Kylee Knighten

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet
Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the four ethical communities
2. Apply the ethical communities to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

My title is Senior Recruiter and I have been in this role for the last 3 months. I joined Coast
Healthcare 8 months ago in May 2021. Initially I was welcomed into the company as a Recruiter
and after onboarding my 20th travel nurse I was awarded the title of Senior Recruiter. The title
comes with no additional responsibility, nor does is really hold any weight in the company. It’s a
small way of Coast acknowledging growth of new employees. The average recruiter takes over a
year to build their client base to 20 nurses and many recruiters have somewhere between 20-80
nurses at any given time. Since all contracts are temporary (usually 13-weeks) recruiters must
continue to prospect to build their desk. In the 8 months I have been here I have overcome
several challenges and am exceeding my current goal by 350% and supporting 30 nurses actively
working.

Due to the increased need of healthcare professionals across the country right now our
credentialing team is extremely overwhelmed and understaffed. Every hospital across the
country needs nurses, forcing Coast to quickly onboard and get nurses started. Because of the
influx Coast was not prepared to take on such a high demand and the executive team encouraged
recruiters to stop actively recruiting, while implementing the following policy “after nurses are
offered a position the credentialing specialist assigned to their job will not reach out until 1 week
before their start date”. This change in time from when the nurse is offered to 1 week prior to
their start date was setting our nurses up for failure. The drug screen and background check alone
could take up to 7 business days for results and having only 5 to complete all medical
requirements was impossible. Recruiters voiced their frustrations, and the executive team had no
other response but to delay the process to buy them time to catch up. Requesting that recruiters
stop enrolling nurses means they stop receiving commission. As you can imagine this was a
challenging situation that the company took a month to overcome.

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 2) Describe how the ethics of the organization influenced the situation.
In order to describe how the ethics of the organization influenced the situation it is
important to identify what some of the ethics of Coast Healthcare are. The ethics translate
into the core values, and both contribute to how the company is run. One of the core
values the company demonstrates daily is Driven by Excellence. The metaphor used by
Bolman and Deal is a structural factory. Coast Healthcare operates as a factory with each
department contributing as a moving part on the conveyer belt. The recruitment brings in
the nurse for on boarding, then passes them to our credentialing team who assists the
nurse with their training and medical requirements then to the account managers for their
orientation specific to the hospital they are working at.

The organizational ethic of caring in the Human Resource frame was illustrated by Coast
acknowledging the recruiters’ frustrations and allowing them to take time off. While I am
extremely biased in the situation because I am on the recruitment team, I do understand
that this was the company’s way of showing they care and demonstrating another core
value, Team Strength. Coast’s ethical behavior lies in their humility and actions towards
employees. Most recruiters did not want to take time off, especially it being unpaid time
off but it’s nice to look back now knowing that it was excused and encouraged for our
wellbeing.

3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical communities for an alternative
course of action regarding your case.

“No one can give everyone everything they want, but it is possible to adhere to a value of
fairness in making decisions about who gets what,” (Bolman and Deal, 2017). I have to
say before making recommendations for an alternative course of action I do agree with
how the situation was handled but for the sake of this assignment I think it’s necessary to
feature an alternative ethical community. The alternative here would be The Jungle:
Justice and Power. As Bolman and Deal stated, it’s not possible to please everyone but it
is possible to level the playing field.

The recruitment team is the only commission-based department in the company.

Therefore, if we stop working, our money is directly affected. The market becomes
saturated with a need for nurses due to the pandemic and because Coast was not ready
with enough employees to handle this, recruiters were asked to stop bringing on new
nurses. How is this fair to us? The political frame and metaphorical use of a jungle is
applicable here. “People with a voice in key decisions are far more likely to feel a sense
of fairness than those with none. Leaders who hoard their power produce powerless
organization. People stripped of power look for ways to fight back: sabotage, passive
resistance, withdrawal, or angry militancy,” (Bolman and Deal, 2017). This statement

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 sums of the effect of the situation. There were several recruiters who decided to leave the
company and others who transferred to other non-commission-based departments.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about ethics.

After reading these last couple chapters it became apparent to me that there is no perfect answer,
or one stop shop for ethics. Like leadership, each obstacle is going to have a unique way to solve
it and it is up to the leadership team how they intend to, with or without the voice of their teams.
Just because a situation is ethical does not guarantee all members are fairly compensated for the
situation. Companies must make tough decisions to keep the business functioning and it won’t
always be easy or work out in everyone favor.

In the current climate of a pandemic, recruiters are lucky Coast was telling them to take time off
rather than laying them off all together, as other companies had to do. For this reason, there isn’t
anything I would have done differently. I fully agree and support the company’s decision to
pause recruitment to allow other departments to get hired up and catch up on the immense
workload coming in daily.

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 Reference or References