ESSAY QUESTION:
"Employees should expect no privacy while on the job, even when engaging in personal communication via telephone or e-mail. Employers are paying for their employees' time and have a reasonable expectation that this time is spent solely on work-related activities."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the position stated above. Support your views with reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
MY RESPONSE:
Employed in a university hospital a year back, my work schedule consisted of over 80 hrs of work per week, 6 days a week, for the entire one year of my employment. These work hours were double the amount an average American employee serves in his/ her office. During these insane work hours one thing that kept me happy and focused was being able to communicate with my family during whatever little time I got free while on duty.
The position above implies that me or any employee for that matter should not have the comfort of engaging in any personal communication privately while at work. For all reasons and purposes, I consider that implying that the employees are slaves of the employer for the duration of their work and hence, should not expect any privacy while communicating with their loved ones and this position I find extremely unreasonable and in some ways offensive.
While it is reasonable for an employer to consider that he/she pays the employee for their "time" and expects them to be fruitful in terms of spending this time , it is completely unreasonable for him/her to expect that every second of this "time" has to be spent working only. An employee is not a robot but a human being who needs "occasional breaks" and this break time should be left on the employee's discretion to spend to his liking. If he wishes to call his sick child at home for 5 minutes or wish Birthday to an old friend, it should not be monitored.
Now, if this position described above is actually put into effect in an office, can we expect the productivity and the profits of the company to increase since the employees are concentrating just on work. Well, in my opinion the only thing that would increase would be days an employee would take off from work and both the gradients mentioned above would actually decrease as will the job satisfaction among these employees who would much rather work for a company which is liberal in this context and would treat them with dignity. A responsible employee would never take time of his duty hours to chat with an old friend and an unreasonable employee would do all in his power to cut time off from work. Therefore, putting these strict regulations is not a solution to any problem but its the creation of whole new problems in itself.
i wrote this as a part of a practice test and was kind of pressed on time towards the end, i know i made a lot of grammatical errors and i am not correcting them here because I want you to consider as if I wrote it exactly in the real exam and rate it accordingly. Honest opinions, critique and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
"Employees should expect no privacy while on the job, even when engaging in personal communication via telephone or e-mail. Employers are paying for their employees' time and have a reasonable expectation that this time is spent solely on work-related activities."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the position stated above. Support your views with reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
MY RESPONSE:
Employed in a university hospital a year back, my work schedule consisted of over 80 hrs of work per week, 6 days a week, for the entire one year of my employment. These work hours were double the amount an average American employee serves in his/ her office. During these insane work hours one thing that kept me happy and focused was being able to communicate with my family during whatever little time I got free while on duty.
The position above implies that me or any employee for that matter should not have the comfort of engaging in any personal communication privately while at work. For all reasons and purposes, I consider that implying that the employees are slaves of the employer for the duration of their work and hence, should not expect any privacy while communicating with their loved ones and this position I find extremely unreasonable and in some ways offensive.
While it is reasonable for an employer to consider that he/she pays the employee for their "time" and expects them to be fruitful in terms of spending this time , it is completely unreasonable for him/her to expect that every second of this "time" has to be spent working only. An employee is not a robot but a human being who needs "occasional breaks" and this break time should be left on the employee's discretion to spend to his liking. If he wishes to call his sick child at home for 5 minutes or wish Birthday to an old friend, it should not be monitored.
Now, if this position described above is actually put into effect in an office, can we expect the productivity and the profits of the company to increase since the employees are concentrating just on work. Well, in my opinion the only thing that would increase would be days an employee would take off from work and both the gradients mentioned above would actually decrease as will the job satisfaction among these employees who would much rather work for a company which is liberal in this context and would treat them with dignity. A responsible employee would never take time of his duty hours to chat with an old friend and an unreasonable employee would do all in his power to cut time off from work. Therefore, putting these strict regulations is not a solution to any problem but its the creation of whole new problems in itself.
i wrote this as a part of a practice test and was kind of pressed on time towards the end, i know i made a lot of grammatical errors and i am not correcting them here because I want you to consider as if I wrote it exactly in the real exam and rate it accordingly. Honest opinions, critique and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
