Group Productivity - Hired Consultant



Group Productivity - Hired Consultant

Introduction

Alameda Hospital is a general medical and surgical hospital with 226 beds located in the city of Alameda, California in US. As a health care institution, the hospital needs to transform to a new model. This new model should be able to promote team based care, where the physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers and other staff members need to set up new ways to work together. The hospital is facing internal challenges related with team productivity as the staff members have not been cooperative to each other and it has negatively influenced the quality of services in the hospital. The staff members are exposed to many conflicts due to the absence of team work. Members perform there own tasks without consulting with others and the decision making is also individually handled by senior staff of the hospital only.

Therefore, the president of the hospital has to arrange an external consultant in order to explore the issues and improve the overall quality of services. As a consultant I'm tasked to find out the problems related with employees that are hampering the service quality in the hospital. After doing extensive research, I've been able to find out that major problems involves role conflict among the group members, communication issues, lack of cohesiveness within diverse members and excessive intergroup conflicts. The hospital lacks the sharing culture that is imperative for any organization to survive and excel. Working as single unit not only makes the job easy for everyone, but also enhances the efficiency and quality of care a patient receives.

Discussion

Role Conflicts within Groups

Role conflict is a form of conflict that takes place when a person is coerced to perform separate and incompatible roles. It usually happens when the person is tattered between performing separate duties. Role conflict within groups is one of the greatest problems that are directly affecting the productivity at Alameda Hospital. Role conflicts in hospitals are complex and challenging (Gregory & Griffin, 2010). The physicians and nurses in the hospital are often expected to perform conflicting roles like being a supervisor as well as co worker. Therefore different obligations attached with a single employee results in this issue. In Alameda Hospital, the research shows that role conflict generally arises from two factors. First one is linked with an individual having conflicting responsibilities and the other one is related with a single employee reporting to two or more supervisors. Therefore this issue is directly responsible to ignite frustration in employees which result in loss of productivity within a group.

Like for instance, a manager in Alameda hospital is expected to work together with the employees whom he is also supervising. This leads to a role conflict as the manager to work with his group in kind, collective and considerate manner as well as report those members of the group that are underperforming. Similarly a manager of a certain group can ask an individual employee to focus on the quality control while another ...