Lidl : Surveillance Case Study Essay

* Within such an environment it would be difficult to ensure the safety of the company employees.

The author gives exemplary examples of the short term and long term effects of stress. The author goes on to state that the short term effect is beneficial but the long term is not. “Mild stress can be beneficial. It can help you

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse went over computer and workstation monitoring, email monitoring, telephone monitoring, mobile device monitoring, audio and video monitoring, GPS tracking, postal mail and social media monitoring. Employers are able to see what is on your screen, how much time you spend away from your computer and how many keystrokes per hour each employer does. Employers are able to discretely monitor employees with certain computer equipment. Employees may not know they are being monitored. Employers can review email content. Even though the message may have an option for marking an email as private, the company may still have access to the email. You should assume that your work emails are not private. Even though you may delete your emails, the company still has access to them also.

According to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, "an employer can monitor their employee to ensure adequate job performance and supervise customer contacts."

With today’s technological surveillance capabilities, our actions are observable, recordable and traceable. Surveillance is more intrusive than it has been in the past. For numerous years countries such as the United State and the United Kingdom have been actively monitoring their citizens through the use of surveillance technology. This state surveillance has been increasing with each passing year, consequently invading the citizen’s fundamental constitutional right to privacy,. This has lead to the ethical issues from the use or misuse of technology, one such ethical issue is should a government have the right to use technology to monitor its citizens without their knowledge or approval? For this reason this paper will

once again brought to light the various concerns and complaints that this contentious area inevitably generates.  The idea of monitoring employees’ conversations has a certain Orwellian darkness that encourages accusations of privacy invasion and corporate spying.  Indeed, some companies have taken this too far – some reportedly even requesting their employee’s Facebook login details.  However, by and large the concept of employee monitoring – when done appropriately – seems to me to be relatively

As much as a company should not invade the rights of its employees , it has the equal responsibility of ensuring that its privacy and that of its employees are not divulged or used in any personal intent by other employees . According to Nyman (2005 , more companies are being held accountable by employees whose privacy was compromised in the workplace because of what is seen as a lack in its measures to ensure their privacy . Therefore , if employers are being held accountable for such situations , Nyman believes that they should be given enough power to protect themselves from such liabilities

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

We spend much of daily lives working. In fact, Americans spend about eight-times as many hours working as they do eating and drinking (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Approximately seven in ten Americans report that they experience symptoms of stress (Anderson, Belar, Breckler, Nordal, Ballard, Bufka, Bossolo & Bethune, 2013). Stress is elicited by a variety of psychological stimulus associated with our jobs, our residences, our social interactions, and the activities we engage in (p. 249, Franken, 2007). Many Americans live with the burden of an unsatisfying job as well as a stressful workplace. An online survey of 1,848 people in the United States, conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that 74 percent of

It has been proved that computers help a business ease its activities such as record keeping, monitoring employees and word processing among others. However, the use of computers in the workplace breeds concerns such as security threats and privacy issues. Computer systems are not only prone to hackers but also other security issues that may compromise the company’s activities and social integrity. The research will probe into some of the advantages and disadvantages of computer 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 with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers’ in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The workplace surveillance is helpful in improving the performance of workers or it is contributing towards degrading the performance of workers and their work relationships.

General Purpose: To inform the audience about the cause, affect and ways to manage stress.

Chalykoff and Kochan (1989) found in there study of performance monitoring in call centres that there can be positive effects when monitoring employees. There was a positive relationship between job satisfaction and how fast the feedback was given, whether the feedback was positive or not and a clear rating criteria. As previously said, the two main ways for managers to monitor their employees in call centres if through listening in live as the call happens and they can also record the phone call to be reviewed after within a set criteria. (Akroyd et al, 2006). Although the employeees are not always aware that they are being monitored which some could perceive as an invasion of privacy. Despite this both Carayon (1994) and Chalykoff and Kochan (1989) found that there was no link between employees views of monitoring and it being an invasion of privacy but this could be open to more research as there is not much literature on the topic within call centres yet. Due to the nature of work within call centres, it could be argued that a source of the stress on employees comes from emotional labour (Akroyd et al, 2006).

In The Los Angeles Times (2013) an article titled, “Tracking workers’ every move can boost productivity,” stated how employers are using surveillance software to monitor employees every movement. Employees are criticizing the monitoring software since it has caused harsher work environment. Employees feel with the monitoring system, employers see them as human machines a way to drive costs down and increase production (Semuels, 2013). Employees are finding that monitoring technology have cost jobs

      It is critical to understand important stress management skills.  If stress is not dealt with, it can result in a burnout, or perhaps worse, "People who experience high levels of anxiety are four to five times more likely to die of a heart attack or stroke" (Morrison