Reference no: EM132904165

Valerie Castonguy, Director of HR at Greenleaf Inc., sat at the conference table looking at her team. She had called the meeting to discuss what interventions they could implement to improve the situation at the company. It had been a long year and many employees seemed to be on the verge of burnout, if not already there. Some recent mistakes had resulted in faulty products being shipped to customers and the production department was raising alarms about the costs of replacements.

Managers at the company were also on edge, and there had been numerous complaints about managers yelling at the employees, demeaning their work, and ignoring requests for help when employees returned from sick leave.

Valerie had brought her team together to find solutions to this well-being problem. Ronald suggested they implement a mindfulness training program because he had read scientific studies showing that being mindful (i.e., focusing your awareness on the present moment, and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations) had many health benefits. The training took about eight weeks, and Ronald argued that the increased health had the potential to substantially reduce the number of people taking sick days.

Amara wasn't convinced. She had also read some research on mindfulness, and it showed that when people were mindful in the context of negative experiences, it could be detrimental to their well-being. By encouraging people to be in the moment, mindfulness could lead individuals to become fixated on negative experiences, like their supervisor yelling at them, making them even more stressed. Given the present climate at the company, Amara was worried that mindfulness would exacerbate an already tense situation.

Ronald did not agree. He felt that learning to focus on the now would improve the mental health of the employees, and would have the added benefit of helping employees to compartmentalize their lives. They would learn to leave their personal troubles outside the office, and to leave their office troubles at the workplace. He reasoned that the increased focus would lead to fewer errors.

Amara still wasn't sure. She pointed out that, in order to train everyone, Greenleaf would have to cover their wages when they weren't actually working, which would be an additional cost, and she couldn't shake the feeling that the training would just make things worse and might not address the complaints that employees had raised about the managers, or the production problems.

At that point, Valerie interjected: "I hear what you are saying Amara, but the status quo is not sustainable. Replacing everyone who goes on sick leave is adding an extra 5% to our labour costs, and replacing faulty products is adding 5% to our operating costs. We can't keep accepting these losses. I know the outcome of the mindfulness training is uncertain, and there's a chance it could make our costs go up even more, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. I've made my decision. Let's make the training happen."

Apply the concept of ethics to Valerie's decision to implement the mindfulness training program at Greenleaf Inc, and explain how the decision-making concepts under the textbook heading of Risky Business could have influenced whether Valerie made an ethical decision. Be sure to provide a rationale as to why you think Valerie's decision was ethical or not.