Production in the Workplace - Term Paper Example

Production in the Workplace al: Personal Mission ment The healthcare organization is first-rate healthcare provider determined to become a leading provider of a range of healthcare services to uphold healthier communities. Personal Vision Statement The healthcare facility is a leading, integrated system of healthcare that foresees and responds appropriately to the lifetime needs of communities. Above all, the organization is committed to the care and improvement of human life. In recognition of this commitment, we will strive to deliver high quality, cost-effective health care in the communities that we serve. The resources and research of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) back us. HCA is one of the largest healthcare organizations in the country. Elevator Speech Each person has their own strengths and attributes that they can apply in the workplace to ensure attainment of organization’s goals and objectives. I believe if these are applied in the workplace they can greatly enhance productivity. Personally, I am a hard worker, a self starter and detailed oriented person, and with this I can impact positively on the productivity of the organization. In addition, I am flexible and highly adaptable to change regarding new initiatives or processes, and I enjoy leading such change with positive encouragement. It is always my pleasure to watch new operations in the organization gain acceptance and become successful, which also provides me fulfillment. I am also a smart, trustworthy and supportive individual who understand the importance of change. Furthermore, I have experience with multiple softwares such as hpf, meditech, artive among others. Hence, I believe with my personal attributes and strengths, interest in healthcare, as well as experience, I will make a valuable contribution to the productivity of this organization. The following pie graph illustrates Life point facilities that are contracted through parallel to do their billing: Undoubtedly, productivity is the core of every organization or business operation as it greatly impacts on the achievement of projected goals and vision. Furthermore, productivity will influence the level of growth of the organization over a given period. A productive and committed workforce will drive the organization towards attaining its short term and long-term goals more effectively notwithstanding the various social and economic challenges facing the organization (Bulger & Reiser, 2009). Healthcare organizations must use the available resources wisely and efficiently to produce value quickly during tough times when the organization operates on tight budget. Sometimes the organization might resort to cut the labor costs to enable it gather extra funds to carry out other essential tasks aimed to improve quality of services. One of the greatest challenges facing contemporary healthcare organizations in their attempt to improve delivery of services is ways of managing the efficiently. For a team of healthcare personnel, key insights along with business intelligence innovation would yield substantial value in the short term (Bulger & Reiser, 2009). However, the team should also focus on mechanism and criteria that would help realize the long-term projections amid array of challenges. Apparently, the healthcare facility is particularly facing the challenge of managing the workforce that has always shown commitment to maintain patient volume ratio as well as caregiver hours. Similarly, the organization must maintain its focus of attaining labor costs. Nevertheless, the anticipated change in labor costs should not result to loss of morale and motivation to a hardworking labor force (Bulger & Reiser, 2009). Incidentally, many of the healthcare professionals will obviously feel demoralized by attempts to slash their wages and salaries following the drive to reduce labor expenses. The organization should largely focus on cutting expenditures on less productive labor, as well as activities that add little value to the organization. In essence, productivity would dictate that the facility venture in activities and strategies that would help in achieving projected objectives (Deeprose, 2006). In the same way, the organization will focus on controlling variances resulting from understaffing or overstaffing. Different safeguards should therefore be in place to protect and maintain productive labor from any form of victimization. To achieve this, the organization would need to streamline all departments to reflect its core values, mission, and vision. However, all departmental teams must familiarize with the latest development aimed at achieving high production rates using the limited resources (Deeprose, 2006). The organization may choose to utilize its locally available resources to realize long-term commitments. Similarly, it might consider recruiting more healthcare personnel to join the workforce particularly in instances where the existing human resources are inadequate to attaining anticipated production levels. As a provider of healthcare services, it should largely focus on elements, strategies and avenues that will help improve service delivery to patients. Thus, an effort to curb any loss of lives due to negligence should top the organization’s priority list alongside plans aimed at ensuring that all personnel attached to the organization adhere to the code of conduct (Deeprose, 2006). Information on variances should pass through relevant channels and levels of the organization to make decisions on it. By looking at the patters and understanding trends, it would be much easier for the facility to make quick decision and necessary changes that would assist in reinforcing structure for better decision making. Hence, the healthcare facility can leverage on existing information and data to share and distribute information with key executives and staff. Emphasizing the root drivers and providing transparency to personnel is an important step towards realizing the productivity aspiration. Transparency would imply a complete overhaul of the management structures and communication channels to accommodate the needs of the staff. It is imperative that the facility maintains tight links with the workforce by always keeping the staff updated on any changes that would affect the overall working of the entire set up (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). Any plans to recruit more personnel to join the team of dedicated healthcare workers should reach all staff. Some workers might misinterpret the move as merely strategies aimed at intimidating or even replacing some of them. Therefore, some of the workers who consider their positions threatened might lose motivation or in worst-case scenario end up handing in resignations before a perceived axe falls on them. The transparency debate would also extend to keeping the personnel informed about plans to award promotions as well as the criteria to employ in offering such promotions (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). It would be highly demoralizing to the workforce if the human resources manager decided to promote an employee who is barely a year old in the organization while overlooking those who had served with due diligence for say over ten years. Staff evaluation is also an important tool that boosts productivity. Apparently, the healthcare facility should enforce stringent measures and safeguards in its appraisal to ensure that it achieve its primary goal while at the same time making sure employees undergoing the process do not feel intimidated to deliver beyond their individual potentials (Ozcan, 2009). Similarly, the management should keep the personnel aware that such processes would be the basis of promotions and pay rewards. Furthermore, the organization should examine its own management practices and ascertain whether the practices can help improve workforce productivity. For many organizations, management practices and strategies have mainly geared toward protecting the senior personnel. Many of these practices create excessive immunity to senior managers. Personnel at lower levels of the organization are left wondering as whether they truly belong to the facility, and if their contributions are really worth it (Ozcan, 2009). It is disastrous for an organization to ignore the plight of its personnel because such a move will have negative impacts on productivity. Biased management practices might also lead to emergence of alliances or groupings, which is further detrimental to the success of the organizations. Incidentally, those healthcare workers allied to the departmental head will appear to be more superior compared to their counterparts with no allies or simply have less influential allies (Ozcan, 2009). Similarly, the organization should design economic incentives for employee at all levels. Most contemporary healthcare facilities have adopted a natural tendency of rewarding senior officials and overlooking low-level personnel despite the latter making massive contributions to the organization. One of the recommended best practices for improved productivity would be to ensure economic incentives are spread across all levels. Although many people would censure the cost of implementing such strategy, it would necessary that the organization structures a program so that the extra payouts reflect clearly defined earning or revenue targets. The management should also strive toward providing a momentous feedback in a more positive manner. Apparently, feedback is among the critical foundations of management skills. The capacity of the management to provide helpful, regular feedback to healthcare workers in an encouraging manner is essential for efficient management and productivity. Incidentally, not all feedbacks will be positive (Healey & Marchese, 2012). However, the manner in which the management presents a feedback might win trust and encourage the workers to put in extra effort to attain the anticipated goals. A manger that presents feedbacks in a manner that disillusions employees does not add any value to the quest for improved productivity by the organization (Healey & Marchese, 2012). Overall, communication across important channels should also be done considerately taking into account the strong implications of any negative or positive information about the organization as well as its production plans. Thus, the top management should largely focus on various strategies that will foster quick delivery of response or feedback to the workers by the senior executives. Respect is another fundamental virtue the healthcare organization must embrace and consider part of its core values. Respect is apparently simple and often ignored, but is definitely a powerful determinant of the relationship between employers and the employees. It is one of the powerful motivators in an organizational set up (Murthy, 2005). Respected personnel will never involve their seniors in any form of altercation or exchanges. Besides, it would be improper and utter disrespect for healthcare personnel to engage his or her seniors in violent arguments when the latter has accorded them the much-needed reverence. An employee that feels highly respected will always reciprocate by putting in additional effort to help organization realize its ambitions (Murthy, 2005). Similarly, lack of respect on the part of the management against employees would highly affect workers’ self-esteem and commitment to accomplish the vision, purpose, and goals of the organization. Moreover, the facility must ensure that managers in various capacities have acquired sufficient training. Leadership training is an important step toward fostering capacity building (Murthy, 2005). An adequately trained executive particularly on management of employees will arguably deliver better than the one who could have probably secured his position out of mere academic qualifications or any other considerations not related to training. Summary and Conclusion Productivity will influence the level of growth of the organization at all times. A productive and committed workforce will drive the organization towards attaining its short term and long-term goals more effectively notwithstanding the various social and economic challenges facing the organization (Lighter & Fair, 2000). Provision of support to the employees during crisis is an adequate assurance of the management’s commitment to maintaining positive welfare of workers at workplace. For instance, the employee might require a quick replacement of an equipment since the one he currently uses is outdated or simply inefficient (Lighter & Fair, 2000). In the same way, flexible support for a fairly balanced life at the workplace and emotional support particularly when facing unfair criticism are a clear demonstration of the managers commitment to ensure the workplace is always conducive to the employees. Moreover, the senior executives should avoid being emotionally stingy (Lighter & Fair, 2000). They should credit where it is due. Withholding praise as well as acknowledgement when it is acceptable is not only unrealistic but also archaic. Computer technology is vital tool that can help the organization to improve productivity. The facility should begin employing modern technologies for documenting clinical records, processing employee wages, and performing diagnosis (Aft, 2000). The 3-D printing technology offers surgeons an opportunity to initiate some body parts for further analysis. The facility should provide computer training to those employees who have not acquired computer literacy as part of its long-term goal of building on the capacity (Aft, 2000). Prejudiced management practices might also lead to the surfacing of alliances and groupings, which further put the success of the organizations on the line. Incidentally, those healthcare workers allied to the departmental head will appear to be more superior compared to their counterparts with no allies or simply have less influential allies. The organization should design economic incentives for employee at all levels. Most contemporary healthcare facilities have adopted a natural tendency of rewarding senior officials and overlooking low-level personnel despite the latter making massive contributions to the organization (Aft, 2000). One of the recommended best practices for improved productivity would be to ensure economic incentives are spread across all levels. Previous studies have revealed that recognition is a powerful instrument toward motivation employees and further translates to an improved productivity. Finally, the senior executives should lead by example. It is quite a demoralizing scenario for employees when a senior leader acts in a manner that dishonors his or her integrity, personality, and self-worth. References Aft, L. S. (2000). Work measurement and methods improvement. New York, N.Y: J. Wiley and Sons. Buchbinder, S. B., & Shanks, N. H. (2012). Introduction to health care management. Burlington, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Bulger, R. E., & Reiser, S. J. (2009). Integrity in health care institutions: Humane environments for teaching, inquiry, and healing. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Deeprose, D. (2006). How to recognize & reward employees: 150 ways to inspire peak performance. New York: AMACOM. Healey, B. J., & Marchese, M. C. (2012). Foundations of health care management: Principles and methods. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. In Miller, K. M., Wyllie, C., Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations., & Joint Commission Resources, Inc. (2006). Planning, design, and construction of health care facilities. Oak Terrace, IL: JCAHO. Lighter, D. E., & Fair, D. C. (2000). Principles and methods of quality management in health care. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen Publishers. Lighter, D. E., & Fair, D. C. (2004). Quality management in health care: Principles and methods. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett. Murthy, P. R. (2005). Production and operations management. New Delhi: New Age International (P) Ltd. Publishers. Ozcan, Yasar A., Ph.d. (2009). Quantitative Methods in Health Care Management: Techniques and Applications: Epub Edition. John Wiley & Sons Inc. United States., & United States. (2008). Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2009. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. Read More