Discussion:
I think that employers should be able to track their employees. After all, you are paying for them to do a job. After hours, that is another story. But while they are on your property or out doing their job, you should be able to monitor what they are doing. There is some information that the employer shouldn't be able to watch. In HR we get a lot of credit collectors, we, especially me, don't let that impact how we treat someone. In some businesses they want and do use this information and start to "treat the employee differently even though the employee does not want you to know this information." (Lister, 2014, p. 2) If you do that with the information you are collecting then no, you shouldn't be able to track your employees. How would I react if I was monitored? It would depend on what they were watching and the reason they were doing it. I don't do anything while working, or even outside of work that I wouldn't do in front of my mom so I think I would be OK with my actions being tracked. But if they were getting into personal information that I would have an issue with, just like when employers can run your credit report. "Joey Price, with BL Seamon, thought she had found the perfect candidate for a conference planner position. The candidate was fresh out of college but had experience planning conferences and a good academic record. But when Price found out that the candidate had multiple car repossessions, extremely high credit card bills, and collection agencies after her, she rejected her. "A credit report doesn't lie," Price said." (Robbins, Judge, 2017, p. 569 ) That to me is crossing a huge line of tracking you, just because you suck at handling money doesn't mean you can do a good job or not so I'm not cool with that. If any company uses that type of information and not hire you for a job that you are qualified for that is an unacceptable action, treating an employee differently once finding out this information is also intolerable. Acceptable is offering help classes on how to manage money and other valuable things like that would works best.
Lister, J. (2014, June). What Are the Ethical Implications of Observing Employees Without Their Knowledge?
Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2017). Organizational behavior (17th ed.). Pearson Publishing