workplace rights and issues Flashcards
What is the foundation of workplace rights and issues?
Human resource management is a term that has recieved much criticism. Crane and Matten note a conflict with the second maxim of Kantian ethics - to treat others as an end and not as a means only.
HRM philosophy is focused on considering employees as a resource and reducing costs and maximising efficiency.
Often there is a gap between the rhetoric of HR policies and the actual reality. E.g ‘Flexibility’ can mean management can do what it wants or ‘empowerment’ can mean shifting responsibility and liability (Llegge 1998)
What is the definition of discrimination?
Preferential or less preferential treatment on grounds not directly related to their qualifications and performance in the job. Crane and Matten
What principle of Rawl’s does it relate to?
Relates to Rawl’s second principle that ‘social and income inequalities should be arranged so that they are attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair and equal opportunity;.
There are inherent differences between people however the principle is focused on aptitude, effort and ability rather than race, religion or other such characteristics. For example in the EU it is legal to require that an employee speaks a language to a certain degree but it cannot be required that they are native. This would be discriminating on the bounds of race rather than ability.
Challenge with considering ability however is that those with disabilities can be inadvertently discriminated against. It can be challenging to define the extent to which companies should be expected to facilitated these needs in order to make access and level the playing field since these needs can vary so much and the assistance needed can vary so drastically. E.g wheelchair access, assistance for the visually impaired, hard of hearing, those with mental health challenges… etc etc.
Discuss Gender discrimination
Gender discrimination - Crane and Matten propose that men and women on average receive different pay for different jobs. This is disputed because the research to support such claims take into account uni-virate analyis (Peterson, 20167). In other words, it does not consider the wide range of variables involved. It is illegal in most western countries to pay women less than men for the same job however there are still more men in positions of leadership who are paid a high salary.
There is evidence that men and women on average have differing interests and preferences in career pursuits. One example could be provided by the healthcare industry where women dominate more than men or the tech industry where men dominate more than women.
There is evidence that women may find it difficult to penetrate upper echelons of leadership positions even when they desire these roles due to the workplace culture.
Crane and Matten noted the case of Morgan Stanley when it was sued $54m because women were deemed to be discriminated against because many key meetings were held in strip clubs and the women were barred from entering. ‘Old boys netowrk’ (Beauchamp 1997)
what happened in the morgan stanley gender discrimination case?
There is evidence that women may find it difficult to penetrate upper echelons of leadership positions even when they desire these roles due to the workplace culture. Crane and Matten noted the case of Morgan Stanley when it was sued $54m because women were deemed to be discriminated against because many key meetings were held in strip clubs and the women were barred from entering. ‘Old boys netowrk’ (Beauchamp 1997)
Sexual and racial harrassment
Harvey Weinstein issue #metoo campaign has attempted to bring issue to further light
Difficulty with actually defining the problem. While some behaviour can be codified in law such e.g extreme examples such as rape, less extreme examples such as joking could mean flirtation for one person and harrassment for another. This demonstrates a key challenge with moral absolutism or relevativism in dealing with this issue. Where and how to codify lines can feel very different for different people.
Discuss equal opportunities and affirmative action.
Equal opportunities and affirmative action
Examples of equal opportunity programmes (Crane and Matten) such as ensuring all can see the advertisement for job listings. (Procedural justice - ie equal opportunity)
Affirmative action - deliberately targeting those who are deemed underrepresented. In India, caste based quotas are in place but in America, no quotas can be imposed based on such characteristics.
Recruitment, fair job criteria (considering work experience as well as qualifications), training programmes for discriminated minorities, promotion to senior positions
What are some criticisms of affirmative action?
Criticism
Bias
Mismatching (not on ability?)
Correcting past injustices (reverse discrimination) Crane and Matten - Retributive justice - Peterson 2017 is highly critical of this approach claiming that is is its very essence racist because it punishes a group for the actions of their ancestors and favours another.
Perhaps it would be better to consider income rather than race? (Distributive justice - Beauchamp 1997)
What are the four types of employee privacy?
Physical privacy
Social privacy
Informational privacy
Psychological privacy
What does Christie 2015 have to say about health and drug testing?
In conclusion, there are important ethical challenges with workplace random drug testing programs. Employers are obligated to provide a safe workplace, and impaired employees could negatively impact this goal. However, despite their intuitive appeal, random drug testing programs run the risk of appearing to contribute to this important objective when in reality they may not.
What happened in the Supreme Court of Canada in respect to drug and alcohol testing?
The most relevant Canadian example is the June 2013 Supreme Court of Canada ruling, which had 20 interveners from across the country.8 As part of a DFWP, the management of a Pulp & Paper Mill implemented random alcohol screening using the breathalyzer technology. Management contended that their workplace was clearly a safety-sensitive area and thus they were justified in unilaterally imposing this requirement. Management argued that the fact that this was a safety-sensitive sector meant, a priority, that safety concerns trumped employee privacy. However, the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that any safety gains were minimal and therefore they did not outweigh the negative impact on employee privacy, which was determined to be severe.
The Supreme Court of Canada explained that there are three situations where alcohol and/or drug testing is acceptable: (1) where there is reasonable cause to suspect that the employee was impaired at work, (2) where the employee was directly involved in a workplace accident, or (3) where the employee is returning to work after receiving substance abuse treatment. Universal random alcohol and/or drug screening programs do not typically satisfy these criteria.
Why is electronic privacy and data protection such a big issue?
Rise of the use of computer in the workplace enables new forms of surveillance (Ottensmeyer et al. 1991)
(Hartman 2002)
Different countries have different data laws (German companies to London to have data processed legally (Crane and Matten)
Often based on the potential to cause harm to a company
What does Leong HBR 2017 have to say about employee privacy?
With the emergence of new information technologies, corporations can now amass and analyze unprecedented volumes of unstructured data — the data created by humans, such as the text contained in company documents, email, instant messaging, and social media. Collecting this data was originally driven by the obligation to produce evidence for litigation, to preserve business records, and to respond to regulators’ demands for information, but it has now dawned on corporations that all of that data can open up new vistas of management capabilities, such as visualizing employee interactions, mapping domain expertise, replaying past events, tracking employee sentiment, and providing insights into all human activity across the organization.
what does Leong 2017
Consider the following ways that companies are using employee data:
Who knows whom? Who knows what? Companies use employee data to outline a network of relationships among employees, customers, vendors, and others, identifying subject matter experts. For sales and business development, this is an invaluable tool. A sales manager of a major services corporation, for example, may want to know which employees have the strongest relationships with executives at a client prior to visiting them and who best understands the subject of the meeting. But ethical conflicts can arise, say when the analysis identifies sensitive personal relationships that perhaps should not have existed on corporate servers in the first place.
Which employees are likely to quit? While it’s not an uncommon request to identify employees who are flight risks within an organization, the breadth and depth of such analysis may leave employees with a disquieting sense of being under surveillance. There is a risk, too, that managers may jump to easy conclusions about the results instead of unearthing the real issues, for instance assuming a distracted employee is disengaged when actually they’re going through problems at home.
Instant replay button for escalated incidents. During escalated incidents, timely and complete data can be the best defense against a surprise event, such as an internal investigation regarding an accusation of inappropriate behavior between an executive and a subordinate. Today’s technology can gather all relevant information on the matter and present a complete analysis so that management can respond effectively and in a timely way. However, this requires a very large amount of data to be retained, coupled with powerful search and analytics tools, which together, if used unsparingly, can infringe on the privacy of all employees.
What can individual managers do to make sure the data being collected in their organizations is being used ethically?
(Leong 2017) 4 THINGS
Understand your company’s privacy comfort zone. Get a sense of where your company and employees stand with respect to privacy. Every organization and country has its own privacy culture and definition. For example, the EU has the General Data Protection Regulation, which governs and protects individuals’ data privacy, while the U.S. is more lax about privacy protection. Defining this privacy comfort zone and seeking to understand what expectation of privacy exists within your department and company can help guide decisions on privacy issues.
Ask for guidance from your information governance (IG) committee. Many organizations have recognized the dangers of siloed data and have started to form a committee to coordinate an information governance strategy. This committee can offer guidance on available solutions for protecting employee privacy while staying in line with corporate objectives. Typical IG committee members include the general counsel, the chief risk officer, the chief compliance officer, the chief information officer, the chief information security officer, and the chief data officer.
Share guidance with your team, and encourage best practices. Pending guidance from the IG committee, you can start implementing best practices, such as encouraging employees to limit the use of corporate devices and resources to official business purposes. Keeping personal information off of company email and company devices whenever possible will reduce unnecessary exposure.
Invite feedback. Governments and regulatory agencies have realized the power of electronic information and have actively written “whistleblower” laws to mandate whistleblower protection. Managers should create a safe space for discussing corporate ethics and encourage employee feedback in order to maximize transparency and minimize the dangers of whistleblowing events. Creating a forum for employees to voice their opinions might illuminate questionable practices that management has not considered. Above all, employees should never feel silenced or afraid to speak up.
