Running head: CASE STUDY
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CASE STUDY
Action Research Case Study
Jesse Taylor
University of Arizona Global Campus
BUS 370
Professor Edward Lisoski
13 December 2021
Organization Problem
Employees’ morale and organization culture play vital roles in determining the success of any organization. Center City Hospital can apply this concept by boosting employees’ morals and creating a conducive organizational culture that will orient the firm to profit and patient-centered. Research shows that these two factors are inseparable from any company’s success. For instance, scholars suggest that organizational culture significantly affects staff satisfaction, reduces turnover, and excellently improves patient service care providers. All these eventually lead to more profit and gain on the hospital’s side and the customers at large (Willis et al., 2016). Research done by LinkedIn shows that the majority of professional have positive morale whenever working with an organization that value other people rather than being driven by the desire for money. Staff with high morale are very engaging, efficient, and motivated. This has proven to be directly proportional to the effectiveness in their daily operation, resulting in the attainment of the set objectives. Some of the benefits associated with nursing staff having high morale include; cost-effectiveness, collaboration, retention, and increased production to the satisfaction level (Willis et al., 2016). For Center City Hospital to achieve more profit and be patient-centered, the CEO, DON, and HR manager should focus more on how to boost nursing staffing morale and also create a conducive organizational culture.
Improving nursing staff morale in Center City Hospital
The first strategy the managing team should adopt is reducing nursing staff micromanaging. This is because excessive supervision of employees tends to affect their workflow as they lack confidence in themselves, forcing them to check with their manager, making them get bored constantly. Center City Hospital management team should practice this strategy to get the nurses a sense of work ownership, making them more engaging. The managers should know that micromanaging employees see it as a lack of trust considering they are professionals (White, 2014). It is worse when accompanied by criticism. Instead, the managing team should guide them, and they point out the areas that they need improvement. Nursing should be given their space to practice their profession while giving them a platform to strengthen their weal point through empowerment.
The second way of improving employee morale is through setting clear goals to reduce burnout. If there are no clear goals and thin such a case, it is characterized by disorganized the nurses tend to die from monotony. This does not mean death, but their morale goes down to zero. Research shows that employees feel motivated when the work is progressive rather than when it is repetitive (White, 2014). This progression makes them feel the management or company inspires them to move forward. The presence of clear goals translates to clear communication which helps the nurses to make effective plans. The managing team should also know that no one is perfect so, they should not expect 100%. Therefore for any achievement by the employee toward the set goals, they should be appreciated and given the power to progress working as expected. This will boost morale as they will be left will a sense of accomplishment.
Thirdly, it can be achieved by improving work-life balance. This has been the biggest enemy of employee morale in many organizations, especially the health sector, where staff may find themselves been overworked. When a nurse fails to balance their life, they concentrate so much on work, which, in turn, lacks attention to their family and friends. Continuous pressure from this life-work imbalance creates stress to the nurses and eventually reduces their working morale. So, the Center City Hospital can boost their nursing staffs’ morale by balancing their work-life. They can achieve this by supporting staff through wellness initiatives, assigning them flexible duties that will help them to accommodate family matters. The managing team should also check the staff regularly to ensure they are doing fine in their duties and outside life. This will improve their morale as they see the organization is concerned with their wellness, hence their act positively toward helping the hospital achieve its goals.
Changing Center City Hospital culture to become more profitable and Patient-centered
The first step to be used by the managing team to have a good culture is creating and communicating meaningful organization values. These values will guide how employees should act and interact with other staff, the community at large, and the patients (UMA, 2018). Through these values, the staff will understand what is important to the organization. This can be achieved by leaders developing values that fit the expected profit and patient-centered goals and communicating them to all staff. Research shows that values are a fundamental element in any organization. They help reduce uncertainty, make staff understand what is expected of them, and balance-checked by ensuring everything runs as expected to achieve the organization’s objectives (UMA, 2018). The values created should be embraced by everybody within the organization where the top management should act as a leading example. Eventually, the result will be a harmonized organization.
Another way of boosting culture change within Center City Hospital is through the conduction of proper employee selection. This is because employees have different abilities in embracing or adopting changes. Hence, the HR manager should select the best staff that will fit perfectly in implementing the changing culture. Criteria such as experience should be given priority. It will help get the right persons who can fit well with the set organization values and the proposed culture (UMA, 2018). This will help reduce resistance or other barriers that may come across and delay the culture improvement. The competency to cultivate the changed culture should be strengthened through orientation and onboarding throughout their working life. They can also undergo a coaching program to be familiar with and understand the culture adopted by the facility toward achieving more profit and patient-centered.
Another factor that is very important in changing the culture is collaboration and team building. this is whereby the stakeholders come together and work to meet a common goal. This will bring a good working environment where all stakeholders involved in the facility activities have a perfect relationship. This boosts their learning ability from each other due to increased trust. It can be achieved by encouraging open communication of ideas, and all the contributions made are critical in changing the culture (Willis et al., 2016). The togetherness by the staff and other stakeholders impacts a positive spirit in them, and this helps in embracing the changes as they feel they are part of the reforms made. For instance, collaboration and team building is brought by the spirit of unity. This will also bring the spirit of innovation, which helps cultivate the new culture required to achieve the organization’s goal.
References
UMA. (2018). 10 Ways to Build a Great Culture in Your Healthcare Organization. Ultimate Medical Academy. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.ultimatemedical.edu/blog/10-ways-to-build-a-great-culture-in-your-healthcare-organization/
White, P. (2014). Improving staff morale through authentic appreciation. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal.
Willis, C. D., Saul, J., Bevan, H., Scheirer, M. A., Best, A., Greenhalgh, T., … & Bitz, J. (2016). Sustaining organizational culture change in health systems. Journal of health organization and management.