Principles of Organizational Performance Management
Organizational performance management is very vital in ensuring that there is sufficient output among workers in any organization. In the nursing profession, a leader always desires to provide that their team and working staff offer services that are excellent with desirable outcomes as per the satisfaction of the patients' needs and their families. This paper, therefore, aims at elaborating on how I will envision myself with the role of nursing leadership for various departments, units, and services. Y tea is currently struggling with the aspects of performance outcomes since it has been noted that are performance score is still below the benchmarking levels.
I look forward to exploring ways of improving the outcomes through enhancing employee performance scorecard data that will concentrate on how to measure results under my healthcare organization.
The Patient Population being AddressedThe patient population being addressed are those that are aged between 60-80 years in Aventura Hospital. The community in this study are indeed the elderly in the society and they have been featured to have health complications of different levels that require high attention by the medical practitioners to enhance quality and well being of their health condition always since they need adequate support and care (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). Aventura hospital offers both long-term and short term healthcare services to the elderly patients that are usually brought to the healthcare facility. The hospital entails various categories and subsections that are used in the treatment and handling elderly patients as their health needs and complications. There is a section that contains patients that are under a critical condition, and there is another section that entails patients with minor issues. The patients aged between 60-90 years have been noted to have various complications from minute to severe that all require active medical attendance and adherence. For instance, the hospital helps in handling elderly patients that face the issue of falls and have even devised effective of promoting fall prevention among the elderly through electronic and digital devices like mobile phones due to the available technology.
There is an adequate number of nurse practitioners that have been assigned in different healthcare organization departments to help ensure that the patients’ needs are always addressed (Miller, 2013). The patients who are diagnosed with chronic diseases, diabetes, hypertension, depression and other illnesses are assigned nurse practitioners in their respective divisions who attend to them always and ensure that they acquire comfort and stability. The hospital has also devised a system that allows the fairly and friends to visit the patients.
A2. Outcome Measures Relating to the Population
Performance Outcome: Improved Satisfaction of the Patient
Quality: Ensuring medication is administered in time
Safety of the Patient: Promotion of fall prevention among the elderly while under medication
Engagement of Employees: improve education and skills of handling this population
B. Discussion of the Necessary Processes that will Steer Every outcome Measure
Measure
Outcome
Drivers
(Performance)
Satisfaction of patient
Enhance achievement of the patient outcomes and minimize complaints and dissatisfaction
l Develop a positive image as a community provider
l Multiple censuses
l Continuation of the reimbursements of the CMS
(Quality)
Application of timely and medications
Medication will always be offered to patients in about one hour before the stipulated time
l Improve the scores of patient satisfaction
l Ensure that all administered medication’s therapeutic levels are improved
l Mitigate the issue of drug interaction when drugs are related to one another
(Safety)
Reduction of falls
Decrease the issue of falls especially after patients have been given certain medications
l Ensure counterproductive treatment
l Minimize hospital medication transfers
l Minimize the duration that a patient cannot be treated due to the body strength of the patient
(Engagement)
An increment of employee engagement
Improve the education and skills of the staff that will be handling this population
l Improved patient outcomes
l Enhance the evidence-based practice use
l Minimize work-related injury risks that may arise while working with this population
(Quality)
Documentation improvement
Improvement of documentation processes
l Adequate updates to the care plan
l Excellent treatment outcomes
l Application of an interdisciplinary approach to improve patient outcomes
To enhance the performance measures, the patient outcomes will be improved thereby leading to patient satisfaction scores and minimizing the issue of complaints by patients. The drivers include census multiplication, development of a positive image as the community provider, and Continuation of the reimbursements of the CMS (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). The activities that will steer this outcome are addressing the needs of the patient in time, listening to their concerns, creating engagement time with patients in every shift and ensuring that there is communication to patients whenever there is a delay.
To ensure the quality measure is improved the desired drivers will include improving the scores of patient satisfaction, improvement of therapeutic levels of all medication administered, and minimize the aspects of drug interaction for drugs with close cooperation. The drivers will ensure that there is a desired outcome which will entail the administration of all the medications in one hour before the scheduled time. The activities that will steer this outcome will include education of all the nurse practitioners concerning the administration of appropriate drugs, continuous learning for the nurses who will be disseminating medication in the part times and ensuring of adequate staffing of the nurses to enhance their performance.
To enhance the safety measure for patients, the desired outcome will be a reduction of falls among patients due to medications (Conger, 2017). The drivers for this desired outcome will be counter-productive to the plan of treatment, reduction of the hospital medication transfers, and minimizing the duration in which a patient cannot be treated due to the body strength of the patient. The factors that will steer this outcome are identifying the patients that are at high risk of a fall and medication review with the relevant interdisciplinary group. Also, there will be personal supervision of the patient until the therapeutic levels are attained in all the medications administered.
To enhance the employee engagement measure, the outcome will be improving the education and skills of all the nurses that will be handling the desired population. For this outcome, the drivers will therefore be; an increment of the evidence-based activities, excellent patient outcomes and minimization of nursing related risks (Buick, Blackman, Donnell, Flynn & West, 2015). The events that will steer this outcome are sharing with the nursing staff always to determine training needs, determine the crucial team that may act as mentors and study groups that will promote adequate preparation.
B1. An Additional Indicator
Safety of the patient: To enhance the quality measure, the desired outcome will be documentation improvement. The drivers for this outcome will be better outcomes after treatment, Updating the treatment care plan in time and application of the interdisciplinary approach to enhance the results of the patient (Miller, 2013). When documentation is done effectively, there will be ethical, safe, and ideal means of communicating, recording, describing information and knowledge to the interdisciplinary group. Documentation entails an official document, and therefore, it should be precise and clear as per the policies and procedures of the organization. Also, when medication is done effectively, errors like transcription medication will be minimized.
The activities that will steer this outcome are for the nurse leaders to assess continuously every new order, diagnosis, and corrections on the care plan with effective communication with the interdisciplinary group (Greene, 2018). It would be ideal for the team to adhere to the standards of documentation and ensure continuous education and enable the multidisciplinary team to access the documentation and enact any possible changes to the healthcare plan plus treatment procedures as per the documentation.
C. Discuss at Least Three Advantages of the Performance Data Scorecard Created in Part A
Numerous advantages can be accrued from an expertly balanced scorecard for all the healthcare organizations across the globe. One of the benefits of a balanced scorecard is that it ensures conjunction of diverse elements of a healthcare organization into one with the mission of enhancing the outcomes on patients, minimizing the response duration, sensitizing on long-term management and teamwork, improving quality (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). a scorecard enables the management of any healthcare organization to put together varoius cricial elements like the working staff and the management to work in correlation always to ensure that the core aspects which are enhancing quality care are enhanced. Quality care can be enhanced through ensuring that everybody is on board in working towards achieving the projected goals and objectives of the healthcare facility. The second crucial advantage of a balanced scorecard is that it offers security against sub-optimization. The scorecard indeed analyzes and takes into consideration the entire collection of measures in unison and enables one to stipulate whether an improvement in one area can have an impact on the other. The third advantage that is accrued from the scorecard is that it enables the management to evaluate healthcare programs effectively, shows how projects can be improved and enhancement of quality care, performance measures, clinical pathways measures and also indicates how accreditation is attained. Based on these advantages, a healthcare organization is able to ensure that its working staff offers adequate medical services to all the patients. This, therefore, helps in developing an excellent experience among the patients and their families that will enable them come back to the healthcare facility and even recommend others to seek for its services. With a balanced scorecard, the management will be able to determine the strengths and weaknesses that hinder quality performance thereby improving on the weak areas and maintaining the strengths always.
D. Two Current Trends Related to Employee Engagement
One of the existing current trends that are correlated with employee engagement, in particular, is open communication amongst all the staff members. It is vital to ensure that there is always effective communication among the staff concerning work operations and even emulate the set goals and objectives of the organization as their daily priorities (Conger, 2017). Research entails that the most common complaint among the workers is that they are usually left out in most of the critical activities that take place in their place of work. The employees have in some cases stipulated that they may at times not be informed of what s going on in the organization. The workers come to work as usual only to be given new ideas and commands to execute and work with them by the top management. They have no power to ask the management questions concerning the new changes, but all that is expected of them is to follow and execute them. It is, therefore, ideal when employees are informed concerning any new ideas that may be introduced into their work so that motivation and strength to enact the new changes will be enhanced since they will feel that they are also fully engaged into the organization's activities. When the management involves the employees in implementing new changes, the employees will be motivated to work harder, have a positive attitude with the work activities, and will always operate as a growing team (Miller, 2013). This will thus enable the workers to improve their performance and even acquire excellent patient outcomes as per the desires of the healthcare and the family and friends of the patients.
In many situations, when there are secure communication and transparency with the employees, a problem will be easily solved before it gets out of hand. Ensuring good conversation is as ideal as:
l Establishment of a platform upon which employees issue their concerns, ask questions and offer suggestions for improvement of the organization’s operations.
l Taking into consideration of all the needs of the workers even when they are communicated verbally and they appear evident in the practical operations of the workers like when a nurse practitioner lags under a medication pass and requires help to complete it.
l Agreeing with the employees since they to have the trust that the management values their interests and will always support them.
l Working in unison to determine the challenges and solutions assurance that the workers’ voice is being heard and that they are always considered as part of the entire team.
The second trend that is existing currently in the healthcare employee engagement is ensuring that the employees are always recognized effectively so that they have a strong commitment (Conger, 2017). Many workers desire to work under programs that are sponsored and entail recognition of those involved. Better patient outcomes will be attained when the patients are always engaged. Therefore, devising ways and means of keeping the workers motivated and engaged is vital for adequate patient care and the models of delivery. Thus, when the management conducts free, fair and positive programs for recognition, the employees will feel confident and secure and remain to be always engaged.
Active caring and interacting with the patients and the staff is the vital aspect that coexists among the workers in a healthcare facility. This may be a dinning worker pulling the last effort on the patient around the dining and kitchen issues, or a receptionist making a previous gasp alteration of the calendar for appointment to ensure that the needs and demands of the patient that is in distress are attained, all these efforts imply the much all the workers within a healthcare organization can stretch themselves to ensure better healthcare and desired patient outcomes (Buick, Blackman, Donnell, Flynn & West, 2015). Such an effort will not be for the patient only but also for the entire working team in the healthcare organization. When hardworking and outgoing employees are recognized and appreciated, such employees they will always feel that they are more than just being enjoyed thereby developing a culture of appreciation in the organization for all the workers. The rest of the workers will, therefore, feel inspired and always strive to perform and go beyond the expectations so that they can be adequately recognized also.
Appreciation may entail just straightforward activities like saying "thank you for the hard work" or as little as bringing a cup of coffee and donuts may have a far-reaching implication on the worker and maintaining his/her full engagement. Hence, when the management team puts a positive effort in appreciating the efforts of the workers, they will always work hard and stay fully engaged with the activities and operations of the organization.
D1. The Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Healthcare Quality
The main aim of healthcare management in any healthcare facility is always ensuring high-quality care services to the patients. This has, therefore, improved quality care to be a continuing priority in the healthcare and as time goes by, is even becoming more vital since it has a direct impact on the primary issue of healthcare operations (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). According to the center for Medicaid and Medicare services, the eligibility on how reimbursement is determined through the patient satisfaction levels and the quality of care a patient received while under treatment.
The satisfaction measures that determine the levels of reimbursement are identified from every interaction that exists between a patient and a healthcare practitioner (Miller, 2013). When employees are fully engaged in their work, they will always depict a real and caring attitude and will always attach themselves with effective patient outcomes. Indeed, all the employees that commit to engagement will still be excellent mediators for their patients, ambassadors of their organization and acquire the strength of becoming leaders, mentors, and experts of subject-matters in a health organization.
When employees are engaged, they will have a strong trust in their organization's vision. They will also be at the forefront of enacting improvements, and it will be negligible for them to turn their back and quiet in case the projected processes fail to succeed (Buick, Blackman, 'Donnell, Flynn & West, 2015). The workers that are not engaged can be easily identified through their constant negative comments concerning the organization, they have little concern about the outcomes of their patients, and rarely have suggestions for process improvement. They show the signs of being disengaged. When employees are disengaged, they will have a low turnover and even yield poor quality work in their work.
One of the ways employee engagement can be enhanced through the leaders focusing on the training and coaching of the employees through a mentorship and affirmative program concerning the aspects of involvement and commitment to the activities of the organization. Such actions can be done through leading by example ensuring transparency and elaborating clear expectations through adequate and effective communication that will lead to employee engagement (Greene, 2018). When the employees are engaged, they will always enjoy their work daily thereby resulting in the excellent care of the patients minimum work stress burnout and turnover which steers improved healthcare services.
D2. Discussion on Whether Current Tools in Your Organization Adequately Provide Data Regarding Employee Engagement
Upon examination of my organization's tools, I feel like the available tools cannot effectively offer employee engagement for the workers in the organization. The facility mainly deals with elderly patients aged between 60-80 years. It is the central facility in the country and therefore, it does not involve itself with healthcare consumer assessment and system providers (Buick, Blackman, Donnell, Flynn & West, 2015). The facility does not have continuous assessment services that can be used to solicit suggestions that can be used to enhance the improvement of the process. The healthcare facility experiences a high rate of turnover among its workers, and I believe it is not related to the patient population served by the facility.
There have been many times whereby the staff has been required to work up to overtime hours without any notice due to the issue of inadequate staffing and callouts that exist within the facility. This, therefore, makes the current staff have burnouts, have low motivation levels and even feel that they are having low levels of safe staffing. The facility has got three levels of management, but all these managers have allowed the nurses to work in this dangerous short manner. When handling staffing issues, the managers forgo the unit they feel should be working and at times floating a nurse practitioner working on a fulltime in a different group that is having a short.
The health organization lacks a workers committee or operations improvement team that can help in steering the desired change. There are dedicated employees but they are not recognized by the organization as preceptors or mentorship leaders to guide and motivate others and they even rarely receive rewards for their commitment. The tools that the organization may use to ensure that the leadership has adequate data is through completion of surveys that are conducted an examination of the trends of turnovers by nurses. This will, therefore, enable the human resource team to determine the exact reason as to why the workers are leaving the organization to join others. They can define whether they are quitting because of dissatisfaction, promotion issues or due to relocation.
Similarly, the organization may use the tool of enacting charges on the nurses on issues of absenteeism, legal assistance or cost related to compensation of the worker (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). This will enable the management to have adequate knowledge of the engagement levels of every nurse practitioner in the facility. It should be understood that a reduction in the engagement of employees may result in an increment of injuries in low workplace motivation and low patient satisfaction within the healthcare facility.
However, an ideal tool that the organization may use in enhancing and improving engagement is through observation by the leadership. More often, the working staff has been noted to converse more openly that they don't care, feel miserable and even feel like they are not acknowledged by the management (Greene, 2018). Such incidents imply that the workers have got low esteem and interest in working in the organization further. Therefore, of the leaders can apply observation skills and note this attitudes in the workers, then they can be able to determine the challenges facing the nurses and improve them so that they can become fully engaged. Given that this is absent in the organization, the workers feel like the management does not care and therefore, cannot waste their time giving suggestions.
E. A Plan to Improve Employee Engagement Based on the Performance Data Scorecard
This measure aims at improving the engagement of employees through the enhancement of the certification of all the Nurses that are Registered within the facility under the RN-BC. Currently, there is not even a single nurse in the facility that is registered with this body and therefore the target will be aiming at acquiring at least 5-10% of nurses getting registered with RN-BC by the end of the coming financial year of the organization (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). This will be achieved through conducting educational town hall meetings whereby I will individually enlighten other nurses about the concept and allure them in an attempt to acquire their positive feedback. To ensure that my plan succeeds, I will work in liaison with the educational trainer for the nurses handling the elderly in the society so that we can develop a useful program that will ensure the projected certification of the nurses is attained.
Many nursing educators for in-house training usually have their MSN, and therefore, they will be able to offer adequate support in generating an affirmative in-house training program for the nurses. Three days will be allocated in the preparation of the study material to be used in exams for certification. In the process of all the activities procedurally to arouse more interest from other people, a clinical ladder program will be implemented. This program will help all the registered nurses with interest in acquiring their certification as well as a review of NCLEX for practical licensed nurses and their desire to pursue higher education so that they can be registered as full nurses (Conger, 2017). The program will offer continuous study sessions for all the registered nurses that have interest in the certification program. All the nurses that will be involved and effectively complete the different levels under the clinical level, they will be openly appreciated, compensated with a pay increment and also given an opportunity to join the mentorship programs as mentors. After the applications become more familiar with time among the nurses, Aides for certified nurses educational study sessions will be implemented for all the nurses that will be willing to study elderly mentorship and nursing. However, to make the program more competitive, only the nurses that have acquired a distinct standard of leadership and care will be allowed to enroll for it.
Also, upon an assessment of all the employees, it will be ideal for interacting and engaging with all the working staff in a manner that will ensure they always develop the desire to stay engaged. For instance, if a particular group of nurses is identified to have low self-esteem concerning the work, there can be a plan for motivating and raising the appreciation of such workers by ensuring that their needs and demands are adhered to effectively while they are at work (Conger, 2017). For the workers that whose performance scorecard will read less than below the average expected score for the employees, it will be ideal for redesigning the work program so that it can fit and suit their expectations for them to deliver effectively. The work program will put into consideration all the challenges and setbacks such nurses encounter than make them record such low performance.
There should also be a performance appraisal form that should be implemented for all the nurses so that they can work effectively and ensure better patient outcomes. The performance appraisal will help the employees to avoid laziness and get fully engaged in the operations of the nursing operations of the elderly so that quality care can be attained for the patients at all times.
E1. Discussion of Leadership Best Practices That Improve Employee Engagement
The leadership best practices that can enhance employee engagement include effective creation and communication of the values, goals, and objectives of the organization (Miller, 2013). At any single point, it should not be assumed that all the working staff is aware of the vision of the organization. Therefore, to ensure that everybody is on the cause, the leadership should provide that they are all always mindful of the idea to the organization and the progress that is being made towards attaining the vision.
The leadership can also enhance employee engagement through building a culture that highly promotes employee engagement through transparent, inspirational, visible, enthusiastic and robust actions concerning everyday operations (DeNisi & Gonzalez, 2017). When there is such a strong culture, it, therefore, implies that all the workers even the incoming new ones will be able to follow and emulate these actions thereby leading to active employee engagement within the organization.
Also, leadership best practices towards the action of engagement can be enhanced through promoting a high level of integrity and trust among the workers that will lead to respect for all and always acknowledge credibility (Greene, 2018). When employees are accorded the opportunity to foster changes, this also enables them to improve their levels of engagement in the workplace.
Leadership can also apply the best practice of ensuring that there is an official existence of rewards and programs that will help recognize the hardworking individuals in the workplace thereby promoting high engagement among all the employees. All the workers will strive to get rewarded and understood within the organization, and thus they will attempt to ensure they attain high standards of engagement. Also, it is vital to provide that the right and hardworking workers in an organization are rewarded for the right cause. Leadership policies that encourage employees always enhance the engagement levels of all the workers in the organization since such activities ensure an open concern for the happiness of the worker. Thus, when such practices are enacted, the workers will always feel satisfied and recognized in the team thereby leading to high levels of employee engagement that thereby result in improved patient outcomes.
References
Ronen, B., Pliskin, J. S., and Pass, S. (2018). Principles of Management in the Dynamic Healthcare Environment (DRAFT). Oxford Medicine Online. doi:10.1093/med/9780190843458.003.0002
Conger, J. A., and Pearce, C. L. (2015). Using Empowerment to Motivate People to Engage in Effective Self- and Shared Leadership. Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior, 201-216. doi:10.1002/9781119206422.ch11
References
Buick, F., Blackman, D. A., Donnell, M. E., Flynn, J. L., and West, D. (2015). Can enhanced performance management support public sector change?. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 271-289. doi:10.1108/jocm-12-2013-0249
Conger, J. A. (2017). Motivate performance through empowerment. The Blackwell handbook of principles of organizational behavior, 143-155. doi:10.1002/9781119206422.ch11
Buick, F., Blackman, D. A., Donnell, M. E., Flynn, J. L., and West, D. (2015). Can enhanced performance management support public sector change?. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 271-289. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2689363
Rotundo, M. (2015). Conduct Performance Appraisals to Improve Individual and Firm Performance. Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior, 85-104. doi:10.1002/9781119206422.ch5
