The Importance Of Employee Privacy

775 Words2 Pages

Since the birth of the internet, technological advances to the current date have been a massive step. In our society today, everyone has some sort of internet connection with them. Whether it’s their smartphone, laptop, tablet or even a home desktop, it’s at the touch of their fingertips. All this instant access to technology has given birth to social media sites (i.e LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) as well as accessible apps to download on your phone to help you with most issues. As was a famous quote “there’s an app for that”. But is having this access at our fingertips really helping us, or is it causing us to have an addiction to be constantly updating our newsfeeds? For many companies, viewing the social media of a potential candidate or current employee has been …show more content…

As quoted by Lewis Maltby in the same Wall Street Journal article “Yes, employers have a legal right to monitor employees ' conduct on their work computers. But the only time employers have a legal duty to monitor employee communications is when the employer has reason to believe that the employee is engaged in illegal conduct.” Employers should stay away from the use of this information because most of the time what employees do on the Internet has nothing to do with work, takes place during their private lives and is done on their personal computers. In today’s society, employers are hurt because an employee’s private behavior might go against their personal values. Many people have lost jobs because of their political opinions and religious beliefs. A bikini photo of women on vacation has cost them their job. Refusing to hire people because of private behavior unrelated to work is not only unfair, but hurts the employer. When HR reject the top candidate because they disapprove of the person 's private life, the employer loses,

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