Organizational behavior development Journal

During my previous work experience as an executive hospital assistant/member of quality project team, I came up with a new idea of digitalizing all the hospital records by implementing an electronic record system. However, it was not an easy task since some employees were unwilling to accept the move, which brought conflict in the department. Most of the employees argued that the hospital was not ready to implement the electronic record system in terms of financial preparation and knowledge on dealing with the electronic record system. I decided to spend more time with different employees in a different department to discuss this new idea. The following is a small conversation between one of the employees and myself:

Me : Good Morning Lisa , I have an idea.

Lisa : Good Morning, what is your idea? Please share it.

Me: We digitalize all hospital records by implementation of electronic record system?

Lisa: How will this help the hospital and how prepared are we to implement this idea? I feel it is not the right time to come up with such idea, the hospital is okay with the old system

Me: The quality of service delivery will improve and we have all the required resources to implement the idea. On matter of times it is the right time because of the inflexible competition due to high level of technology from our competitor.

Lisa: Personally I am not prepared since I have no any idea on how to use the electronic record system and I feel it is not the right time and it will be a waste of money and effort.

Me: all staff members will undergo training after the system is complete and ready for use. This will help reduce the fear and all worries.

Lisa: I somewhat disagree now but can we go on and consult the rest of the members.

Me: Ok thank you so much for your time, we agree to disagree.

From the interaction with employees, I realized that we should work on the idea as a team. Teamwork requires clear communication of the idea to the employees and taking time to listen to their feedback. This will make it easier to understand employees' main areas of concern, which will solve conflicts within the hospital. I felt it was a challenging task listening to every employee's views and opinions since some employees were against the idea entirely, and others did not even show interest to respond because they felt they were not part of the process.

After two weeks of communicating with the employees, I came up with a plan to avoid any future conflict. The plan involved establishing an innovation team that will ensure the hospital is up to date in terms of new applications in line with the new technology. The team will ensure that the new ideas are clearly communicated to the employees on time. This will result in teamwork among the employees. Teamwork makes it easy to implement new ideas since every employee will feel to be a part of the process. Finally, the plan will include an orientation program that will ensure employees will get all the basic skills and knowledge needed, to use the new ideas that will be implemented. The plan was implemented immediately by establishing an innovation team, which comprised of one member from each department for representation. After establishing the innovation team, we immediately communicated the new idea of electronic records to the employees for consideration. The employees expressed what they felt should be considered during the implementation. Then employees also were given a week of training to make it easier to implement the electronic record system.

I learned that I could work alone, but to accomplish work more effectively, it needs teamwork. The implementation of an electronic record system was confronted with a lot of resistance by most employees, which brought conflict in the hospital. But I realized that teamwork with clear communication makes it easier to accomplish any task within a short time. Proper interaction with the employees helped me improve my communication skills, and my leadership skills were sharpened as well. In the future, I will always consider teamwork and communication as a priority to accomplish any project.