Lab Description
This interactive lab delves into the ethical challenges employees and organizations face in the digital age, focusing on social media use, workplace professionalism, and maintaining ethical boundaries. The lab begins with Maya’s Facebook post, where she vents about the challenges of meeting deadlines at work, and explores the consequences that arise from her actions.
Through realistic scenarios, reflective activities, and thought-provoking calculations, students will explore how online actions impact team dynamics, organizational reputation, and individual careers.
What’s Included:
- A relatable workplace dilemma involving a social media post gone wrong.
- Writing prompts and decision-based activities that encourage students to think critically about ethical dilemmas.
- Interactive worksheets, including toggling plausible outcomes, ranking priorities, and calculating the hidden costs of social media use.
- Opportunities to craft a social media policy, balancing employee autonomy with organizational needs.
Key Topics Covered:
- Professional boundaries in online behavior
- Consequences of social media misuse in the workplace
- Ethical decision-making in digital spaces
- Understanding tangible and intangible costs of distractions
This lab offers a highly engaging and practical approach to teaching workplace ethics. With a blend of real-world incidents, interactive activities, and actionable takeaways, it equips students with the tools to make thoughtful decisions in digital and professional spaces. Perfect for modern learners, this lab ensures students are prepared for the ethical challenges of the connected workplace.
Who this course is for
High School, College, Corporate Training
Introduction (47 Minutes)
The goal of this activity is to encourage students to:
- Demonstrate Empathy: Understand and thoughtfully respond to Maya’s frustration while maintaining professionalism.
- Analyze Workplace Dynamics: Reflect on how individual actions on social media can impact team morale and workplace relationships.
- Apply Ethical Reasoning: Craft a response that balances empathy with ethical considerations and avoids escalating the situation.
- Develop Communication Skills: Practice writing concise, respectful, and constructive feedback in a sensitive scenario.
By engaging in this activity, students will gain a deeper understanding of how personal and professional boundaries intersect in digital spaces and how to navigate those boundaries ethically.
The purpose of this activity is to help students:
- Explore Ethical Perspectives: Reflect on various plausible outcomes of Maya’s actions and analyze their ethical implications.
- Understand Workplace Dynamics: Recognize how social media behavior can impact team relationships, leadership trust, and organizational policies.
- Develop Decision-Making Skills: Practice evaluating potential consequences of actions and justifying their reasoning.
- Foster Critical Thinking: Encourage nuanced thinking about workplace ethics, avoiding oversimplified conclusions.
Through this activity, students will build a deeper understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in ethical dilemmas and the complexities of professional environments.
In this drag-and-drop activity, students will classify the given set of social media actions into four categories -
- Violates Professional Boundaries
- Harms Team Dynamics
- Neutral Behavior
- Supports Workplace Ethics
The objective of this activity is to help students analyze and classify social media actions based on their ethical and professional implications in the workplace. By engaging with real-world scenarios, students will develop critical thinking skills to identify behaviors that uphold or violate workplace ethics, understand their potential impact on team dynamics, and recognize the importance of maintaining professionalism online.
Sub Activities
- Review Questions
The objective of this worksheet is to help students analyze the tangible and intangible costs of personal social media use in the workplace. By calculating productivity losses, refocus time, and resource expenses, students will develop a deeper understanding of how individual behaviors impact organizational efficiency and costs, fostering critical thinking about responsible social media use and workplace ethics.
The objective of this activity is to help students apply their understanding of workplace ethics by creating a practical social media policy. By identifying ethical and professional guidelines for online behavior, students will develop critical thinking skills, learn to balance employee autonomy with organizational needs, and understand the importance of clear, enforceable policies in fostering a positive workplace environment.