Online Public Relations Thoughts

Organizational policies mean nothing if employees don't follow them. And, in this case, employee violation of medical privacy records turned into a public relations embarrassment for a hospital. The hospital's punitive action was warranted. It needs to make an example of those who transgressed the rules and to state publicly that it won't tolerate such behavior. It would be good if more organizations reacted this way, but too often they don't. We witness almost daily businesses that call themselves customer-service organizations whose employees don't give a damn about customers. Someone is failing to enforce rules for how to treat customers, and no one in management seems to care. It is a recurring PR headache. The more a company claims it is a customer-service business, the more hypocritical it becomes.