The health care organization you work for serves a rural population and most staff members commute to work, some for 45 minutes or more, over roads in varying states of repair. The past winter there were several storms that made it challenging for some people to get to work, and the organization found itself short staffed when this happened. In addition, some managers required employees who couldn’t make it in to take the time as a sick day, while others did not. The lack of Consistency in practices raised concerns at a leadership level and has resulted in a degree of antagonism between those who live close to the facility and those who live further away.
You are part of a policy working group tasked with developing policy around reporting for work in adverse weather conditions.
Committee members have significant concerns about justice. In this case, their concerns about justice focus primarily on Fair distribution of risk and Fair distribution of workload.
In preparing for the consult, you first review the Organizational Values. For your organization, these are excellence, Integrity, caring, and community. You reflect on how these values translate into practice, and the challenges of being consistent. In other organizational ethics consultations you’ve been involved with the question has been how these values guide Treatment of patients, but in this case it seems that issues of how these values should influence Treatment of staff are also relevant.
You look to other policies already developed so that the response is consistent and you can draw upon a Resource allocation framework that guides business planning and budgeting or an All hazards response plan developed in response to pandemic influenza four years ago to provide ethically Relevant comparisons.
Based on initial reflections and information-gathering conversations with the requestor and others, you decide that inviting stakeholders from Human Resources, senior leadership, the patient and family council, the unions, staff who live close by as well as farther away, and Risk Management to participate in the policy development process is consistent with the organizational values of integrity and community.
During the first meeting, you emphasize the values of Solidarity and Reciprocity. Based on the initial conversations you’ve had with stakeholders about their concerns, you look to the all hazards plan and focus the conversation on addressing risk OR you turn to the business planning process, emphasizing that these allocation decisions are no different from others.