Q: If you had reason to believe someone was lying about an absence from work,

do you think it would be appropriate to investigate? If so, by what methods?

A: Employees’ privacy is an issue that seems to never have a solution. I agree that there are
times when employees abuse their use of sick leave and have a rise in absenteeism, but I do
not agree that hiring a private investigator is the answer to the problem. The root of the
problem more than likely has to do with the employee’s satisfaction on the job. It is the
manager’s responsibility to manage his employees and I believe that means it is his job to be
in tune with their attitude and satisfaction. Since satisfaction has a negative relationship with
absenteeism, the first step is to evaluate the troublesome employee and review his/her
productivity. If the manager decides to hire an investigator as a first step instead, that will
simply cause a higher level of distrust and result in an even lower level of job satisfaction.
The employee evaluation would determine the next line of action for me if I were the
manager. If the employee seemed to have a negative attitude at work and was sliding under
the radar by having a low level of productivity then I would let them go. With an abnormal
number of absences, plus a lack of contribution to the company I would choose to fire them
over any other sort of investigation because I would want to keep a good name for my
company. I would much rather put in a little extra work by paying better attention to my
employees than having the company get a bad reputation for possibly intruding on privacy.

Q: If excessive absenteeism is a real problem in an organization, are there

alternatives to surveillance? If so, what are they, and do they have any
limitations of their own?

A: If there is excessive absenteeism in an organization, the main alternative to surveillance

is reviewing social media sites. With the popularity of so many different forms of multimedia
in our society it is almost guaranteed that a manager could find information on their
employees on at least one of these sites. These sites can give a big insight into the employee’s
life without having to follow or record them, because this is public information that they are
deciding to disclose. With Instagram, an organization could see pictures that the employee
posted when he/she was “sick”. Twitter could possibly allow some insight into how the
employee’s job satisfaction is since it is common for individuals to rant on this particular
social media site. Facebook may be the most beneficial though since the employee could be
tagged in a photo or post. So even if they were trying to hide their activity on their “sick”
days it is possible that someone else could let the cat out of the bag. The main limitation with
social media is that accounts can be made private and if a manager sent their employee a
friend request when they have no friendship outside of work then the employee would
probably begin to suspect what was going on with the situation.