Critical Thinking: Organizational Change and Workforce Management

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.

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