Duty of Care

BY Dr. John Jones, Consultant, Values and Ethics

“I first became interested in the concept of duty of care when I heard a police officer’s presentation at an ethics conference. The officer was describing how his undercover work had taken a toll on his private life. The presentation wasn’t polished and the officer showed clear signs of anxiety and distress. He talked about how he had been deep undercover for a long time and had only recently surfaced.He said he was a mess both psychologically and emotionally, and that his marriage had ended and he was estranged from his kids.

At the end of his talk, the police officer asked, “Does my employer have a responsibility to put me back together again?”Although he was talking specifically about the police service, his question surely resonates with all of us.

The question is a rather disturbing one, but it goes to the heart of the concept of duty of care as it relates to our work in CSC.There are aspects to the work at CSC—whether one works as a front-line officer or not—that can have a serious impact on each of us. The front-line officer certainly has a particularly difficult challenge, but this job can take its toll on individuals at all levels of the organization and across a wide variety of roles.

What follows is meant to be a stimulus to further thought.

In the literature, sadly, duty of care almost always relates to the legal responsibility we have toward clients—toward offenders, their families, their victims and so on. There is scant mention of the care that we ought—and I use this word advisedly—to show to one another. And what is increasingly becoming apparent to me is that the more difficult and potentially damaging our work, the harder we can be on one another.

Stress in the Workplace

A recent report onworkplace stress by Leger Marketing found that 55 percent of workers “experience anxiety, irritability with co-workers, defensiveness, anger, mood swings, and feelings of helplessness or of being trapped.”The report found that 52 percent of workers say stress in the workplace causes themto be“impatient,procrastinate,quick to argue,withdraw or isolate themselves from others,neglect responsibility and performpoorly.” Based onmy work in the justice field for 30 years, both as a practitioner and an observer through research and training activities, I have the feeling that the numbers for those working within the justice systemmight be even higher. It’s simply the nature of the beast.This work is tough and it can take a toll.

So what would one like to see? In a nutshell, it’s this: first, that we care for one another and, second, that our organization cares for us. Let me take this one step further. Individually and as an organization,we have amoral responsibility to do so. It’s a duty of care.We owe it to one another to watch out for our mental and physical wellbeing.

Do We Owe One Another a Duty of Care?

I remember a particularly poignant letter to that noted philosopher Ann Landers. The letter was written by a police officer’s widow. The officer had recently been killed on duty as a result of crashing his cruiser. He’d had a drinking problem for many years and his colleagues had covered for him, thinking they were doing him a favour. He was under the influence when he died.“Those he thought were his best friends,” wrote his wife,“were in retrospect, his enemies.” Do we owe one another a duty of care? I would say we do. Do we always exercise it? Probably not.

So how can we, both individually and organizationally, begin to start exercising this responsibility? Here are a few suggestions: that we make an effort to inject respectfulness into our formal and informal work relationships; that we all commit to generating as positive an environment as we can in an essentially negative workplace; that we commit to creating an ethically and physically safe workplace. We need to be more caring in what we say and more thoughtful about how it affects others. There’s no rocket science here. Just a bit of the obvious, really.

Dealing With Mistakes

What about dealing with mistakes? Yes, in a correctional environment there are some mistakes we cannot ignore. However, in an ethically sound organization characterized by a caring ethos, should we not recognize some honest-togoodness first-time mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning, not for punishment? We have to ask ourselves where we fit into this definition? It’s a tough question, but one we need to ask.

Let me leave you with a few last thoughts. In my view, an organization has a legal and moral obligation to provide a duty of care not only at times of crisis but all of the time, simply because it’s the right thing to do. We need to support and enable field personnel to do their work even more efficiently and well than they are already doing. We need to nurture our employees. We need to recognize that their personal lives, goals and aspirations are important. In doing so,we also promote professional performance. Finally, at all levels of the organization, we need to set a personal example of respectfulness and courtesy.

If caring doesn’t begin with us,where does it begin?

If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, please send them to Roger Pharand, Senior Advisor,Values and Ethics. ♦