Case: That's Her Responsibility, Not Mine

 

Susan Wilson is the administrative supervisor of Diagnostic Imaging at Central Hospital. Supervising in an expanding department and coping with steadily increasing outpatient activity, she found her workload increasing to the extent that she believed help was required with some of her duties. Taking a hard look at tasks she could legitimately delegate, that is, tasks that did not require supervisory authority, she settled on her monthly statistical report. The report itself was fairly easy to create, but gathering the necessary data consumed a fair amount of time. She selected employee George Peters to do the report and provided him with all necessary instructions, even to the point of creating a detailed written procedure. She believed George was capable of doing a thorough job; he had sufficient time available to incorporate the report into his workload, and she further thought that

 

George might appreciate some variety in his work. George expressed no feelings for or against doing the report. A few days after assigning the report Susan discovered that the current report had not yet been started and that if it were not completed at once it would be late. Susan reminded George; his reply was that other necessary work was delaying the data collection. Susan emphasized the need to get the report done on time, but George seemed in no particular hurry to get on with the task.

The following day Susan accidentally overheard a portion of a conversation between George and another employee to whom George was saying:" ... her lousy statistics. I think she should keep doing it herself. After all that report's her responsibility, not mine."

 

Instructions

1. Identify and describe any actions.
   Susan might have taken incorrectly in delegating the statistical report to George.
2. Decide what, if anything, Susan can do to try to correct the attitude revealed by George in his comments to the other employee.