Respecting Employee Rights and Managing Discipline
Employers have the legal right to monitor employees, they can monitor their company phone, how they behave in the office or even social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Some companies have rules against having convicted people in the payrol and it’s understandable that they want to keep track of their employees’ steps. But is this against the employee rights? Employees’ have the right to have privacy without the interference of their company so there should be some limits in monitoring employees.
There are different rights an employee usually has. Statutory rights are the ones protected by specific laws enacted by government while Contractual Rights are more personal laws based on each individual contract with their company.
For example, a Statutory right would be to get paid for your job on time. While a Contractual Right would be being able to work from home if it has been settled in a contract beforehand.
Employees are not the only ones with rights, managers also have them. Their rights are to run the business and retain any profit that result.
It’s not so common anymore in advanced countries but managers have what is called “employment at will”. That means managers can hire or fire anyone at anyy time for any cause.
Employee Rights Challenges
Random Drug Testing
Random drug testing pits management’s duty to protect the safety of the company. But many employees consider this an illegal invasion of their privacy. Some companies even require drug testing before being able to apply for the job.
Electronic Monitoring
Theft costs is a reality in every medium/big company. It can be merchandise, embezzlement, industrial espionage, computer crime, acts of sabotage or misuse of time on the job (Yes, this is also considered theft).
This is why all companies install security systems to prevent this to happen. It can be cameras around specific areas like Cashiers, storage places or next to the computers. They can keep track of everything inside work facilities but they would be crossing a line if they keep doing it out of their premises.
Whistle-Blowing
Also called “snitching” when an employee give sinformation about another employee or even of the employer. Usually altruisticly becase they may be shunned, harassed or even fired for their efforts.
Moonlighting
Usually employees cant sustain themselves with only one job leading into holding a second job outside normal working hours. But it can’t be a bad idea because they can end up using work hours to fullfill that second job responsabilities. That’s wyhy it has to be controlled.
Restrictions on Office Romance
People fall in love at work because that is where they spend much of their time and meet people with similar interests.
How an organization will deal with an office romance depends on the goals and culture of the organization. Military organizations usually ban them since they can “corrupt” the way they will act during work. Other companies view office romance more positively by recognizing the beneficial effect it may have on employee morale due to the fact that many office romances lead to marriage.
Discipline to Employees
The most commonly used form of discipline is the progressive discipline, consisting of a series of managemend interventions that gives employees opportunities to correct their behavior.
For example the first thing would be a Verbal warning, followed by a Written warning, then suspension and at the end the Discharge of the employee.
Positive discipline is a procedure that encourages employees to monitor their own behaviors and assume responsibility for their actions.
Managing Difficult Employees
It is often necessary to discipline employees who exhibit poor attendance, poor performance, insubordination, workplace bullying, or substance abuse. Managing the discipline process in these situations requires a balance of good judgement and common sense. Discipline may not be the best solution in all cases.
There are a lot of causes like poor attendance or performance, insubordination, bullying at the workplace and/or alcohol or illegal drug use and abuse.
New York Police Inspector Is Charged With Sexually Abusing Female Officer
We have seen a lot of news of this type, a higher rank abusing of their power to abuse sexually of “inferior” ranks at their job. In this case it’s even worse since Police should act giving example to society.
This officer had pulled her hair, tried to kiss her and toucher her genitals. He has been relieved of his gun and bade and placed on paid modified duty.
There should be more support for victims in this cases because it has been proven that people is scared to report this incidents to their superiors for fear of being also punished or backfiring the situation making it worse.
Receipt Rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate.
Well, I think this article is obsolete in Finland since here tips for waiters are not that important. But we know in USA are the biggest part of their salary and they depend on it. This means in USA in this case of business employees are the ones who charge with the risk of the failure of the company. What I mean here is, as an owner of a company you accept the risk of losing your money by having the right of retaining the earnings. But this tip-rule where waiters don’t get paid much and rely on tips removes this risk of losing money.
Also making mandatory to give tips in a restaurant can lead into racism, sexism or homophobia as excuses when the service was not as expected like we can see in the examples whgere they discovered the words “you fucking Mexicans”.
References
“New York Police Inspector Is Charged With Sexually Abusing Female Officer.” Mele C 2016 URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/nyregion/new-york-police-sexual-abuse-of-officer.html Accesed: 24/02/2020
Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate. McCarthy S. 2019 URL https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/receipt-rage-why-food-is-being-served-with-a-side-of-hate Accesed: 25/02/2020
Guillem's Basics of Human Resource Management 