Introduction
Employee engagement illustrates willingness and desire of employees to give their best and outperform themselves daily, motivated to contribute to organizational success (Fried & Fottler, 2015). It is considered a very important factor to ensure low turnover rates and prevent burnout. Medical and pharmaceutical industry is known to have the highest burnout and turnover rates, which is partially motivated by poor employee engagement practices. As such, hospitals and pharmaceutical facilitiesremain some of the more frequent clients for performance improvement consultations.
Case Study Scenario
In this case study, I am to play the role of a consultant for a pharmaceutics directors, who has been in charge for 6 months. For the past two years, some of the department stores for her service have been very low, which forced her to seek advice on performance improvement. The purpose of this case study is to help the director devise a plan of action in order to improve morale and employee engagement.
The First Improvement Consulting Phases – Initial Contact and Contracting
As it was agreed, I am supposed to meet with the director in order to discuss the situation and outline a potential performance improvement contract to be signed between the consulting company and the pharmaceutical enterprise. At this stage, my task would be to establish rapport with the client and present myself as an experienced specialist in order to gain the customer’s confidence and trust. After that, it would be possible to proceed with the contracting phase, during which the customer would be explained the goals, deliverables, outcomes, responsibilities, and procedures required to achieve a lasting improvement in performance (Fried & Fottler, 2015). The contract must be signed and agreed upon before it would be possible to proceed with the next phases.
How to Build Rapport and Credibility?
Building rapport and credibility during the first meeting is a very important part of a successful customer-consultant relationship (Fried & Fottler, 2015). It relies on visual and personal appearances as well as professionalism and understanding of the problem. To account for visual appearances, I would remain cordial, but at the same time formal and polite. When discussing the problem, I would build rapport by sharing some of my past experiences in the field as well as representing my knowledge of similar situations in other pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, I will allow the customer to explain the situation from their point of view before offering potential solutions and alternatives (Fried & Fottler, 2015).
The Easy and Difficult Parts of the Consulting Contract
The data collection and diagnosis part of the active contract would likely be the easiest to fulfill. Hospitals and pharmaceutical facilities are very centralized organizations, meaning that it would be easy to perform data collection as all employees would be obligated by their superiors to participate in surveys. The protocol is standardized, and there are numerous survey templates fit to assess the situation. The only difficulty with this part is to assess which survey template would be the most appropriate for the situation. In addition, a custom survey could be created in order to present the situation within this particular company accurately.
The hardest part of any employee engagement improvement contract is measuring the effectiveness of performed measures (Fried & Fottler, 2015). While measuring production values is relatively simple, other factors are not as easy to assess using quantitative means. One of the most obvious indicators of progress would be diminished burnout and turnover rates.
How to Measure Progress
The primary tool for measuring personal data will be a survey. Employees would be asked to measure their engagement, burnout rate, and other important factors that have the potential of affecting productivity and effectiveness. Improvements in the production of pharmaceuticals would be measured traditionally: by comparing the output, the number of employee-related accidents, equipment damage, and defects to data available for the past two years. Long-term engagement will be measured by comparing turnover rates for the following year with data for the two past years. In combination, these tools and measurements should allow perceiving progress with a relatively high accuracy (Fried & Fottler, 2015).
Closing Meeting
The meeting will be closed after all the important details and concerns are addressed, and the contract is signed. I will ensure that the meeting does not drag on longer than it should. Closing the meeting on a positive note is very important, as it would lay down the foundation for a successful customer-consultant relationship and ensure mutual understanding and rapport with the client in the long term.
Reference
Fried, B., &Fottler, M. D. (2015). Human resources in healthcare: Managing for success(2nd ed.).Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.