Values and Impacts of a High-Performance Work Team in Healthcare
Abstract
Teamwork focuses on achieving excellence by sharing their goals, leadership, collaboration, and group operating rules, open communication and clear role expectations with trust amongst each other (Betancourt, 2020). It is well known that work teams are the backbone of all contemporary work life. Health care providers who work as a team can be more responsive to occurring changes like, for instance when the patient’s condition worsens. Healthcare culture is, therefore, one in which good health and well-being flourish across social, demographic and geographic sectors hence fostering healthy, equitable society guides. In all business premises, strategies for developing HR should be well considered. In the new competitive markets, firms and organizations should engage in strategic planning to survive and prosper. The goal mainly being to deploy and allocate resources in a manner that gives competitive advantages. Therefore, there is a need for strategic plans which provide the organization a direction to follow. This can either be a single paper or a fill-up binder, which depends on the complexity of the organization. In a proper building of a high-performance team, you have to invest in leaders who use their talents to break down barriers, reward and praise their team members, speak the language of inclusion, and seeks a diversity of ideas and opinions.
Introduction
A high-performance work team is regarded as a group of goal-focused people who are specialized and have complementary skills who innovate, collaborate and produce consistently superior results. The group focuses on achieving excellence by sharing their goals, leadership, collaboration, and group operating rules, open communication and clear role expectations with trust amongst each other. It is well known that work teams are the backbone of all contemporary work life. These project teams are the ones that create new services and products. Teamwork is very crucial in industries but is more critical in the healthcare setting when the patient’s life is at stake. This implies that every employee in health care has got some experience and skillsets, which leads to better health outcomes. The benefits of teamwork in the health care setting are vast and undeniable. This implies that with the appropriate training, you will be poised to take a rewarding career in a healthcare team quickly after graduation. Teamwork is a crucial and optimal way of delivering healthcare. Research has been made showing that effective and efficient collaboration provides benefits to both the patients and their peers. This will additionally make the workplace to be more enjoyable and productive when you operate as a team. Problems relating to safety issues are greatly minimized; thus, on the other hand, increasing the retention rate (Eriksson, 2017). This will also improve patient care with seamless collaboration and enhanced communication. Additionally, health care providers who work as a team can be more responsive to occurring changes like, for instance, when the patient’s condition worsens. This paper focuses on the value and impact of a high-performing work team in healthcare by discussing the healthcare culture, various strategic moves for human resources and the implementation of the strategic plan. Finally, the paper examines the measurements of high-performance team success.
1.0 Understanding the Healthcare Culture
1.1 Structures within the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare culture can be defined as one in which good health and well-being flourish across social, demographic and geographic sectors; hence fostering a healthy, equitable society guides private and public decision making whereby everyone has the opportunity to make the choice that leads to a healthy lifestyle. This implies that the increasing diversity of the nation comes with challenges and opportunities for health care providers, policymakers and healthcare systems to deliver culturally competent services. Therefore, cultural competence can be defined as the ability of both the organization and providers to effectively provide health care services that meet the linguistic, cultural and social needs of the patient. Improvising the culturally competent health system will help to improve the quality of care and health outcomes, which can contribute to the elimination of ethnic and racial health disparities.
1.2 Department Groups
The health care industry consists of providers of diagnostic, remedial, preventive and therapeutic services like nurses, doctors, hospitals and other public, private and voluntary organizations. It also includes pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical equipment and other health insurance organizations. Hospitals and health care facilities vary widely in the services they deliver and, therefore, in the various departments they have. Some hospitals may have acute services like emergency departments or specialist trauma center, urgent care, surgery or burn unit. However, they have to be backed up by more specialist units like cardiology or coronary care unit, gynecology, obstetrics, cancer center, neurology and intensive care unit. Contrary, some of the hospitals also may have outpatient departments, while others have chronic treatment units like physical therapy, rehabilitation services, psychiatric ward, dermatology, dentistry, and behavioral health services (Kamolsiri and Tayko, 2018). Small and standard healthcare support units such as pharmacy or dispensary, radiology and pathology and on the non-medical side, there are often medical records departments or releases of the information department. However, nursing services are mostly considered as one of the most significant aspects of the process of distinguished medical care.
1.3 Department Function
There are various departments in hospitals with every department dealing with different treatments. Accidents and emergency, which is also called the casualty department, deal with emergencies in cases where the patient has arrived by ambulance. The admitting department is where the patient gives out his/her personal information before being taken to the hospital unit or ward. Anesthetics are where doctors give out an anesthetic for operation and procedures. Breast screening is where women are screened for breast cancer, although it is usually linked to the x-ray and radiology department. Burn center is where the part of the hospital is specialized with treatments of burns. Finance departments are where all sorts of works related to budget and ideals of using funds in the hospital are carried out. The finance department also prepares payrolls and monthly wages, which includes contracts of maintenance and operations and other purchases.
1.4 Contribution of Each Department
Preservation of a safe environment reflects a level of compassion and vigilance for patient welfare that is as important as any other aspect of competent health care. The way to improve safety is to learn about the causes of error and use this knowledge to design systems of care. However, patient safety is attributed to the division of work in that every department deals with a specific task hence making the administration to be more intense.
1.5 Assessing the Departmental Environment
For a better understanding of the factors influencing the quality of medical services, then we have to look upon every department strategy for its quality assurance in medical facilities. The difference comes in where there are contradictions in external and internal factors such as availability of resources and collaboration amongst the providers. This thereby shows that proper planning, effective management, supportive leadership, education and training improves the overall quality of medical services. HealthCare services quality is always associated with patient satisfaction, health organizations’ productivity and loyalty together with profitability. This implies that it is essential to define the measure that improves the quality of health care.
1.6 Factors Affecting Patient Care Environment
Quality healthcare is a subjective, multidimensional and complex concept. Healthcare can be termed as consistently delighting the patient by providing efficacious, effective and efficient healthcare services according to the latest clinical guidelines and standards, which meet the patient’s needs and satisfies providers. It is believed that quality and benefactions healthcare is providing the appropriate health care services in the right way in the right place at the right time by the right provider to the right individual for the right price to get the right results. Some of the single factors affecting patient care are the availability and scarcity of resources, patient cooperation and cooperation among the providers. This will affect the quality of medical services and patient outcomes.
1.7 Assessing the Patient Environment
Different scholars have defined medical services quality as the application of technology and medical science in a manner that improves and maximizes the benefits to health without correspondingly increasing the risks. Quality health care is thereby the provision of care that exceeds the patient’s expectations and thus achieves the highest possible clinical outcomes with the resources available. From the analysis, it is said that the majority of patients die because of avoidable hospital errors. However, focused team initiatives can easily change and improve the team’s performance. This implies that patient safety involves eradicating harm and reducing the likeliness of mistakes through the planning of foster communication, lower infection rates and reduces errors.
1.8 Diversification Make-up of Healthcare Workers
Diversification is vital to healthcare because it can lead to improved satisfaction for racial and ethnic minority patients ((Kamolsiri and Tayko, 2018)). It has been reported that patients treated from physicians of their own racial or ethnic background are most likely to have received higher quality care. Deliverance of quality healthcare services requires commitment and coordination among a number of different organizations and providers. It also needs the coordination of highly complex diagnostic, therapeutic and logistic processes and practices. The very complexity of the healthcare system and its bureaucratic and highly departmentalized structure pose a significant obstacle to quality improvement in healthcare.
2.0 Developing a Strategy for HR
In the new competitive markets, firms and organizations should engage in strategic planning to survive and prosper. The goal mainly being to deploy and allocate resources in a manner that gives competitive advantages. HR managers should have input into the strategic plan, have specific knowledge of the organization’s strategic goals, know what types of employee skills, behaviors, and attitudes are needed to support the strategic plan and develop programs to ensure that employees have those skills, behaviors, and opinions.
2.1 Vision for the Facility
Vision is the same as your dream. This implies that it is what the organization believes is an ideal condition for society. Several vision statements should well articulate everything the organization dreams for. Vision statements are taken as inspiration that shows the people the particular path to follow.
2.2 Mission for the Facility
The mission is the next step of action, which is to ground the vision into practical terms. The mission statement describes what the organization is going to do or will do and the reason for that. The mission of any organization is almost similar to the vision in that they are more concrete. This implies that there are more action-oriented than the vision statement. The mission statement inspires people to action.
2.3 Assessing the Role of HR
Organizations that practice HR are increasingly required to understand how they should strategically manage human resources in line with future directions. This is where information and resources on strategic human resource management and how it may defer from HR strategy to boost business performance.
- HR Contribution
This helps in pushing the responsibilities to a much intense level of the companies, thus making them smoother and more efficient and teaching the managers to empower employees to take risks and find new solutions. This has a beneficial impact on speeding and making the organization more effective.
- HR Assessment
HR assessments provide an objective review of the business, practices, procedures and policies to ensure they are compliant with federal and state laws as well as specific industry-specific regulations.
- HR Partnership
Strong business skills are strongly related to collaboration. Thereby a strategic partner helps in development through the rotation of talents. In selecting partners, you have to consider a team with specialized expertise with a leader located in the business unit.
2.4 Developing the Job Analysis
Job analysis is the process of determining and identifying in detail the particular task requirements and duties and the significance of these duties for a specific job. This helps the organizations to determine which employee is best within a particular position. This involves the placement and allocation of responsibilities.
- Jobs Needed
The process of job analysis involves the analyst describing the duties of the incumbent, then the nature and condition of work and finally, the necessary qualifications. Some of the types of jobs in healthcare are medical assistant, nursing assistant, physician, therapist, pharmacy technician and registered nurse. Professionals are needed in health care because here, we have the patient life on stake. Some of the values of employees are much beyond recognition. For instance, doctors make a difference by helping the patients minimize their pain, recover from a disease they are suffering from or learn to live with disabilities.
- Effects of the Jobs
These jobs give the patient the ability to live and enjoy a better life. There are occasions where the doctors cannot cure the disease, but they can help the patient to live with it, which makes quite a difference to them and their families. If they can go back to work after an illness, that benefits their employer, too. And, that’s only part of what makes doctors important to society.
2.5 Developing the Job Specification and Description
The job description relates to person specifications. Thereby, the job description sets the overall purpose of a role and the main task being carried out. This also implies that person specification aligns with the skills and experience that are required for an effective job. Well written job descriptions and person specifications assist in attracting the right candidates for the position as they set out the principal accountabilities and enable potential applicants to match their skills and experience to those listed in the selection criteria (Rees and Gauld, 2017). When there is a need to get a particular job, some of these things that are considered are; educational qualifications, level of experience, specific qualities within a specific task, physical, technical, emotional and communication skills that are required to perform the job. Other things like responsibilities that are involved in a job are unusual sensory demands. A job description is crucial because it gives the employee the expectations required of them in performing their role. This helps to provide enough detail to help the candidate to assess for the position. It also helps in supporting the recruitment team during the selection process and for the formulation of questions for the interview process.
2.6 EEO and Affirmative action
This is the action of giving everyone the same opportunity to thrive; thus, affirmative action is actively supporting those who have been consistently deprived of fair and equal treatment (McAlearney et al 2013). There is public policy with regard to the EEO, which is expressed in the constitutions and, more particularly, in the anti-discrimination laws. The government prohibits discrimination based on desired characteristics in terms of employment terms and conditions.
- Sexual Harassment
This type of harassment relates to the sexual nature and the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. This type of harassment may include a range of actions from the mild of transgressions to assault and sexual abuse. Sexual harassment is not friendship, consensual interaction or flirtation. Sexual harassment is not behavior that is mutually agreed upon. All incidents of sexual harassment, no matter how large or small or who is involved, require employers or managers to respond quickly and appropriately. Just because someone does not object to inappropriate behavior in the facility at the time, it does not mean that they are consenting to the response.
This is whereby bosses or other employees sexually harass fellow employees either for individual favors or preferences. These types of sexual harassment are offensive under criminal law. This may include exposure, indecent, sexual assault to the employees or even threatening communication. Such criminal offences should be reported to the police.
- Towards Patient
This is whereby the health attendance molests the patient either in a better or critical condition for their good or favors. While the person who sexually harasses someone else is liable for their own behavior, employers can also be held vicariously liable for acts of sexual harassment by their employees or agents like the patients in that case.
- Towards Guest and Patient’s Family Members
This type of sexual harassment occasionally happens when the family is unable to pay the bill or when the quest is looking forward to individual favors from medical attendance. This type of sexual harassment may also happen at the health facility or the health-related events. Sexual harassment that even comes in a common workplace also falls under health care. This is because a workplace covers any place that a person attends for the purpose of carrying out their work of the trade.
2.7 Developing the Talent Pool
Talent pools can be termed as a group of employees who are given specialized training to assume greater responsibilities within the facilities. Mostly they are individuals who are considered to be of high potential and high performing. Talent pools help the facilities to develop workers in the area margins that align with the organization’s values and competencies. Talent pools are developed mostly in areas and roles which enhances the critical growth and success in the future. Talent pools may also be created for mid-level management depending on the size of the health care. However, beyond management and leadership, every organization has individuals or groups with knowledge/skills/ expertise that help the organization to establish and maintain its competitive advantage. In order to preserve your competitive advantage, you need to develop deep bench strength in these areas. Moreover, the talent pools developed will likely change over time, as the organization and the environment in which it operates changes. So you should regularly (at least once a year) revisit your complement of talent pools and ensure it is addressing your organization’s needs. To create and develop a talent pool, one has to identify the knowledge, skills and/or experience that are critical to success in each area and critical to the organization’s success. One of the ways you can do this is by interviewing current high-performers in those areas, as well as their managers. It can also help to start from a list of critical tasks or job responsibilities, then move to identify the key competencies required. This enables one to create a detailed behavioral description of those competencies hence providing examples of what it should look like.
2.8 Developing a Selection Process
Several steps do the developing section process with a criterion that determines which person to be chosen and who to be left out. This process is ideally done after you have developed the recruitment plan, and you have to select the people with the appropriate qualification. Instead, you have to go through numerous steps to get to the final stage of the employee selection process, right from the drafting of a job announcement through interviews, background checks, and the final offer letter, among many other steps along the way. Some of the steps for the selection process are job application. This is whereby qualifying questions are asked. The next step is the screening of the CVs to sift through the filters so as to check those who are suitable for the job. Then several tests follow like assessment tests, in-person interviewing, background checks, reference checks and lastly, the decision and offers.
2.9 Employee Training and Development
Employee training is vital in a facility because it improves the morale of employees. Employee training improves trust, job security and job satisfaction, which, on the other hand, enhances job sustainability. Well trained employees show both quality and quantity performance. Employee performance greatly influences the bottom line of any organization. This reason shows why it is important and realistic for the organizational leader to know the importance of employee training and development. The training and development of employees help the organization to attain diverse goals such as improving morale, sense of security, employee engagement and the overall competencies that are necessary to perform a particular job. Additionally, the team leaders should use systematic approaches for assessing the employees’ performance and working capabilities, thus determine the outcomes for better healthcare outcomes.
2.10 Developing a Pay Structure
A salary structure is used to set a range of pay from maximum to minimum. The pay structure is graded based on profession, the task is given out and the level of education. Salary structures can be used to help optimally manage compensation.
2.11 Developing a Team Building and Team Bonding Process
Team building and bonding help to nurture a capable team, and it would do every leader well to have a sufficient grasp of both concepts and to understand how they can build on each other. This is done to make the team be more productive and have high productivity. Both the concepts are different from each other but again interrelated due to its similar outcome. Every team is developed with the members who have a common goal but might be distinctive of different thoughts and intentions. Aiming to achieve the target and conquer successfully, it is also necessary to keep an eye and study the actions of the opponent teams. Winning a situation gets easy if the team members are united with similar thoughts, disciplines and motivate each other to not lose hope. But, it is very difficult to form a group with team-oriented people, which leads to a lack of improvement and failure.
2.12 Developing High-Performance Goals for Teams
Building a team for quality delivery at all time and cost is an essential aspect of improving productivity and efficiency. In instances where a high-performance team is set, then the result will be exemplary good. It not about employing professionals in the workforce but rather developing the initial workmates for effective outcomes.
2.13 Employee Retention
This is an aspect in every organization in that it retains its workers for effective productivity and to reduce training time from new employees. Employee retention is a vital issue in that the organization competes for talents in a tight economy. The cost of employees’ turnover is greatly increasing, thus increasing some soft costs and low productivity. The payoffs for organizations that focus on the employees’ retention are worthy of the time and investments.
3.0 Implementing the Strategic Plan
Growing a business means taking many decisions about the way you want to expand your operations. Creating a strategic plan is a key component of planning for growth. It will help you prepare a realistic vision for the future of your business and, in doing so, can maximize your business’ potential for growth. Strategic plans give the organization a direction to follow. It can be either a single paper or a fill-up binder, which depends on the complexity of the organization. A strategic plan is typically focused on a business’ mid- to long-term goals and explains the basic strategies for achieving them. The purpose of strategic planning is to set your overall goals for your business and to develop a plan to achieve them. It involves stepping back from your day-to-day operations and asking where your business is headed and what its priorities should be.
3.1 Developing a Feedback System
Feedback occasionally occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs on the part of the chain of the cause of the effect (Körner et al 2016). Leaders actively urge to use feedback to enhance their performance and increase the productivity of other team members.
3.2 Implementing Procedures that Address Team Structure and Quality
In most modern businesses, many organizations have attempted to unlock values by matching their structures to their strategies. Many companies generated enormous economies of scale by centralizing key functions like operations, sales, and finance. Researchers contend that in quality management, when something is not written, then it did not happen. This implies that the organization has to implement procedures that will help in addressing the team structure for better performs and quality outcomes. Many multinationals adopted a matrix arrangement in the belief that they could retain both the economies of scale of centralized functions and the flexibility of their product-line and geographic business units.
3.3 Employee Discipline
Employee discipline is attributed to the conduct or unnecessary issue that may even lead to termination. Misconduct is generally the more serious problem as it is often deliberate, exhibited by acts of defiance. In contrast, poor performance is more often the result of a lack of training, skills, or motivation. Performance problems can often be solved through coaching and performance management, while misconduct normally calls for progressive discipline. Sometimes extreme cases of misconduct are grounds for immediate termination. Adherence to employees’ training focuses on the organization’s mission and vision hence better performance.
3.4 Addressing Employee Fairness and Employee Rights
Employees may have a different policy depending on the departments or job categories, but contrary, every employee has their rights. These rights should be adhered to so as to make the working environment conducive and comfortable for better production.
3.5 Implementing Methods to Release Stress and Tension Healthcare Workers Face
While some workplace stress is normal, excessive stress can interfere with your productivity and performance, impact your physical and emotional health, and affect your relationships and home life. It can even determine success or failure in the job. You can’t control everything in your work environment, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless, even when you’re stuck in a difficult situation. Whatever your ambitions or work demands, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from the damaging effects of stress, improve your job satisfaction, and bolster your well-being in and out of the workplace. Stress in the workplace leads to low productivity; hence there is undoubtedly a great urge to control it before it takes most of you. Some of the ways that may help to reduce stress are like friend talking, turning to co-workers for support and leaning on the family and friends for support.
3.6 Implementing a Work-life Balance Process
Striking that perfect balance between career and family has always been a challenge for many workers. Our schedules are getting busier than ever before, which often causes our work or our personal lives to suffer. Work-life balance involves juggling workplace stress with the daily pressures of family, friends, and self. Modern employees demand greater control over their lives and a bigger say in the structure of their jobs. This helps in improving the overall health and general well-being of employees.
3.7 Goals for Continuous Improvements
Some of the positive impacts of continuous improvement are that with practice and time, companies learn internally how to work in an organized, efficient manner, identify opportunities, and make changes accordingly. They also learn how to pinpoint areas where value is added, where value is absent, and how to dispose of invaluable waste. Continuous improvement is all about making sustainable, incremental and repeated changes in how things are done. This leads to an increase in profitability and performance.
3.8 Problem Identification and Solving Methods
Problems are generally seen as a problem when people get afraid or uncomfortable with the situation. This makes them feel that they have to come up with an answer, and it has to be the right one. Problems have to be solved, and there is no punctual way to solve them. This is the aspect in which the leader identifies every capability of the team members and understands everyone’s interests. In day to day life, problems arise to provide us with the information that we can use to fix up what is necessary and to do a better job.
4.0 Measuring High-performance Team Success
In every team, there are two or more people who are designed to achieve a common goal or objective. However, when we refer to a high-performance team, we imply that they are more focused on the approach and are much better than the usual work teams. In the proper building of a high-performance team, you have to invest in leaders who use their talents to break down barriers, reward and praise their team members, speak the language of inclusion, and seeks a diversity of ideas and opinions.
4.1 Building Measurements in Patient Satisfaction
This is whereby the patient satisfaction is looked upon to for better service delivery. This articulates all the services given out in health care to reach all the needs of patients. This will help in the specialization of knowledge and professionalism of the staff, like most in the out clinic. Patient satisfaction is a vital and a common indicator for measuring the quality of healthcare. In most cases, it affects the clinical outcome, medical malpractice claims and patient retention. It also affects the timely, efficient, and patient-centered delivery of quality health care.
4.2 Employee Retention
Employee retention is measured by looking upon the number of average employee turnover rate. This should be approximately 10%. When the staff turnover is high, then the leader should look upon other factors that may be arising for a conducive environment. Employee retention is a vital issue in that the organization competes for talents in a tight economy. When the employee turnover rate is high, then the leader should focus on looking at what is the source of the problem and adjust it to favorable conditions before the total cost increases.
4.3 Employee Satisfaction
Every job should give the employee contentedness with what they do. This is mostly influenced by the mode of supervision and the nature of the work. Leadership is also a critical factor in determining job satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is influenced by several factors like appreciation for the work, a good relationship with fellow workmates, a good work-life balance and a good relationship with the superiors.
4.4 Labor Relations Concerns Dealt with in a Positive Manner
Maintaining good employee relations is vital to the success of any organization. However, it is good to know from firsthand experience that there are many issues that can come up in the workplace. These issues can easily snowball into much larger problems. Every business owner wants to have a safe and secure workplace that encourages communication and has a supportive culture. When you identify the issues, then implementing the plan is much easier. That plan is the key to maintaining a happy workplace that runs efficiently. Some of the labor conflicts that may arise are like sexual harassment and annual leave disputes. For proper management and dealing with the problems, the leader should consider different aspects to be fair and increase the employee’s discipline and retention.
5.0 Conclusion
Teamwork is essential in a healthcare setting because the well-being and the life of the patient here are at stake. Every employee in a health system brings with them some experience and skills that lead to overall health outcomes from the patient. This implies that the benefits of teamwork in healthcare settings are vast and undeniable. Moreover, discipline within the organizations and respect for one’s career is also vital. When an employee is not respected or is humiliated will lead to lower retention or low productivity. Good leadership is the key to good teamwork, which brings more exceptional outcomes for both the patient and the employee’s sake. The job description sets the overall purpose of a role and the main task being carried out. This also implies that person specification aligns with the skills and experience that are required for an effective job.
