Question

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GENERAL   INSTRUCTIONS

Question One

A junior member of staff has just returned to work after taking special leave to care for her elderly mother. For financial reasons she needs to work full-time. She has been having difficulties with her mother’s home care arrangements, causing her to miss a number of team meetings (which usually take place at the beginning of each day) and to leave work early. She is very competent in her work but her absences are putting pressure on her and her overworked colleagues. You are her manager, and you are aware that the flow of work through the practice is coming under pressure. One of her male colleagues, Joshua, is beginning to make comments such as “a woman’s place is in the home”, and is undermining her at every opportunity, putting her under even greater stress.

1. Explain how the following key fundamental principles can be handed. (i) Integrity (ii) Confidentiality                                                       
2. Provide at least 5 possible courses of action.                                    

Answer 1

Answer a - i) integrity: Integrity can be handled by having trust in her abilities and honesty towards work. As she has been a competent employee so as her manager I need to trust her integrity to cope up with work correctly by putting more effort into time management and scheduling work both at home and at the office.

ii) Confidentiality: As her manager, I need to take care that as her concentration is divided between work and home affairs, she might unwillingly mess up with confidential tasks at the office. So delegating her less confidential task till the time she copes up with the situation and become adjusted to handle both sides accurately, would help avoid this risk.

Answer b - Possible courses of action:

• Helping her with a flexible working schedule until she learns to manage both ends at her home and work.
• Allowing her to attend the morning meetings from home over the call or video call so that she does not miss out on the work.
• Making the team understand her problem and asking them to be empathetic towards her condition as some other day they may be at her position needing the same support from the team at the time of crisis.
• Having a buffer in a team that is trained to handle her deliverables, in case she needs to take a sudden leave.
• Advising her on ways she could take the assistance of a fulltime nurse so as to take care of her elderly mother while she is office so that she can concentrate on her work completely while she is in office. Also possibly giving her a considerable pay rise so that she could afford to have this assistance for her mother's treatment.