods of monitoring. Surveillance can

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improve the employees’ productivity level, assist in proper office management and provide a
means of evaluating performance of employees, but it can as well lead to mistrust and negative
morale among the employees. Various arguments have arose from surveillance study, among
them being that it leads to stress and hence health problems to workers and the most pressing
issue being lack of privacy among the employees. The argument of Productivity tries to answer
the surveillance results on productivity. Studies have shown the relationship between
psychological problems and surveillance, boredom and fatigue (Ottensmeyer & Heroux, 2011,
p.519). Employees work best under monitoring in some cases, but they may begin having
increased levels of stress when they realise they are under surveillance. They may hence feel
being violated and lose trust in their employers. Monitoring may also limit employees’ control to
their information and hence lower creativity since they know they are being monitored.
According to Bell, Bishop, Gann, Gilbert, Howe, Lamb, Leighton, McKee, Picton,
Prestage & Roythorne, 2015, p.305) systems are expensive. The surveillance system can be
expensive to install and maintain. Currently, monitoring is done mostly through apps.
Developing the monitoring applications is costly.
3.4 Effects of workplace surveillance on business performance
Many organizations have been using electronic surveillance to many their employees’
activities (Lee & Kleiner, 2013, p.72). Issues of concern have been noted to rise over the
surveillance in the workplace, with the major one being privacy invasion. The call has been to
focus on surveillance studies due to their frequent use in most organizations. Currently
surveillance in the workplace has spread in many industries including healthcare, banking and
insurance. A number of studies on surveillance emphasize the surveillance effect. These studies

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involve the use of different perspectives which are informed by different theories. (Miller &
Weckert, 2010, p.255) have conducted social-psychology studies to give a discussion of the
effects of surveillance in the workplace on business performance. The studies used a framework
called the social facilitation. This framework accesses whether the employee works alone or in
the company of other workers. The studies showed that workers under surveillance had a higher
production due to their excellent job performance as compared to physically supervised workers
whose productivity was in turn higher than that of individuals who worked alone.
Weckert (2014), in his study revealed that electronic surveillance is not different from a
physical supervisor in the workplace, especially when difficult tasks are put into consideration.
The studies did not show the relationship to satisfaction of the job by the employees. Introna,
2012, p.219) did a study on the effects of monitoring of employees in the workplace. He
concluded that considering various different factors which are variable, for example, work
quality, job satisfaction, level of stress, productivity and rewards; monitoring the employees
when they are aware, leads to increased business productivity.
Lee & Gostin (2012, p.102) studied the relationship between employee monitoring and
performance. He concluded that employee monitoring led to improved business performance.
The study as well showed that frequent assessments of monitoring and performance resulted to a
higher business performance. Kidwell & Sprague 2014, p.198) did a study on employee
perceptions. Major objective was to find whether with surveillance, employees developed a kind
of perception, for example, higher productivity than quality. They concluded that employees
under surveillance worked on quantity rather than quality.

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4. Research Methodology
There are many different approaches which can be by the researcher project to answer the
research questions formulated. These approaches can be quantitative or qualitative in nature
(Ball, 2010, p.87). They include interviews, surveys, observations, case studies and
questionnaires among others. These approaches have merits and drawbacks. It is therefore
crucial to select a suitable research method to be used putting into consideration the nature of the
data to be collected.
4.1 Interviews
Interview is a qualitative method of data collection used in collecting data mostly for
research purposes. According to Ariss, Nykodym & Cole, 2012, p.22), an interview is a face to
conversation between two or more people. With this kind of method, researchers are able to
gather more information from the participants. It involves the researcher asking participants
open-ended questions. This allows the researchers to get more detailed answers as compared to
quantitative methods such as surveys. Interviews can be categorised three groups namely
unstructured, structured and semi-structured interviews (Albrechtslund, 2017).
Interviews have merits and demerits. The merits are;
i. Interviews enables the researcher find out more detailed information and learn what they
may have not learnt otherwise.
ii. Interviewer presence makes the respondents comfortable as they answer the questions
and ensure proper understanding of the questions.
iii. Physical presence of an experienced interviewer in one way or another improves the rate
of response.

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The demerits are;
i. Meeting all the respondents to perform interviews is a time-consuming exercise and it
actually leads to increased cost of conducting the exercise.
ii. Interviewers must trained intensively about the subject matter and equipped with the
required interview soft skills for the whole process to be effectiveness.
4.2 Surveys
Survey is a research method that enables the researcher to ask the questions of concern to
a vast number of individuals. The answers provided (data collected) are then analysed to check
for any patterns. Surveys are mostly used since they are easily distributed to the audience using
various methods which may include emails and even the internet.
The major advantage of using survey as a method of research data collection is that it
covers relatively a huge number of individuals. This means that the answers or rather the data
collected is a fair representation of the population under study and this enables to come up with a
more accurate conclusion. The major disadvantage of the survey method of data collection is that
it does not detailed information. This means that it is not concerned with deep information but
rather a vast amount of data.
4.3 Questionnaires
Questionnaires refer to a quantitative research method used to collect data from a vast
number of audience in question. It consists of questions arranged in order and are asked by the
researcher to the participants. The data collected is then analysed and interpreted. Questionnaires
can be done in two ways; the researcher issues the participants with the questionnaires to answer