Employee Development at Islington General Hospital

Introduction

Training remains an essential factor and it contributes significantly to efficiency of staff in healthcare organisations. According to Chaghari et al. (2017), training is a core investment for every organisation leading to staff development, internal promotion, and achievement of organisational goals. Training is also essential to achieving employee productivity and retention, which is attained through offering career development and job satisfaction in the long-run (Dos Santos 2019). Training programmes are necessary for viability and the survival of an organisation in the competition arena. However, it is not all training programmes that are efficient in improving quality of patient care and employee competence (Bluestone et al. 2013). Therefore, the learning and development programme that Islington General Hospital will adopt must reflect the needs of individual employees to ensure it achieves the intended results. This report aims at guiding the management of Islington General Hospital in designing and implementing a learning and development programme that addresses the issues it is facing in relation to governmental change requirements. This report identifies the key issues that need to be addressed, illustrates how the training needs for all attendees will be met, and designs a learning and development programme that suits the needs of different employees while considering their prior learning, their learning style preferences, personalities, cultural differences, and abilities. In addition, the report demonstrates how the recommended learning and development programme helps Islington General Hospital improve its performance while enhancing employee wellbeing at work. Finally, the report make recommendations for future changes in the learning and development programme for sustaining of the realised change.

Description of Issues

One of the issues that need to be addressed is resistance to change. Resistance to change is inevitable and a natural reaction by employees to organisational change (Pereira et al. 2019). However, with proper negotiation with employees, managers can be able to manage the change without resistance from employees. Thus, part of the learning and development programme will discuss steps that managers at Islington General Hospital can take to overcome change resistance shown by employees. In response to the new targets for reducing patient complaints and quicker completion of the received complaints, Islington General Hospital has committed to raise the standards of professionalism among its entire workforce. For this to be attained, there is need for learning needs assessment to ensure the developed learning and development programme reflects the needs of Islington workforce. According to Shah et al. (2016), a needs assessment of the entire workforce is crucial to ensure the developed learning and development programme is effective. Similarly, Sockalingam et al. (2015) state that the need to conduct a needs assessment prior to implementation of any educational programme is incontrovertible. As such, part of this report provides guidance to management at Islington General Hospital on how to assess the needs of its workforce and incorporate topics that will address the established needs in the designed learning and educational programme. Although Islington General Hospital provides information to its staff, the nature in which the information is presented hinders uptake of the information. The case reveals that the information is too wide ranging and lack clarity resulting to the library not being used. During the implementation of the learning and development programme, some materials will be issued to the entire staff. This implies there is need to encourage Islington staff to use the available information. Therefore, part of the learning and development programme will be ensuring informational materials are designed in a way they are clear to the intended users and there is effective internal communication within the organisation.

Although Islington General Hospital has appraisal and personal development courses, such are not run among the entire staff, attendance is low, and uptake of the appraisal by managers is very poor. According to Catteau et al. (2016), appraisals are core to managing performance in that they help in identification of areas of development ensuring that the workforce is continually developing to attain the required level of competence. Despite the ultimate importance of appraisals, the managers at Islington General Hospital are reluctant to appraise employees, which can be said to hinder personal development among the staff. In addition, employees are reluctant to attend the personal development courses, which implies they may not understand their importance. Therefore, among the aims of the learning and development programme will be to highlight the importance of appraisal and personal development courses in building professionalism among the entire staff. The learning and development programme will also offer guidance to managers on how to fairly appraise employees and how to design personal development courses that reflect the established gaps in skills. The learning and development programme will also provide guidance to managers on how to support employees to achieve the desired results in terms of professionalism. Another concern is lack of professionalism among the managerial staff. The case reveals that clinicians are often promoted for their technical expertise thus they lack emotional intelligence and people skills to manage others. As a result, the management team is effective at clinical duties but poor at managing others. According to Gaspard and Yang (2016), human resource management practices adopted by organisations have a significant influence on organisational performance. This implies that for Islington General Hospital to retain its employees and maintain its reputation is South London, the managerial staff must be equipped with the abilities, attitudes, knowledge and skills of managing the subordinate staff. Therefore, part of the learning and development programme focusses on how the competencies of the managerial staff should be developed.

Discussion and Analysis of the Learning and Development Programme

Business objectives

The ultimate aim of the learning and development programme is to ensure that Islington General Hospital maintains its reputation, performance, and its independence. To attain this aim, the following objectives need to be met:

Develop a change management model that addresses employee concerns hindering change adoption

Conduct regular needs assessment to ensure the staff is continually developing in key competencies

Make information easily accessible and understandable by the intended users

Conduct appraisals to inform the content of personal development courses

Develop the people skills of the managerial workforce

Training and evaluation of competencies

Change management is the first skill that need to be taught to the managerial staff. As it is, Islington staff has become used to their own ways of doing things thus reluctant to change their behaviour. To overcome this resistance to change, there are various models of change management that can guide the implementation of change. Kotter’s Eight Stage Model is among the most effective. The model outlines eight stages to be followed for effective change implementation. These stages are (1) establishing a sense of urgency, (2) forming a powerful guiding coalition, (3) creating a vision, (4) communicating the vision, (5) empowering employees to act on the vision, (6) planning and creating short-term wins, (7) consolidating improvements and produce more change, and (8) institutionalising new approaches (Kotter 1996). Having completed these eight stages, Islington staff will understand the change and why it is important and will feel supported to successfully undergo the change (Chou 2014). The short term wins and consolidating improvements will give employee confidence in the change increasing their commitment to it (Pollack and Pollack 2015). Institutionalising new approaches will ensure the change becomes a norm in the organisation making sure employees do not go back to the old ways. The competence of managerial staff in developing personal development courses also needs to be developed. From the case, Islington does not have a standard tool of assessing employee training needs. Literature provides various needs assessment tools among these being the Hennessy Hicks Training Needs Analysis Questionnaire. This tool has been psychometrically tested for reliability and validity and has been adopted by the WHO as a training assessment tool (Gaspard and Yang 2016). For these reasons, Hennessy Hicks Training Needs Analysis Questionnaire is ideal for Islington General Hospital for employee training needs assessment. The questionnaire comprises a set of 30 items but the managerial staff can modify the items careful not to affect its psychometric properties. Through the questionnaire, the organisation will be able to assess training needs in six categories including clinical skills, communication and teamwork, administrative, research and audit, continuing professional education and managerial and supervisory (Barratt and Fulop 2016). Further, the questionnaire recognises prior learning ensuring the learning programme is not boring to the staff by teaching what they already know.

The skills of the managerial staff in information dissemination also requires some polishing. From the case, it is evident information is provided in unclear way hindering its uptake. People have different learning preferences, which implies that the organisation cannot use one type of resources and assume learning will occur for the entire staff. Therefore, the management has to add other ways through which information will be disseminated. These would include face-to-face meetings, group discussions, departmental meetings, billboards, and visuals to appeal to different learning style preferences. In addition, the information should be designed in a cultural sensitive way: the colours used, fonts, font size, diction, and images should recognise diversity. Further, the appraisal skills of the managerial personnel needs to be improved. Following performance appraisal, personal development courses should be offered to ensure employee undergo continuous learning to adapt to the rapidly changing internal and external environment (Beausaert et al. 2013). At Islington, it is evident that employees are reluctant to complete the personal development courses. According to Ramadevi et al. (2016) personal development plans should be used as a strategic tool in order to stimulate employees to undertake the personal development courses. For a start, a quarterly appraisal meeting is recommendable, which should review past performance of all staff with an aim of setting future-focussed goals. Before the first appraisal, it is necessary that the management prepares the staff for the appraisal and help them understand its purpose. The training should also focus on developing the people skills, stress management, emotional intelligence, and wellbeing of the managerial personnel. This training should be evaluated to establish how effective is it at improving the performance of the managerial staff as well as enhancing their wellbeing at work. To attain this, individual development plans, training workshops, and coaching would be effective. These are discussed in detail in the next session.

Specific Learning and Development Programme

Personal Development Plan (PDP)

From the case, managers and administrative staff at Islington General Hospital felt undeveloped and lacked support to move into their new roles. To serve this intended function, the development plans should be individualised. For every manager/administrative staff, the PDP should summarise previous development noting room for future development (Grohnert et al. 2014). In addition, the PDP should be constructed by the manager but consider the input of the person the manager report to (Fletcher 2019). Further, the PDP should form a basis of future manager-trainer interaction; it should allow the two to communicate, the trainer to give feedback, and the manager to reflect and learn from personal actions (Fletcher 2019). The PDP should also be essential in decision making. When developing the PDPs, the employees should be encouraged to set specific and challenging goals; according to Locke and Latham (2013), setting specific but challenging goals helps raise the levels of commitment. On the other hand, Campbell and Evans (2016) states that line managers should be involved in goal setting to ensure that the goals are challenging but attainable. However, the goals should be majorly be set by employees in that when employees take ownership of goals, they are more determined to achieve them as compared to when the goals are prescribed (Pedler et al. 2013). This implies that line manager should support employees through goal setting rather than set the goals for them.

Training Workshop

A 3-hours workshop will be designed for the entire Islington General Hospital workforce. The aim of the workshop will be to prepare the entire staff for the change as such communicating the change and why it is important for the entire organisation. It is also in this workshop that the vision of the change will be communicated so that employees will understand the direction to channel their efforts. When communicating the vision, ample time will be allowed to ensure that every individual in the hospital learns the change, its essence, and commits to be part of the change. The training workshop will be interactive in nature so that the management is able to identify the concerns of employees about the change and address them. In addition, the management will be able to answer questions raised by employees and clarify any misunderstandings to ensure the entire staff shares in the vision. It is also during this workshop that the management will communicate the new roles of employees following the change and assess their ability to carry their roles. Areas of concern will be noted and employees provided the required level of support until they feel confident to complete their new roles. The educational materials to be used in the workshop include digital and print copies with legible font types and font size. The trainer will refer to PowerPoint slides and verbally explain the content of each slide to appeal to people with different learning style preferences. Given the large number of employees, identical workshops will be delivered on three consecutive Fridays in January 2020. Employees will attend one of the three identical workshops ensuring that everyone attends one session.

Coaching

Coaching will be provided to managerial and administrative staff with a focus on people skills, emotional intelligence, wellbeing, and stress management. The aim of the coaching programme is to ensure these persons set and attain work-relevant goals, gain insights about their environment, themselves, and others in the organisation, and deliver the intended results in terms of learning, development, and goal attainment. Coaching services will be provided by a panel of 10 professional leadership coaches external to the Islington General Hospital. These coaches will be selected through a competitive tender process to ensure the best talent is selected. The coaching sessions will be grounded in a solution-focused, cognitive-behavioural framework which according to Grant et al. (2017), focuses on ensuring the coachees attain their goals by understanding the reciprocal relationships between personal feelings, behaviour, thoughts, and environment thus making necessary adjustments to attain the set goals. Once the coachees set their initial goals, the role of the coach will be to help the coachees to progress through the self-regulation cycle. As such, the coachees will be expected to develop action plans, monitor, and evaluate their progress towards the goal after every coaching session. The coachees will undergo six coaching sessions over a period of six months.

Recommendation

In this learning and development programme, coaching services will be offered by external professionals. Hiring can be expensive in the long run. Therefore, it is recommendable that after completion of the first coaching (the six sessions), Islington General Hospital uses the managers that have undergone coaching to coach others in the organisation. This internal training is less expensive thus sustainable.

Conclusion

After analysing the situation at Islington General Hospital, it is evident that training and development is a necessity for the entire staff. The PDPs are aimed at developing the professionalism of both the managerial staff and the subordinates. The Training Workshops are intended to prepare the employees for the change thus focusses on ensuring the employees understand the change and why it is important. In addition, the workshop seeks to equip the employees with the skills they will require to complete their new roles following the change. Coaching is meant to develop the managerial competences of the management and administrative staff. Ten external professionals will be hired to offer the coaching services. Coaching will be based on the solution-focused, cognitive-behavioural framework to ensure the coachees attain the set goals by the end of the coaching period. After the coaching period, the organisation will rely on those who have undergone the coaching to coach middle level managers.

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