Assignment task:
Ben Taub Hospital is part of Harris County Health Systems. It is renowned for its top Level 1 trauma center for the southeast region of Texas. It has a hospital bed capacity of 586 and over 100,000 emergency room encounters per year. Its emergency department also houses a tweny-four-hour emergency psychiatric center. Medical faculty and students belong to the prominent Baylor University Medical Center.
In late December 2012, ten employees from Ben Taub decided to go out to celebrate the holidays. They all met at the hospital, where they parked their cars and then boarded a party bus that took them to various bars in downtown Houston. When the night ended, the party bus returned to the hospital and dropped the partygoers near the ambulance dock off from the emergency care center entrance.
Some of the partiers decided to go into the hospital to use the restroom. They were dressed in their civilian clothing, without badges, but they began saluting and cheering on their on-duty co-workers. After some time, they departed and continued their path to their parked cars.
The next morning, all ten employees were suspended, and after a week-long investigation, they were terminated. A hospital representative claimed "the group acted inappropriately during an early morning visit to a restricted area and were laughing and shouting near a bereavement room." However, cameras did reveal that not all ten employees were in designated staff-only areas.
A grievance was filed on the behalf of all ten employees by a union representative through the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. A representative from the AFSCME named this an "unorthodox" termination. This was based on factors such as: No alcohol test was performed on the employees, the ER is already a loud and convoluted environment, the employees had on civilian clothes and were not wearing badges, and the party bus was parked off of hospital property
Case Questions:
Q1. Do you think there is enough to justify the terminations of these employees based on "inappropriate behavior?" Would coaching and a write-up in the employees' files be sufficient?
Q2. If one the employees decided to go solo and not as a union member to file a grievance, do you believe he or she would have a better opportunity of being reinstated?
Q3. Should all ten employees receive the same level of punishment?
Q4. Knowing that these employees worked in a high-stress environment, what are some recommendations you could provide to Ben Taub's organizational development team regarding stress relievers and teamwork?
Q5. In your opinion, should the hospital supervisor intervene when the actions were occurring, or should he wait until the next day to file a report and review the evidence (camera footage) with human resource representatives?