public adminstration n

Agency Analysis

LaShanda Lewis

6 March 17

Practicality of union presence

DHHS has faced evolving relationships among labor and management and the purpose remained focused on the building of constructive association between the two parties. There are 8 labor unions present within agency and 3 of these unions are recognized at the national level. DHHS and union have interest in the development of cooperation between management and employees at all the levels. Labor Management Corporation Council (LMCC) believes that there is a need to develop strong communication and cooperation among labor union and management with the view to achieve the desirable targets (Obama, 2016). It is believed that cooperation among the two parties will enable the agency to protect and enhance the level of public health and delivery of valuable human services.

It can be recommended that agency should continue union representation because union has a goal to improve the state of labor management relations and various forums under the supervision of union to ensure dispute resolution.

In addition to this engagement of employees at pre-decisional level is also necessary to create the sense of ownership among all the stakeholders.
Another reason for which union is needed to have presence in DHHS is that of resolving proposed changes in the conditions of employment within organization.

Opportunity of privatization

The agency is trying hard to deliver the high quality products and services to the public in collaboration with other pillars of healthcare department. In order to improve the quality of employee work life it is recommended that agency must operate under existing status rather than making it privatized. It is better not to privatize the agency because of the following two reasons:

The privatization will result in the increased conflict of interest among management and employees and the agency cost will resultantly increase to a larger extent. To keep the agency focused on the delivery of high quality healthcare services
The healthcare sector should not be focused on the mere objective of profit maximization rather it should remain focused on the social welfare, improved customer services, better delivery of health related products and services, and cost savings. Privatization will result in the creation of profit oriented objectives and goals that may result in the form of deterioration in the quality of services.

Agency’s policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding pensions

It is important to devise retirement and pension plans for the agency so that financial security of the employees can be ensured. Employees also give importance to the pension plans while choosing among different job opportunities available to them. Retirement planning has been given much importance by the DHHS and there are various options available for the employees among those they can chose in accordance with their preferences and convenience. There are two types of pension plans under Employee Retirement Income security Act (ERISA) namely defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans (Drummond et al, 2015).

Defined benefit Plans: This plan promises a specified motherly payment at retirement. The benefit is calculated using a formula that takes into account salary and services.
Defined Contribution Plans: This plan does not promise any particular amount at the time of retirement but it is not fixed. Both the employees and employers contribute to the individual account under plan. The rate is fixed and usually is 5% of the earnings on annual basis.

Agency’s approach to productivity and performance evaluation

Performance evaluation plan will be comprised of two elements in general and cannot exceed more than 6 elements that are pre-determined in nature. In case the team elements are kept in view to rate the employees then those will be rated on the basis of contributions made by that individual to the success of that particular team. Any sort of deletion made in the responsibilities and job descriptions of the employees those are also needed to be notified to the performance evaluation team (Salamon, 2015). The possible standards that are used for the sake of performance evaluation include objectivity, explicitness, attainability and measurability of the performance targets assigned to the employees. Rating officials communicate regarding achievement of goals and objectives on the part of employees throughout the rating period.

Three (3) actions the agency could take to improve in the areas of productivity and performance evaluation

Improvement in the productivity and performance of the employees is the main objective of each and every organization because of the reason that this factor ensures long run success of the business. In addition to this there is also a dire need to effectively and accurately evaluate the performance and productivity of each employee so that those having remarkable performance can be rewarded and immediate actions can be taken to tackle to productivity issue faced by the low performing employees (Grosse et al, 2016). In order to improve the evaluation process following steps is needed to be taken:

Monthly evaluation forms are needed to be filled on the part of evaluation officials rather than depending on the annual or quarterly reviews.
Employees should also be given right to review the evaluation ratings given to them and see the comments and remarks with the view to minimize the possibility of any sort of injustice and exploitation of employees.
Ratings should be given on relative basis rather than absolute basis. In other words performance ratings must be finalized after having gone through a thorough comparison of performance among employees working with the organization.

On the whole DHHS needs various reforms and changes in its operational structure with the view to ensure quality delivery of healthcare services and products. Particularly the performance evaluation system is needed to be reformed in order to promote more just reward mechanism within the organization. In addition to this there is no need to privatize the agency because it will increase the agency conflict among different stakeholders associated with the agency. The unions working within agency are planned to work for the betterment of employees and the customers therefore the organization should not take any step to hinder the representation of unions.

References

Salamon, L. M. (2015). The resilient sector revisited: the new challenge to nonprofit America. Brookings Institution Press.

Drummond, M. F., Sculpher, M. J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G. L., & Torrance, G. W. (2015). Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford university press.

Obama, B. (2016). United States health care reform: progress to date and next steps. Jama, 316(5), 525-532.

Grosse, S. D., Nelson, R. E., Nyarko, K. A., Richardson, L. C., & Raskob, G. E. (2016). The economic burden of incident venous thromboembolism in the United States: a review of estimated attributable healthcare costs. Thrombosis research, 137, 3- 10.