P3 Ethical issues (lesson 2)

In the previous lesson the class looked at:

• Codes of practice; Email, Internet, Internal Policies, intellectual property and content in the workplace.

Today the class will focus on:

• Examples of ethical issues (e.g. moral(honesty, accountability, integrity and dedication), whistle blowing (how will the organisation respond and protect those staff who inform of malpractice), disability, use of information)

Study the media for examples of ethical issues and whistle blowing, to see examples of staff who have reported malpractice.

Whistle-blower 

Whistle blowing is when a worker reports suspected wrongdoing at work. Officially this is called ‘making a disclosure in the public interest’.A worker can report things that aren’t right, are illegal or if anyone at work is neglecting their duties, including:

• someone’s health and safety is in danger

• damage to the environment

• a criminal offence

• the company isn’t obeying the law (like not having the right insurance)

• covering up wrongdoing

https://www.gov.uk/whistleblowing/overview

Use of Information

The department that produced the data should own every field of data in every record.  Information ownership is much more complex. Many data owners may have supplied the original data that has been processed to produce this information.

We must ensure that sensitive or confidential information is carefully protected in order to safeguard the interests of the Organization, our clients, partners and staff. Confidential information must never be disclosed or used improperly for personal or other private gain.

http://www.un.org/en/ethics/information.shtml

Disability 

An employer who’s recruiting staff may make limited enquiries about your health or disability.

You can only be asked about your health or disability:

• to help decide if you can carry out a task that is an essential part of the work
• to help find out if you can take part in an interview
• to help decide if the interviewers need to make reasonable adjustments for you in a selection process
• to help monitoring
• if they want to increase the number of disabled people they employ
• if they need to know for the purposes of national security checks

You may be asked whether you have a health condition or disability on an application form or in an interview. You need to think about whether the question is one that is allowed to be asked at that stage of recruitment.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/disability/law.htm

Reporting Bad practice

Similar to whistle blowing but within an organisation how is bad practice reported in workplace.

Breaches

In data, security or information within an organisation.