Ethical Considerations in Researching Workplace Health Essay

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Introduction

The pandemic shed light on the importance of employee health, highlighting its value in an organization’s smooth and effective running. Therefore, there is a need for research on occupational health, focusing on how an organization can minimize profits while maintaining the employees’ health. However, ethical problems arise from research on health promotion in the workplace. The ethical issues concerning research on the organization’s health are justice and integrity, autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality, giving the workers a voice in decision-making, delegating responsibility, and including medical professionals are strategies for dealing with the problems.

Justice and Integrity

First, there is the ethical issue of justice and integrity due to conflicting loyalties stemming from the complex and interrelated relationship between the employees and employer. The source of the conflict is the agency prioritizing the needs of the employees or the organization. Workers and employers are important organizational stakeholders, and they often have ambivalent relationships, with each side sometimes having contradictory feelings toward the other. Ambivalence breeds distrust, which is heightened when researchers side with one team.

Yet, justice and integrity are among the most important ethical considerations, calling for researchers to act honestly and fairly without choosing to side with one team. There is reason to reconcile the different responsibilities to prevent ethical missteps, which often occur during times of crisis when organizational demands are quite high (Bar et al., 2021). The loyalty and allegiance of the research team are not towards the employees or the employer but towards the truth. For example, the organization might be against remote working, yet it is a significant factor in maximizing performance and reducing losses. The business proposal should state the truth, sticking only to facts.

Autonomy

The second issue is autonomy, particularly mandatory participation in worksite health promotion. It deals with informed consent and respect for privacy when making decisions. In the workplace, it is particularly important because of the need to balance individual autonomy and social responsibility (Iavicoli et al., 2018). Autonomy comes in the issue of making lifestyle changes. The Declaration of Helsinki has an act against pressuring people to participate in research (Shrestha & Dunn, 2019). The research may conclude that employees ought to make lifestyle changes, such as dieting and exercising, to reduce the risk of getting sick while minimizing losses. However, an individual’s lifestyle is personal responsibility, indicating that employers cannot mandate employees to change their daily life.

Lifestyle affects an individual’s ability to work. The type of lifestyle impacts work performance and safety (Campanini et al., 2022). The employer is responsible for providing a healthy work environment, but the actions of the employees outside the workplace are outside the organization’s scope. For example, the research might show that wearing masks is ideal, particularly during high infection seasons. However, some employees might choose not to wear masks outside the job, risking infection and thus, reducing effectiveness and profits. The same applies to adequate nutritional intake, avoiding alcohol and tobacco, and exercising.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Lastly, there is the ethical concern of privacy and confidentiality, which deals with data protection. Health is a critical matter. The Data Protecting Act of 1988 limits health professionals from processing medical data (McCall, 2018). Therefore, if the research employees are not health workers, they should not ask for medical data. The ethical act may affect the research, allowing for only a general understanding of the problem.

Strategies

One of the strategies in dealing with ethical issues is to include all employees in the research by giving them a chance to plan, develop, and implement the research. It is a method of fostering autonomy, giving the workers a chance to develop their life plans based on their decisions. Moreover, it is a way of promoting justice by leveraging trust. The employees will know that the decision was due to equal distribution of effort. Equity is necessary despite the individual’s pay, age, and sex (Iavicoli et al., 2018). Notably, equal participation does not mean that every worker must participate in everything. It means they should know that their decisions have a say in the research. It can happen by choosing a department representative who speaks for the group.

The second strategy is in agreement on the duties of each party. The organization must agree that lifestyle choices depend only on the employees’ decisions. There will be no forceful values that step on people’s boundaries. The organization will only provide information based on the research, such as advising the workers to go for regular medical checkups, but not enforcing it. The last strategy is to include medical professionals who will guide the employees during the research. It is valuable because of the vulnerability of medical data, analysis of the consent procedures for taking information, the people who can access it, and dictating the research reasons for the project.

Conclusion

The research on the optimal ways to lower the losses while ensuring the optimal health of the employee should consider the ethics of justice and integrity, autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality. It is essential to prevent a repeat of what happened during the pandemic while following ethical rules. The strategies for dealing with ethical problems are giving the employees a voice in decision-making, agreeing on the duties of each party, and hiring medical professionals to help navigate the medical data.

References

Bar, M., Fish, E., & Mendlovic, S. (2021). . Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 34(3-4), 525-537. Web.

Campanini, M. Z., González, A. D., Andrade, S. M., Girotto, E., Cabrera, M. A., Guidoni, C. M., Aruja, P. A, & Mesas, A. E. (2022). . Physiology & Behavior, 254, 113880. Web.

McCall, B. (2018). . The Lancet, 391(10127), 1249-1250. Web.

Shrestha, B., & Dunn, L. (2019). . Journal of Nepal Health Research Council, 17(4), 548-552. Web.

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