Employee Privacy Avoid Liability Invasion Privacy Essay

Employee Privacy

Avoid liability invasion privacy Essay Question: List discuss ways employers avoid liability invasion privacy. Essay 350 words length APA format. There -text citation essay.

List and discuss different ways employers can avoid liability for invasion of privacy

Employers often justify intrusions into employee privacy based upon safety concerns: concerns about jeopardizing the health of the public can be used to allow drug and alcohol tests. Even lifestyle habits may be restricted, based upon the additional healthcare costs they can incur employers. Weight restrictions may be allowed if maintaining a certain weight is a safety hazard at some jobs, which is why "49 states allow weight standards that do not violate the ADA" (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman 2009: 682). Dating employees or the employees of a competitor business and moonlighting at another organization (which could reveal trade secrets or result in employees working too many hours to be productive) may be prohibited as well (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman 2009: 682).

Of course, many of these privacy-related restrictions are extremely controversial and are not without limits. Federal law dictates that employers can raise (or lower) a health insurance premium by up to 20% due to a "health factor" and may be able to raise it as high as 30% in 2014 (Goldberg 2012). However, to avoid liability for this incursion into employee privacy for off-workplace habits in terms of eating and exercise (as well as more general wellness monitoring programs of weight within the workplace), the employer must offer "a reasonable alternative to those for whom it is unreasonably difficult to meet the standard," such as allowing an employee with high cholesterol to take a statin or someone who is overweight to attend wellness weight loss programs (Goldberg 2012). Finally, depending on the nature of the occupation, if the job does not offer healthcare benefits, this may further impede employers to intrude into such private issues. Regardless, there is always a concern about "function creep" regarding such intrusions (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman 2009: 683). For example, an employer might claim he or she has a right to bar employees over a certain weight because the nature of the work requires a certain level of physical fitness and their weight cannot be reasonably accommodated, but the real reason behind this claim might be that the employer does not want the 'image' of the company tarnished in the eyes of customers by the presence of an obese person in the workplace. The nature of the employment will always be a subjective determinant of the reasonability of privacy restrictions. For instance, a NJ Superior Court judge held that Atlantic City's Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa was within its rights to suspend cocktail waitresses if they gained more than 7% of their initial weight because of the nation of the women's work as 'Borgata Babes': the judge also noted that only one state bars discrimination on weight in the nation (Michigan, not New Jersey), giving employers further leeway to set limitations upon employee's private, weight-related behavior as a condition of employment (Sanburn 2013).