The Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) leadership impersonates commitment to transparency, developing capable managers, and providing ethical education to employees. November 14th, the Commissioner took the time and retold the tale of The Blind Men and the Elephant during the Town Hall meeting displaying the stolen internet image. He even opened up a discussion to decipher the true meaning of Vision, Mission and Values of the Department. Against all these hypocritical attempts, OSDH staffs have been perturbed by LaTrina Frazier’s unceremonious illegitimate expectations and corruption of the agency.
LaTrina’s allies have been carrying and the HR department has been encouraging her illegitimate expectations. The Commissioner has been disregarding evidences and the Office of Accountability has been undermining them. OSDH leadership has been all about deception and wasting employees’ time with sweet talks and false promises in town halls, PHS all staff and division meetings which fall short of action.
Illegitimate expectations are tactics of manipulators and bullies. They are very hard to pinpoint because it can be presented as a list of innocent ever-changing expectation to confuse the victim. Illegitimate expectations can only be understood in comparison with legitimate expectations. A substantive legitimate expectation is an expectation induced by a public authority that an individual will be granted or retain some substantive benefit. Legitimate expectation applies the principles of fairness and reasonableness to a situation where a person has an expectation or interest in a public body or private parties retaining a long-standing practice or keeping a promise. In contrast, expectations are not legitimate when they require a public authority to act in breach of its statutory duty. This applies only when the statutory provisions diametrically conflict with the representation. A failure on the part of the public authority to act in accordance with the expectation is considered to be a breach of the rule of law that requires predictability and certainty and is therefore ultra vires.
Before expounding OSDH illegitimate expectations, let’s look into the general powers of commissioners and HR statutory compliance. Oklahoma Statutes §19-339 (2022) explains general powers of commissioners. The items related to this article are items number 10th and 27th. Item number 10 explains development of personnel policies and number 27th emphasizes establishment of employee benefit program to encourage outstanding performance in the workplace. HR statutory compliance is about implementing and adhering to government legislation around employment and the workplace.
To understand the leadership web of lies; let’s look how illegitimate expectations are executed. OSDH has created a Telework policy to ensure that OSDH complies with state initiatives encouraging telework as an alternative to incurring costs for additional office space for state government and to provide the telework option as an added benefit to its workforce. However, telework limitations are at the discretion of the supervisor. It all sounds good until the supervisor is an inconsistent power-hungry micromanager like LaTrina. LaTrina has no understanding of teams’ dynamic and no respect for state initiative, agency, employees or stake holders. She and her comrades with the support of HR have created a long list of expectations to make teleworking impossible. It has been LaTrina and leadership Mission to defy the State initiative without any consideration of consequences. Employees and their physician request of accommodation for teleworking have been denied and employees have been directed to take leave for several days to months without any plausible ground. This unlawful exercise of power has been disheartening employees, lowering teams’ efficiency and in turn affecting stake holders. Irrational cumulative constraints that cause employees to choose office time or take leave instead of teleworking are considered illegitimate expectations and unlawful.
LaTrina’s illegitimate expectations have been cover up for harassment, bullying and creating hostile work environment. HR department boldly has been acting as her lieutenant reinforcing those expectations. Office of Accountability and Commissioner have been turning away from voiced concerns confirming LaTrina’s and HR department actions. Instead of having constructing behaviors and legitimate expectations of employees to meet the OSDH Vision, Mission and Values, OSDH leadership has been focused on defensive and offensive operation. All the conceit and caprice has caused immense lack of trust in organization and mass leave of experts.
There is no organization without its employees or stakeholders. Since elephant is a favorite animal of the OSDH, we telepathically communicate with our deaf and blind men and women of our leadership letting them know that there is an enormous elephant in the room. OSDH employees are fully aware of leadership actions and they don’t have any trust in them. We suggest that leadership personnel find a way of learning all the available ethical and management courses. The first step is admitting faults followed by “accountability”. Although it is a long shot, we hope that during moments of reflection in Thanksgiving, they remember that OSDH employees and stakeholders are their job securities. They only exist to serve Oklahomans through employees' work. We also hope that leadership personnel learn to be Thankful of them.
Happy Thanks giving.
Stolen image:
elephant perspective story - Search (bing.com)
General Powers:
HR Duties and compliance and responsibilities:
HR Compliance: A Practical Guide - AIHR
The 15 Essential HR Responsibilities in 2023 - AIHR
Definition of legitimate expectation and illegitimate expectation:
Legitimate expectation - Oxford Reference
Legitimate expectation - Wikipedia
Legitimate Expectation Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
OSDH Teleworking Policy:
Administrative Policy & Procedures - 6-41 OSDH Telework Review 09.20.23.pdf - All Documents (sharepoint.com)
Attorney:
New Messages! (calltherightattorney.com)