HRM320: Employment Law
John Smith
Week 2 Assignment
Professor So And So
July 19, 2000
1. What do you think are some of the factors in the modern workplace that contribute to a theft of time? How can those factors be managed?
Theft in the workplace doesn’t only comprise of employees actually stealing funds from a business. It can also involve theft of time, which, to a business, is practically the same as stealing money. A few factors in the modern workplace that contribute to the theft of time are browsing or surfing the internet (for personal affairs); conducting OTHER business affairs at place of work; chatting with co-workers and/or friends on business time (constantly); using the telephone for personal calls; and utilizing work email for personal affairs. “Theft by employees accounts for billions of dollars in losses for businesses each year. Employee theft can be narrowly or broadly defined. The narrow definition is the appropriating of personal property belonging to the business for an employee’s own personal use. This appropriation can be temporary, but most often it is permanent.” (Moran, 2011) So, generally speaking, theft of time usually involves abuse of the business’s property provided to the employee with the intention of being used for said business. As far as how a business can combat this, there are a number of things they can do in order to have a successful running business with limited to no theft of time. First off, in order to successfully inform employees of what an employer expects of them, as well as the Do’s and Don’ts, supervisors should sit down with their employees initially and annually to provide them with feedback. Feedback should cover everything from expectations to progress of the employee. To control how the internet is used and prevent employees from using it for personal affairs, an employer could set up limitations as far as what sites are accessible. Search engine sites such as Google, and any other website ‘required’ to conduct business could be the only accessible sites. Employees who attempt to access a ‘forbidden’ site, might be directed to a page that says the page requested is forbidden and all activity is being monitored. The United States Military operates this way, and it seems to control improper use of the internet. To control leisure chatting and conversing with friends and/or co-workers, employers could implement a surveillance system of sorts. “Many companies use time sheets and electronic surveillance. Time sheets require an employee to justify how his or her time is spent during the workday, but they should be able to distinguish fabrications by comparisons with other similarly engaged employees and from experience with the work habits of the employee in question.” (Moran, 2011) When it comes to telephone usage, employers may record the telephone conversations of their employees, but there are some stipulations such as, “they may listen only to the contents of the business calls for quality-control purposes.” (Moran, 2011) The same applies for email usage. Employers may intercept emails that employee’s receive on the business’s computer and peruse it, however, there are stipulations. “(1) consent by the employee to monitoring (best obtained in writing); (2) where the employer is the provider of the email (this may apply to internal emails, but if incoming email arrives through an outside provider such as AOL, this exception does not apply); and (3) ordinary course of business (this may apply only to business emails, not personal ones).” (Moran, 2011)
2. What does the word Whistleblower mean (legally speaking)? Give an example of whistleblowing.
From a legal standpoint, whistle-blowing isn’t ACTUALLY putting your lips together and making a harmonic sound by blowing. However, in a sense, it is almost the same thing. When you blow a whistle, it is an action that insinuates that something wrong was done, provides
