Problem Solving and Decision Making in the Workplace
Problem Solving and Decision Making in the Workplace
I currently work for a business that functions as an outreach program for people with mental health disabilities, where I am employed as a case manager assisting patients choose and achieve goals put in place to live the most well-balanced life as possible. I have been working for this company for a year, and volunteered for several years before that, but within the last few the culture within the organization started to evolve. The current problem is newer employees need a lot of assistance becoming acquainted with policies, procedures, and expectations, which usually results in these employees interrupting more experienced employees constantly. This paper will discuss how problem solving and decision making will assist to solve this problem.
Background
In general, I work most days in the office, meeting patients, and on a couple days of the week I work out in the field with patients who have trouble getting to the office to meet me. While out in the field, it is difficult to conduct my business when I have people calling constantly, because they do not feel comfortable asking a small group of people for assistance. This problem has rendered the newer employees dysfunctional, and has made decision making slow (Jordan & Troth, 2004). This is troublesome in the psychology sector of medicine, because decisions need to be made in a timely manner to deal with the symptoms and experiences of the individual patients seen.
Failure to work as a team allows patients’ problems to fall through the cracks. Complex problem solving and collaboration are transversal skills, that are critical to success in the 21st century (Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, & Grieff, 2015). Complex problem solving and collaboration are important because it creates a clear plan of what to do when there is a problem, and those people who should be contacted in times of confusion or uncertainty, so they are receiving the best information from the person who has the best answer. Problem solving is one of the key activities performed by professionals in any sector, because the process and practice are fully intertwined with the culture of the organization and its acceptance of collaboration, or competition (Angouri & Barigiela-Chiappini, 2011). If organizations favor collaboration, people work together for the best possible result, while in competitive organizations, it is the best idea which is chosen regardless if a better solution could have been developed if the employees worked together. Before making final decision about change to correct a problem is to determine whose problem it is, and what is needed to fix the problem.
Investigation and Identification of Solutions
The first possible solution that must be investigated is the value of reconsidering the current training program to better prepare new employees for the challenges faced throughout a typical workday. Another possible solution is to develop a mentor/mentee program that links new employees with experienced employees to make the transition more seamless. At the same time, this program would also create a fair way to share the burden of new employees across the workforce that can begin with observation of the experienced employee, followed by observations of the new employee, and then periodic observations to help clarify any issues, or questions.
Another solution is to create an effective inter-professional work, which is based on high levels of shared information (Billett, 2014). This is especially useful when there are instances of co-working, which is common in the case manager field, because they coordinate services with different providers and agencies. The problem with focusing on this problem is that it is temporary and rare since the employee turnover rate is low.
The final solution is the manager, or supervisor decides who gets to mentor which employees, to ensure the training will produce the quality standards upheld by the company.
A new training program for new employees seems like a good idea, but it is difficult to know for certain if the problem is in the training, or the lack of way to train people to deal with mental health patients. It is believed, linking emotional intelligence to a team’s performance in order to manage their emotions, and the emotions of others working in the team (Jordan & Troth, 2004). This awareness needs to be applied to the next training program to better train employees to deal with the unpredictability of these patients, and the problems they may encounter. It is important to understand our organization must work better as a team for the best possible patient outcomes.
The enhanced relationships developed with employees will grow if teams conduct themselves with team building time to openly discuss and out of the normal cases, which may require problem soliving and co-decision making to ensure the patient recieves the best possible care (Jordan & Troth, 2004). These relationships will also encourage employees to discuss all of their cases to better decide how to progress with the patient’s plan. This is why the mentor/mentee program would not be necessary, because if the team is working and collaborating on a daily basis, there may not need to be a program to force people to work together. At the same time, it does make sense to tell new employees to save all of their nonemergency questions for the next meeting.
Inter-professional work will be able to focus on the interaction between individuals, which can include patients, their families, and coworkers. This will make it eaiser for people to work as a team to solve problems on their own. As an example, newer employees can also work together to help each other learn after they have completed both rounds of observations. This will allow the new employees to test themselves and build their experiences together.
Implementation plan to solve the problem
First of all, it is important to address the current training program, by questioning new and experienced employees what the training fails to convey that is essential to daily operations and role fulfillment. This feedback will help decide what needs to be changed, and what is working. The training program should better evaluate the trainees progress with more forms of assessment to determine how well they learned the necessary information. There should also be periodic assessments sent to all employees to guarantee everyone is living up to the standards and expectations in place.
Next it is important to create a foundation of shared procedures, practices, and policies in a way that will reinforce the changes that needed to be made and how they would be fixed (Billett, 2014). While making the daily meetings a regular occurrence, it would make sense to have refreshments, which would be a simple incentive for people to be on time, and willing to participate. As the new employees hear the shared experiences, the knowledge from each individual experience can be added to their knowledge base and help them better understand the role they must fill.
The next step in the plan involves best managing time in the field, which can not only limit the chance an employee is stuck without a proper answer, it is important to find ways to link trips with new employees with each other so they are able to work together. Two brains working together are better than one, which can allow not only the employees to gain experience, but the patient reap the benefits. Problem solving always needs to be viewed as the step before decision making, in order to decide how to correct the problem (Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, & Grieff, 2015).
There is no point trying to solve a problem with a decision that is costly and ineffective at truly solving the problem. This is why it is not good for team morale for the supervisor or director of the establishment to decide which employees are stuck training others. Unless there is some form of incentive in place, it is unlikely people will want to be stuck training new employees. This can come in the form of a higher wage during the time period, paid time off, or additional hours added to the end of a shift, similar to a working holiday.
The main barrier to implementing this plan to solve the problem is the status, or position of an employee, who is not willing to participate in the changes undergone by the organization. Sadly, if the employee is unwilling to be a team player, it is most likely best for this person to move on since they obviously do not want to be a part of the team. Another barrier to the success of this plan, is the repetition of questions from people who are not fully paying attention. This can be poor for team morale, but if the individuals who are not paying attention are spoken to outside of the meeting, they should change their behavior, if it persists, a plan should be in place to deal with all employees who are not meeting the new standards and expectations.
In conclusion, questionnaires and feedback are the key to determine the best choice to solve a problem, because direct feedback can give the best insight to problems persisting in a workplace. In the case the problem is associated with practices, it is even more important to decide what is working for the company, and what is not. Too much feedback and meetings can also be costly, because it may take away time from working tasks, which would make the problem even worse, because less work is getting done and the company is becoming less and less efficient.
References
Angouri, J., & Barigiela-Chiappini, F. (2011, August 17). ‘So what problems bother you and you are not speeding up your work?’ Problem solving talk at work. Discourse and Communication, 5(3).
Billett, S. R. (2014, May). Securing intersubjectivity through interprofessional workplace learning experiences. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 28(3), pp. 206-211. doi:10.3109/13561820.2014.890580
Jordan, P. J., & Troth, A. C. (2004, April 1). Managing Emotions During Team Problem Solving. Human Performance, 17(2), pp. 195-218.
Neubert, J. C., Mainert, J., Kretzschmar, A., & Grieff, S. (2015, June). The Assessment of 21st Century Skills in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Complex and Collaborative Problem Solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(2), pp. 238-268. doi:10.1017/iop.2015.14
