TITLE: Memorial's Healthcare System: Organizational Change and Workforce Management

Memorial Hospital System (MHS) has been facing many serious issues, including leadership problems, staffing deficiencies, and financial hardship. Challenges include:

1. There is high staff turnover, which doubled to 20% in the past two years and is expected to rise.
2. Healthcare costs continue to spiral out of control, with plummeting reimbursement. (The overall margin is negative, and working capital reserves are below industry standards.)
3. There is an inability to raise capital funding due to a bond rating that was lowered earlier this year to "junk" status.
4. MHS is a union shop for non-managerial workforce staff, and the contract between management and the union is up for renewal this fiscal year.
5. MHS is in the process of implementing complex and expensive multi-year healthcare information systems, such as Electronic Health Records (EHR) and other critical-need clinical information systems.
6. MHS is facing significant competition from other local healthcare facilities.

Last year, a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was hired. She identified the current organizational culture as apathetic, leaderless, and resistant to change. She also noted that the staff was under stress, resisting teamwork, accepting mediocrity, and compromising patient safety values and industry best practices. The CEO noted that critical human resources functions were broken and that financial performance was suffering. She attributed this to a variety of process issues, as well as to the lack of focus on the core business of patient care.

In response, she decided to implement the following strategies:

• Change the organizational culture
• Improve human resources and workforce practices and outcomes
• Ensure the organization's solvency and financial viability in the long run
• Cut costs across the board, including implementing a labor-reduction strategy (salary and benefits) with an aggressive timeline to turn around the financial bottom line

Within a few months after these strategies were implemented, MHS started to show less economic loss and seemed to stabilize financially. The morale of the staff, however, took a significant hit in the wrong direction. Staff turnover increased as the sense of job security decreased, and as an increasing number of valued and critical staff in all areas left. Soon, MHS experienced an increase in patient complaints and lowered customer service, with signs of impact on clinical patient outcomes.

Now the CEO, with approval and support from the MHS Board of Directors, wants to create a dynamic long-term organization and human resources strategic plan to put MHS on the right track. To formulate and implement this plan, the CEO hired a well-known consultant who is tasked with performing a system-wide organization and human resources assessment.

 Within the scope of this assessment is the development and formulation of a multilevel strategic program. This new program is to be implemented system-wide, with the goal of helping MHS leaders understand the link among finances, employee morale, human resources functions, and patient satisfaction. The intended end result of this assessment is to: create a culture of accountability; shift the culture to one of services after two years; attract, hire, and retain staff; and implement best practices in workforce management.

Instructions:

Assume that you are the consultant the CEO has hired to do this assessment project. Your main tasks are to: (a) identify the key components involved in changing the organizational culture, and (b) identify the steps needed to generate sustainable change.

Here are the deliverables that the Board of Directors and CEO want to receive from you:

1. Develop a comprehensive strategic plan that has two major sections: Organization Development and Human Resources. The CEO and Board of Directors expect you to create your plan by using benchmarking, and by integrating human resources and organization development best practices from other healthcare organization and other industries.
2. The Organization Development section will address the following topics:

• Workplace communication
• Motivation
• Leadership
• Employee stress
• Decision making
• Conflict management
• Team building and group dynamics
• Embracing change and change management
• The Human Resources section will address the following topics:Organizational and human resources systems that need to be in place to effect positive organizational outcomes
• The steps and decisions involved in recruitment, selection, and retention of staff
• Performance management systems
• Compensation and reward systems
• Training and development processes and their contribution to the organization's bottom line
• Relationship of organized labor and management in healthcare
• The resources, key staff/roles, and steps required to develop a safe workplace

Your submission must be 13-15 pages in length. You must include title and reference pages, and a table of contents; however, these should not be included in the total page count. You have an outline and references list due in Week 6. This is worth 40 points toward your final Portfolio Project score. See the Module 6 folder for further details. Incorporate 20 credible and current references. Ten of these must be peer-reviewed articles. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references. Format your paper according to the APA Format