Workplace Surveillance

Workplace surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers do, but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees and the employer about the employees right to privacy being violated. The employees believe the act of workplace surveillance to be hateful that violates their right to privacy and liberties. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship

As a result, the employees have a feel of their freedom to fade away and the surveillance gives them a pressure to perform as required by the employer. Hence, the situation arises to a point where employees have to deal with a lot of stress caused by the heavy workload. Under those circumstances, the workplace surveillance negatively impacts the workers performance. Instead of meeting their employers’ requirement, they end up degrading their productivity by the stress of being monitored for every moment. Moreover, it’s not just the performance that gets affected; employees’ personal health is also impacted by the stress. Consequently, under such workplace environments promotion on the basis of production performance play a major role. “A general lack of recognition can result in employees feeling their contributions are not valued by their managers or the organization, which can have detrimental effects on stress and well-being” (Grawitch et al. 267). The possibility of employees to suffer from physical and mental disorders arises due the stress they intake at the workplace environment. Finally the stress can end up being a lifelong problem for some workers; causing problems in

“Employers must also comply with law enforcement or national security agencies in their investigations, according to all the personal information protection legislation that exists in Canada” (Levin 318). Whereas, an employer’s failure to inform their employees about the workplace surveillance can often lead to a violation of employees rights to privacy. Even though, if the employees get informed about the technology based activities a gap remains between the employer and the employees creating relationship problems amongst them, as it can create a false sense of security and furthermore cause a demoralizing work environment. “ The employer should also remain aware of the employee’s normal human desire for reasonable amounts of privacy” (Nord et al. 77). Employees think that it is unnecessary to use workplace surveillance. Furthermore, it is believed by the employees that the management or their employers’ act as the spy’s who have the record of each and every activity they perform at work. Hence, this activity creates problem between the employers and employees. Synder and Cornetto stated, “ Since one’s workplace relationships are interdependent, factors that can influence one relationship can ultimately have an effect on the other relationships” (482). Thereupon, if the employers don’t show trust, the employees