Ethics and Communication

RESEARCH PAPER ON ETHICS AND discourse Abstract Its obvious that technology has played a great role in the way we conduct business today. Have these expert advances created a tender breed of easily distracted, inefficient employees? Are employees swindle their own slews out of time, m onenessy, and boilers suit productivity? m each tot that the climax of email, exacting message, and the world-wide-web sport created an easy way for employees to take unnoticed and unregulated ad hominem breaks finishedout the utilisation day.Beyond the deprivation of productivity created by these employees, this type of behavior in addition has the potential to create other terrible problems for the organization. For these reasons, legion(predicate) employers must decide whether or not to implement net usage policies. Many of these policies may even expenditure monitoring devices for email, IM, and website history. We impart examine the ethics and the consequences of employees tak ing personal time on the caller-out dime. Ethics and Communication Personal Time on the Company dime bagIn the surveyplace, there be numerous ways for employees to communicate with co-workers, friends, and family. traditional communication channels were limited to phone, mail, and face-to-face interaction. Technological advances over the run low twenty grades cook given employees a surplus of new ways to communicate. Employees now have the ability to use e-mail, flash pass, textbook messaging, face-to-face video-conferencing, and networks websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. All of these new electronic capabilities have enabled employees to contact friends and family within seconds. on that point is no question that these technological advancements have improved our quality of life. In contrast, they have also decreased the overall productivity of many employees. Employees across the globe are taking emolument of these available resources and using them for personal time at work. According to a survey taken in 2005 by Salary. com and AOL, more(prenominal) than 10,000 employees admitted to wasting an bonny of 2. 09 hours per day (Sahadi, 2005). This study showed that the time wasted by employees in 2005 add up around $759 billion (Sahadi, 2005).These figures illustrate the economic severity of allowing employees to use their work time for personal reasons. Studies have shown that e-mail is the most widely abuse way of stealing bon ton time. According to a survey by Harris Interactive, 55% of the 1,711 respondents said that they send and receive personale-mailon their work accounts. (Schweitzer, 2007). This clearly lowers productivity. However, there are many other negatives associated with using personal e-mail in the workplace. Many viruses are spread through e-mail attachments.Viruses notify destroy authorised files, hardware, and entire networks. Also many personal e-mail accounts are highly vulnerable to hackers who gain wi ldcat access in revision to steal financial data or critical trade secrets. An electronic disaster like this could cost a corporation millions of dollars. An additional nuisance caused by using work accounts for personal use is excessive spam, or junk e-mail. According to a study by Nucleus Research Inc. in 2003, the average employee receives 13. 3 spam e-mail messages per day (NRI, 2003). N. R. I. lso found that in 2003 spam entrust cost the average organization 1. 4% in productivity, or $874 per employee per year (NRI, 2003). As the research confirms, the use of personal e-mail at work has the potential to be devastating for corporations and its employees. The ethical option for all employees is to baulk using work e-mail accounts for personal matters. Additionally, they should avoid using their personal e-mail accounts at work. Instant messaging is a different bill that many employees utilize to call on the carpet with co-workers, family, and friends while at their desks.Ins tant messaging services such as AIM or Yahoo messenger offer free instant messaging by simply downloading the software. It enables employees to chat in real time with people all over the world. Unfortunately, these instant messaging services are highly unsecured. They are easy targets for hackers flavor to steal grand corporate information. These programs also allow the transfer of files from one user to another with ease. This makes the transfer of viruses just as easy. Also, IMs are an easy way for disgruntled employees to spread confidential information to competitors (Gaudin, 2002).Many co-workers like to use instant messaging for its ease and speed when working on projects. However, some of these employees also use the technology as an electronic water cooler to gossip and chit-chat. They are now able to splatter without having to keep an eye out for the boss thus sacrificing productivity. Generally, instant messaging should be used very carefully by employees to avoid any of the headaches it tush create. Many people in the U. S. spend a round amount of their free time surfing the web. This habit tends to transfer over to their work time.According to the 2005 emailprotected survey, 93% of all employees in the U. S. spend at least some of their time at work accessing the Web, up from 86% a year ago (CNN, 2005). Of that 93%, they spend an average of 3. 4 hours per week surfing the internet for non-work related reasons (CNN, 2005). The survey also asked a very interesting question Which would you rather give up, your morning burnt umber or your internet connection at work? (CNN, 2005). Over fractional of the respondents chose to give up their caffeine addiction perhaps these employees are also addicted to surfing the net.The most popular sites to visit among employees are newsworthiness sites, online banking sites, and online shopping sites. Some employees even admitted to visiting pornographic websites while at work. Pornographic websites are bre eding grounds for viruses, spyware, adware, and many other programs that can destroy club computers and networks. There are also legal issues that can arise from inappropriate surfing. If any other employees are capable to these pornographic images, a sexual harassment complaint could be filed. The corporation can then be held liable.As an employee, its important to be ethical in the manner you use the internet. All employees need to fancy that the websites they visit at work not only reflect themselves, however the company as a whole. All of the various problems associated with personal e-mailing, instant messaging, and surfing the web need to be addressed by management. First, it is important that the corporation has a strong code of ethics. Many of these issues could be avoided by implementing and enforcing a strong code of ethics end-to-end every direct of the organization.The next step is to create an internet usage policy. There are many disagreements between managers re garding how strict these policies should be. For example, many employers advise a zippo tolerance policy. This type of policy restricts any and all use of company resources for personal use. Some managers feel this type of policy is even more harmful to overall productivity than no policy at all. Geoff Haggart of WebSense comments The resoluteness lies in balancing employees needs for personal use of the Web at work without draining overall productivity, morale of the companys bottom line. (CNN, 2005). I agree with this rationale. I think the key is making sure that there is a limited amount of free time that employees receive in parade to take care of appropriate personal matters while at work. Additionally, it is important that management is very clear in their definition of what is appropriate and what is not. There is no room for a gray area in a usage policy. After the guidelines are set, a monitoring system should be set up to enforce the policies. Many employees complain a bout the lack of privacy in monitoring employees.I agree that employers should try to keep employees happy however, I feel this is a sacrifice that management should be willing to make. Either way, corporations have the right to monitor any employees e-mail and internet use. In my opinion, employee monitoring is necessary in order to protect the corporation from the many dangers of irresponsible internet usage. In conclusion, its important that employees and employers are on the same page when it comes to the responsible use of electronic resources. Employees should be ethical and monitor their own use of company resources for personal matters.Likewise, employers need to recognize that some employees need short breaks throughout the work day to stay productive. Like many things in life, a compromise between the two is necessary to ensure a pleasurable and productive work environment. References Sahadi, Jeanne. (2005). Power Slacking On The Job. CNN. com. Retrieved September 17, 200 9, from http//money. cnn. com/2005/07/08/pf/wastedtime_job/ Schweitzer, Tamara. (2007). septet Out of 10 Employees Admit to Abusing Office Computers, Phones. INC. com. Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http//www. nc. com/news/articles/200701/workers. hypertext mark-up language Gaudin, Sharon. (2002). IM Security Risks Spark Workplace Monitoring Debate. Datamation. Retrieved September 25, 2009, from http//itmanagement. earthweb. com/secu/article. php/1458241 Spam The speechless ROI Killer. (2003) Nuclear Research Inc. Retrieved September 26, 2009, from http//www. spamhelp. org/articles/d59. pdf Web surfing as addictive as coffee. (2005, March 19). CNN. Retrieved September 26, 2009, from http//edition. cnn. com/2005/BUSINESS/05/19/web. work/index. hypertext mark-up language