Analyzing an Ethical Dilemma Sleeping on Duty Essay

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Ethical Dilemma of Sleeping on Duty

Taking naps while on duty may cause individuals to be suspended from their jobs. Particularly in the field of law enforcement, sleeping while on duty is regarded as a serious form of misconduct, generally leading to disciplinary action, and in some cases, employment termination. Individuals may intentionally or unintentionally fall asleep at work. This employee misdemeanor is considered a serious issue and is mentioned in a majority of personnel handbooks. It has adverse impacts on productivity, and may be dangerous when the person in question is supposed to be alert and on surveillance, to prevent a harmful situation from occurring. Furthermore, sleeping at work reflects unprofessionalism. Different organizations have different attitudes towards this misdemeanor - while some are tolerant and permit personnel to take naps in between work hours under their policy of improving productivity, others are strongly against it, and make use of video surveillance and other such high-tech devices for catching employees who take naps at work (U.S. Legal, 2016).

Sleeping is even prohibited by some organizations (particularly law enforcement organizations, where employees are required to be alert and vigilant always) during unpaid breaks because of the fear of appearing incompetent, as well as the need for employee availability in times of emergencies, or because of legal regulations. Employees whose on-duty naps endanger other individuals can be faced with legal sanctions. For instance, in the United States, war-time statutes/policies claim that, if guards fall asleep when on duty, they may be faced with death penalty. Creek (2015), a retired official working for the police force, states that officers are expected to patrol, seek out troublemakers and innocent individuals in trouble, give testimonies and write reports; thus, to sleep on duty hours represents unethical conduct.

This paper evaluates the ethics relating to law enforcers' sleeping on duty hours, how the dilemma can be resolved, and the advantages and disadvantages of each option considered.

When was it recognized there was an ethical dilemma?

Recognition of ethical dilemmas involves threshold determination, which is quite often difficult, particularly in the present day. The average modern-day employee is bombarded with more information in a single day than that received by employees in their whole lifetime, a hundred years back. Thus, when situations that deviate from routines develop (for instance, situations which may involve unethical shortcuts, or indicate bias/favoritism, or offend others, or involve rule-breaking), is there sufficient time for providing adequate scrutiny and establishing whether an ethical problem exists that ought to be dealt with? Or, in a busy era of vicious competition and information overload, will ethical problems be short-changed or neglected? (O'Rourke, 2013).

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The simple part is identifying an ethical problem; for instance, in the Canadian province of Quebec, two sleeping patrol officials were caught on camera by a civilian (Arsenault, 2011). While such controversial events are under investigation and the results are yet to be known, they are publicized abundantly and may cause the public to distrust individuals to whom their safety has been entrusted. Such evident signs may help with problem recognition. However, the difficult part is solving such a problem, as awareness "of anything that has the slightest hint of being unethical (Loscher, 2007)" assists law enforcement agencies in being on top of unethical situations.

What options were considered when looking at how to resolve the dilemma

The aforementioned situation poses an ethical problem across every rank of a particular department. The following elements must be considered before one can come up with a resolution to an ethical quandary;

1. Did the situation entail an officer who was unaware of the right procedure/course to be followed, or

1. Did the situation entail a right course (in the officer's view) that he/she found hard to follow, or

1. Did the situation involve a tempting, but unethical course (Braswell, McCarhthy, & McCarthy, 2002).

Solutions to police officers' failure to behave ethically start with selecting and hiring qualified personnel. Department heads must refrain from actively working their way around minimum standards of hiring for recruiting persons belonging to special interest groups. The following two options are taken into consideration;

Make Ethics Training Real

Ethics training should be of a feature-intensive nature (Papenfuhs, 2011). It should deal with, and not neglect, human emotions. Mankind does not possess an on/off switch when it comes to emotions. "Chemical cocktails" released….....

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"Analyzing An Ethical Dilemma Sleeping On Duty" (2016, March 20) Retrieved May 17, 2024, from
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"Analyzing An Ethical Dilemma Sleeping On Duty", 20 March 2016, Accessed.17 May. 2024,
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