Employees oppose 'Big Brother' tactics at work

America's workers oppose "Big Brother" tactics and government intervention to solve the problems created by unethical use of technology on the job.

These are among the results of a national study, "Technology and Ethics in the Workplace: The Ethical Impact of New Technologies on Workers," conducted by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants and the Ethics Officer Association. (See the related story on page 18 and above for more details.)

The survey found that 45 percent of respondents indicated they engaged in at least one unethical high-tech action during the last year.

Respondents were opposed to solutions for ethics abuses that have a "Big Brother" overtone or that may be perceived as invading privacy, including: increasing government oversight (50 percent); randomly monitoring e-mail (36 percent); or, conducting random searches of computer files (35 percent).

The survey of American workers shows that they generally support more passive solutions that include: defining and creating corporate guidelines on technology (88 percent); installing software that would limit access to inappropriate, pornographic Internet sites (83 percent); and starting corporate training sessions on ethics (81 percent).

"The increasing use of technology is changing the dynamics of the American workplace," said Edward H. Miller III, CLU, CHFC, president of the American Society of CLU & CHFC. "With these changes comes a heightened awareness that acceptable solutions to ethical problems are of great importance to both American workers and companies. The findings of this first quantitative study to pinpoint the ethical implications of computer technology on American workers are useful in understanding how to solve these issues and strengthen the ethical nature of our work environment."

According to Edward Petry, PhD, executive director of the Ethics Officer Association, "The good news is that there is a clear consensus about the scope of the problem and general agreement about the best approach to move forward."

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