Case Study “Yours, Mine & Hours”

You were recently hired as the Director of HIM. Among your first official acts was the hiring of an assistant director. On the first morning of your fourth week on the job, and the second week for your new employees, the two came to you with a complaint. They said they just discovered they were working 40 hours per week, but the other employees in the department-five in all-were working only 37 ½ hours. This was the first you had heard of anything less than a 40-hour week. You questioned the other employees one by one. You learned that the former director, who had been there many years, hired the entire department with a promise of a 37 ½ hour work week. You told each employee, as you felt you must, that the basic workweek throughout the hospital is 40 hours, and there is no policy that states HIM is entitled to operate on the basis of a shorter workweek. Your employees agreed that nothing was ever written down about a 37 ½ hour work week, but each claimed that this was promised orally as a condition of employment. All of them insisted that the hospital is honor-bound to observe what is apparently an unwritten policy established by the former Director. As one employee put it, “this place has always had a pretty good reputation as an employer, and I didn’t think we had to have everything in writing”

Questions:

What are you going to do about the predicament in which you find yourself as the new Director of HIM?

Who else may you have to involve in the solution to your problem? Explain why?