HR Pulse - Winter 2008 - (Page 29)

The following seven Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence are applied to an organization’s operations: Category 1: Leadership Category 2: Strategic Planning Category 3: Focus on Patients, Other Customers, and Markets Category 4: Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management Category 5: Workforce Focus Category 6: Process Management Category 7: Business Results Measuring Up This comprehensive, integrated, and nonprescriptive approach requires that we take an honest and hard look in the mirror, diagnose our organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and then develop speciﬁc action plans with timelines and measurable performance criteria to ensure that we are making progress and achieving our desired results. Once an organization’s leaders have made the strategic and emotional commitment to achieving quality results, most of the subsequent decisions can be tied back to improving our structures, processes, and outcomes. This gives the HR leader license to pursue those initiatives that support the strategic plan. For example, since labor expenses constitute about 60 percent of a hospital’s operating budget, measuring all aspects of HR should be a top priority for CEOs. Because effective C-level executives will never stop wanting metrics, measuring what matters gives HR executives the chance to prove their effectiveness. CEOs often do not know how best to measure the performance of their HR executive, which gives us the opportunity to offer the senior team and board members useful information regarding the most appropriate people metrics. Demonstrate Your Value Rick Lovering is vice president of Human Resources for AtlantiCare Health in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. In his prior role as vice president of Human Resources with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton, he helped that organization to become the fourth hospital in the country to earn the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program Award. Lovering contributed to signiﬁcant workforce improvements in their employee satisfaction, reduced employee turnover, and implemented management development initiatives. He also created more effective processes that enabled the organization and its leaders to track the efﬁcacy of their work. He started his career in manufacturing and operations, so he was accustomed to demonstrating a return on investment and being held accountable for his performance, like any COO or CFO. He said, “When I originally transitioned from HR to production and back to HR while in manufacturing, I ﬁgured that I still had to document what I was doing and demonstrate my own and my department’s value to the organization. You can’t expect the CEO to treat HR with equal value if you are not held to the same standards as everyone else. Our speciﬁc metrics may be different than those of the CFO, but every department leader must drive results.” Lovering explained that he accomplished these results “by looking at the organization’s strategic goals and key business initiatives and ﬁnding ways that I could help the organization to achieve these. I created a people scorecard that was reported up to the CEO. I also inﬂuenced those outcomes and stuck my neck out.” He advocates taking calculated risks and quickly correcting anything that doesn’t work. He also suggests being conservative in business planning and when estimating earnings or savings in speciﬁc terms. “In requesting resources, explain how you will impact the organization positively in terms of savings or some other productivity measure for a deﬁned period, and then manage that project or initiative carefully.” Lovering has found that “you need to look for ways that you can add value to the organization so that you can not only earn your seat, but keep it and improve it. Then you need to celebrate your successes with your team.” He adds, “If the CEO’s platform is quality, the HR executive needs to identify what are the quality issues on the people side that can help the organization to achieve higher quality outcomes. In brief, you want to make sure to make a connection between what you’re doing and how it supports their agenda.” Get Involved As business leaders, we must be proactive and make critical decisions. Zuhlke says, “We should not wait to be asked to get involved. Instead, we should assume that we have permission to act unless we are told otherwise. If we truly believe that we are responsible for the well-being of the organization, then we have a legitimate business interest in taking action.” Yet, some well-intentioned HR executives are their own worst enemies. In their attempts to be good team players, they are reluctant to assert themselves, do not act to protect their own selfinterests and those of the organization (although they know what needs to be done), and may not acknowledge some of their own and HR’s accomplishments. Then, they are surprised when they are overlooked for promotions, raises, and requests for additional resources. This is a prime example of how having the right metrics in place can help to demonstrate our value and effectiveness to the “You need to look for ways that you can add value to the organization so that you can not only earn your seat, but keep it and improve it.” 29 HR Pulse Winter 2008 >>

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Pulse - Winter 2008

HR Pulse - Winter 2008 Contents Pulse Points Executive Director’s Letter President’s Message HR Leader Profile: Karmen Reid Advocacy is for Everyone A Case Study in Raising Voices Diversity Management Measuring What Matters Bullying as Gender Harassment Combat Workforce Changes Hardwiring Accountability Immigration Frustration HR and Education Making Exit Interviews Count Management Styles that Enhance Intrinsic Motivation Backup Care Fact or Fiction 10 Ways to Lose Your Best People Advertisers’ Index

HR Pulse - Winter 2008

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