Building_an_Ethical_Organization_Part_Two

Building an Ethical Organization Part Two Tanahya Young HSM 230 December 2, 2012 Erin O’Brien This written communication provides a basis for the Women’s Retreat for Victims of Domestic Violence (WRVDC) to satisfy the mandates of its mission statement as described in "Building an Ethical Organization Part I." A review of this document will provide a clear picture of what WRVDC is all about, its central purpose, its principles, standards and moral codes. As discussed in "Building an Ethical Organization Part I. The program is available to any woman who is a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault. The women’s retreat is a nonprofit organization that offers services through education classes, counseling, and self-defense classes. The organization strives to challenge society to gain beliefs that do not condone domestic violence. The Women’s Retreat’s mission statement is to reduce trauma, empower survivors, and improve the quality of life through services provided. The mission statement sends the message to the community that domestic violence is unacceptable and intolerable. Society will not continue to allow this kind of behavior to continue. This is a cruel, violent act from one individual on another. Victims of domestic violence undergo a long healing process, and sometimes victims fail to recover completely. Domestic violence changes a person from the inside out. This damage is hard to erase and overcome. The Women’s Retreat hopes to alleviate the pain and suffering, and encourages a better life for the victims of domestic violence. WRVDC Core Values ♣ Client-centric • Values the lives of clients and their relations • Ascertains client needs and delivers more than 100% • WRVDC employees and clients work together on to empowering individuals and improving the quality of life ♣Empathetic • In tune with the emotions of clients, feeling empathy for their situation • Empathetic feelings drive concerted strategies to solve clients problems • Strategies should be flexible enough to deal with changing needs of client ♣Value • Always improving strategies to help clients • Uses imaginative approaches • Proactive in solving client problems • Champions education to maintain future safety • Utilizes information technology to guide actions ♣ Morality • Moral actions and client privacy are key • Interactions with health care organizations are exemplary • Adheres to rules and/or health care related laws, e.g., HIPAA • Variety is a key component to any client solution ♣ Duty to Community • Champions neighborhood health • Properly uses resources in the community environment • Continuously improves processes • Clients and community come first ♣ Collaborative Effort • Respects all individuals associated with the health care of the client • Understands and utilizes all collaborators expertise • Works with collaborators to deliver exemplary care to the client and to fulfill WRVDC • Mandates The mission statement is always seen first by outsiders. This sets the stage for understanding the nature of the organization as a whole and it helps individuals organize their thoughts with respect to other organization variables. These variables include principles, purpose, ideas, customs, and aims. The mission statement is an essential component of an organizations make-up. The mission statement briefly outlines the organization principles and goals, and it communicates the essential service that the organization provides. In light of these facts a moral code has to be created and adhered to by WRVDC with the stakeholders as observers providing essential feedback. The Women’s Retreat for Victims of Domestic Violence moral code is: Moral Code 1: Act in the best interests of the Clientele The top priority of WRVDC employees is to respect the clientele. When aid is given the women it must be done altruistically. In addition WRVDC employees should try to get the women to be proactive about solving their problems. All of this must be done while preserving the faith that the client has in the WRVDC employee. Moral Code2: Clientele privileges WRVDC employees have the capability to give top-notch assistance to their clients. In order to do this the employees must work hard at discerning the requirements of their clientele. Moral Code 3: Protection of Client information WRVDC employee supplies clients with accurate descriptions of services the organization provides and the benefits the client will receive. If the information must be transferred to others outside of the employee-client relationship then the client needs to give written permission for this to happen. However, written permission is not necessary if withholding the information may cause harm to the client. Moral Code 4: Observation of assessments If treatment or counseling must be performed on the client, the nature of the process must be explained in full to the clients. Furthermore all requested procedures must be evaluated to ensure that they are appropriate. Moral Code 5: Guidance In order to be effective in helping clienys WRVDC employees must be confident in their abilities. This confidence will help the WRVDC employee more effectively solve the patient's individual needs. WRVDC employees are very much like life coach counselors. The clients seek solutions to their personal problems and the WRVDC employees use their expert knowledge to help. Moral Code 6: Competence WRVDC employees have well defined areas of expert knowledge and they know not to make decisions on situations outside of their area. WRVDC employees must continually study their field of knowledge and remain up to date with the latest discoveries in their areas. This is necessary because of the forward march of technology and culture. Moral Code 7: Working Associations WRVDC employees must act in a professional matter, not only in their relationships with various clients, but also in their dealings with other WRVDC employees. Moral Code 8: Supervisor Relationships to Direct Reports Supervisors must care deeply about the performance of the employees that report to them. They must ensure that performance is top-notch while at the same time maintaining a professional relationship with those that report to them. Moral Code 9: Standards pertaining to the law and ethics WRVDC employees must understand legalities and ethics related to their field of work. A good understanding of HIPAA rules helps in this regard. Moral Code 10: Accountability WRVDC employees offer the highest quality health care possible. In order to do this they take their jobs seriously, work hard, and obey all applicable rules. If the WRVDC employees make an error when dealing with clients, they are held accountable. Furthermore they try to learn from the error so that it is not repeated in the future. This set of rules offers a framework that WRVDC employees can use in order to fulfill the statement of work defined in the Women’s Retreat for Victims of Domestic Violence mission statement. The framework defined by the above ten rules provides guidance to the employee on how to fulfill the mission statement goals by acting in an ethical manner. If a situation arises that is unfamiliar to the WRVDC employee such the proper course of action is not known, all the employee has to do is to look at the 10 rules above. In doing so, the employee can compare his or her hypothetical or proposed actions with the rule set defined above. If the hypothetical or proposed action is consistent with the rules then the employee can proceed to help the client. If not then the employee needs to think a little more about the course of action. In the end proper decisions will be made and the best care possible will be given. The set of morality rules listed above, in combination with the mission statement of WRVDC underscores the fact that the organization is totally focused on serving the needs of its clientele. This client center focus funnels the behavior of the employees into various broad activity areas. In turn each broad activity area is composed of multiple specialized activity areas. It is within this stratification that the activities of the WRVDC must be monitored in order to determine if the organization is fulfilling the mandates of the mission statement. A leader's role in all of this is to ensure that the activities proceed efficiently. Part of this involves giving employees the freedom to suggest their own ideas for maintaining or changing the organizational structure. Not only do the employees feel valued, but also leaders gain access to many ideas that would not have naturally occurred to them. When employees become part of the machinery for maintenance and change of an organization, morale is dramatically improved. Work becomes a great place to be and negativity in any way shape or form becomes something that is frowned upon. The mission statement, morality codes, manager and employee attitudes, make up the organizational culture of The Female Health Services Group. This organizational culture impacts all activities and goals, both near and future term. The organizational culture places specific constraints on thoughts and behavior of the employees. For example, if the central focus of the mission statement is "the client comes first" and the employees fervently believe this (these are elements of organizational culture) then it is impossible for the organization to make a future set of goals based on profiting at the expense of their clients. This is not moral and it is not client centric. As a result the long-term goals are in-sync with the values of the organization. Managers within this framework should allow the employees to act freely and with as little supervision as possible. Lack of excessive control over employee activities frees up a managers time. As such managers can then focus on larger company issues like nurturing and propagating the company vision. Furthermore, it forces the employee to be self-sufficient. The only downside is that the employees must be brought up to speed quickly. But after this initial training period significant benefits will start accruing. It is in this way that the organization will accomplish all of its stated goals. Managers must be absolutely positive that patients have the best care possible while at the same time creating a workplace that allows employees to be successful in their areas of expertise. “Any ethics training program will not likely succeed in converting people who are totally bereft of morality; however, the task of ethics training or education for MPA students or public servants is not so extreme. MPA students or trainees in public organizations have, we may assume, a structure of fundamental values, including regime values; so the presence of a set of core values is not at issue. What is in question is the ability of untutored or unsophisticated sensibilities to cope effectively with the many complex and subtle ethical dilemmas endemic to public service.” (Garafolo, 1994). Quantitative evaluation of the ethical status of any organization is an undertaking that is fraught with difficulties. One indicator of ethics is the frequency of complaints received from the clientele. Obviously this frequency is correlated with the ethical practices of the organization. There are many other ethical indicators. The best way to get a handle on these is to implement regularly scheduled reviews, in which employee activities are analyzed to determine if any ethics violations occurred. If this is done then corrective action (or not) can be taken. “Ethical behavior is not simply a matter of good laws or of good people; both are necessary. Internal auditors must, therefore, rely on both compliance- and integrity-based strategies to ensure ethical business environments. Compliance-oriented strategies define the boundaries that management has decided will not be crossed. These boundaries, which must be communicated and demonstrated by management, establish zero-tolerance policies and consequences for violations.” (Eliason, 1999) In summary: “to succeed at building ethical behavior, an organization must have a governance process that is built on a rigorous set of checks and balances and is characterized by transparency. It requires much more than simply talking about ethics or issuing guidelines for ethical behavior. It is not enough to talk and issue rules about ethics and stress "tone at the top." This may well encourage employees to behave ethically, but without more substance, ethical platitudes mean very little success for the organization as a whole.” (Grace, John, 2006) References Eliason, M (Dec, 1999) “Compliance plus Integrity. General OneFile. Gale. Apollo Library. Retrieved -------------- from http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do'prodId=IPS Garofalo, C, and Dean G (September 1994) "Ethics education and training in the public service." American Review of Public Administration 24.n3 283(15). General One File. Gale. Apollo Library. Retrieved on ---------------- from http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do'prodId=IPS Grace S. and John H. (April 2006) "How to make an ethics program work." The CPA Journal 76.4 66(2). General OneFile. Gale. Apollo Library. Retrieved --------------from http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do'prodId=IPS