Critical Thinking: Organizational Change and Workforce Management (150 Points)

Saudi Hospital System (SHS, a fictitious organization) has been facing many serious issues including leadership problems, staffing deficiencies, and financial hardship. Challenges include:

• High      staff turnover, which doubled to 20% in the past two years, is expected to      rise.
• SHS      is in the process of implementing complex and expensive multi-year      healthcare information systems such as Electronic Health Record and other      critical-need clinical information systems.
• SHS      is facing significant competition from other local healthcare facilities.

Last year, a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was hired. He identified the current organizational culture as apathetic, leaderless, and resistant to change. He 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. He 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, he 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, the SHS started to show less of a financial 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, SHS experienced an increase in patient complaints and lowered customer service, with signs of impact on clinical patient outcomes.

Now the CEO wants to create a dynamic long-term organization and human resources strategic plan to put SHS 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 SHS leaders to understand the link among finances, employee morale, human resources functions, and patient satisfaction. The end goal of this assessment is to create a culture of accountability; to shift the culture to one of services after two years; to attract, hire, and retain quality staff; and to implement best practices in workforce management. 

Assume that you are the consultant whom the CEO hired to do this assessment project. Your main task is to identify the key components involved in changing the organizational culture and to identify the steps needed to generate sustainable change. Here are the deliverables that the CEO wants to see from you:

1. Develop a comprehensive organization and human resources strategic plan. The plan has two major sections: Organization Development and Human Resources.  The CEO expects you to create your plan using benchmarking and by integrating human resources and organization development best practices from other healthcare organizations, as well as from other industries.

2. The Organization Development section will address the following items:

· Workplace communication

· Motivation

· Conflict Management.

3. The Human Resources section will address the following items:

· Organizational and human resources systems that need to be in place to effect positive organizational outcomes

· Performance management system

· Process of training and development and the contribution to the organization’s bottom line

· Key action steps required to develop the plan.

Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be      6-8 pages in length, not including the required cover and reference pages.
• Formatted      according to Saudi Electronic University and APA writing guidelines.
• Provide      support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of six      scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journal articles.