Organizational Change and Workforce Management for the Future

Purdue University Healthcare System
Purdue University Hospital System (PHS) has been facing many serious issues including leadership problems, staffing deficiency, and financial hardship. Several of these challenges are directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges include:

1. High staff turnover among both clinical and administrative roles, which doubled to 20% in the past two years and is expected to rise as a new vaccine mandate is being considered.
2. Healthcare costs that continue to increase, with decreasing reimbursement (overall margin is negative and working capital reserves are below industry standards).
3. An inability to raise capital funding due to a bond rating that was lowered earlier this year to “junk” status.
4. PHS is in the process of implementing complex and expensive multi-year healthcare information systems as a new Electronic Health Record.
5. PHS is facing limited workforce availability as it is the sole hospital in a small, rural community which is made worst due to COVID-19 and the loss of several trained staff from the profession.
   Last year, a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was hired. She identified the current organizational culture as indifferent, undirected, and hostile to change. The CEO also noted that the staff was under stress, resisting teamwork, accepting mediocrity, burned out, 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 addition, the loss of long-term employees from the organization has caused a significant and irreplaceable loss of institutional knowledge.
   In response, she decided to implement the following strategies:
   • Transform the organizational culture
   • Improve human resources, workforce practices, and employee outcomes
   • Ensure the organization’s solvency and financial viability in the long run
   Within a few months after these strategies were implemented, the PHS started to show less of a financial loss and the start of financial stability. The morale of the staff, however, has not improved. Staff turnover increased as an increasing number of valued and critical staff in all areas left, increasing everyone’s workload. In addition, due to the pandemic, demand for services have greatly increased above normal need. Soon, PHS 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 PHS Board of Directors, wants to create a dynamic long-term organization and human resources strategic plan to put PHS 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 organization-wide with the goal to help PHS leaders to understand the link among finances, employee morale, human resources functions, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction. The result 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 staff
   • to implement best practices in workforce management
   Assignment Instructions:
   You are the newly hired consultant 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.
   Develop a comprehensive organization and human resources strategic plan. The plan has two major sections: Organization Development and Human Resources. The CEO and Board of Directors expect 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. If you are not sure of industry benchmarks, please use a number you would expect and denote that this is your estimate.
   Here are the deliverables that the Board of Directors and CEO want to see from you:
6. The Organization Development section will address the following items:
   • Workplace communication
   • Motivation
   • Leadership
   • Employee stress
   • Decision-making
   • Conflict management
   • Team-building and group dynamics
   • Embracing change and change management
7. 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
   • The steps and decisions involved in recruitment, selection, and retention of staff
   • Performance management systems
   • Compensation and reward systems
   • Process of training and development and the 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 final paper can use both course resources as well as additional resources found through the Purdue Library or on the web. If you use web sources, ensure they are credible and appropriate resources. You should use in-text citations and a work cited page in APA format for facts you identify. Your final assignment should be 10-15 pages of content, not including works cited, title page, and figures/tables if used. Your paper should be double-spaced, use a standard font (Calibri, Times New Roman, etc.), with 1” margins.