Question Tag: Locum staff

BYF Health Facility offers varied medical services; it is known for its high-quality laboratory services. In 2021, the company added to its laboratory services, testing for Covid-19 following the increased demand by airlines that travelers must have negative Covid-19 status either through PCR or Antigen tests. Consequently, the company recruited additional workers in the year to work in the new Covid-19 Lab on a part-time basis. All part-time employees (Locum staff) are paid based on hours worked, either on an 8-hour or 12-hour cycle.

As a precondition, part-time workers are to log in and also log out on every working day, for hours worked to be computed by the log-in device.

Bismark Appau (Bismark), a brother of the Director of Health Services of BYF Health Facility, is one of the employees who was employed on a part-time basis at the Covid-19 Lab on an 8-hour cycle. Bismark has permanent employment with KBT hospital and hardly gets time to work at the Covid-19 Lab of BYF Health Facility. However, in preparing payroll of Locum staff, the Director of Health Services continuously insists that in the case of Bismark, the full hours for the total working days in the month on the 8-hour cycle should be used, regardless of the hours he worked. Colleague workers are aware of this special treatment to Bismark, and are unhappy about this preferential treatment.

Required: i) Based on the scenario above, justify the possible ethical principles that might have been breached and its effect on productivity. (6 marks)

ii) Recommend the possible actions to be taken in dealing with this ethical dilemma. (4 marks)