Downsizing your employees is never the option any company wants to take, however, there are times when it is necessary to protect the financial viability of the organization. In today’s healthcare market place the need to down size is becoming more common place due to mergers and acquisitions of smaller critical care access hospitals by large systems (Fallon, McConnell, 2007). When the senior leadership of an organization makes the decision to downsize such a large percentage of their employee population, the decision to do so must be carefully planned and executed. Steps to make sure the use of temporary or agency staff should be eliminated and use of part time staffing positions evaluated before starting the layoff planning.
The first …show more content…
Beginning with entire departments, leadership could determine if there were departments where the cost of maintaining that service line was necessary to the overall operation. For example, many hospitals will maintain a mammography department which has very expensive equipment and high salaried nurses and technicians that may not be necessary to the overall operation. Any patient in need of a mammography exam could be sent to an outpatient radiology center for this exam by their primary care physician, eliminating the need for the department entirely. Depending on the size of the department, this could encompass the entire 15% necessary but it is not likely. In the event, more employees need to be downsized to meet the 15% criteria the leadership would want to look next at productivity within a department to determine if it is overstaffed. The department list would need to be sorted by job title and then by seniority. Sorting by job title first allows the leadership to examine the makeup of a department and separate out the positions that are vital to caring for patients and remove these titles from the list. Next, using the mechanism of least seniority for layoffs, they could then cut the staff in departments where productivity goals were not being met while having a lesser impact on patient care. It is at this point where the details of the individuals being downsized must be scrutinized. It is very common that people in different departments with the same job title and responsibilities will have different seniority dates. To further protect the organization from the appearance of discriminatory actions, the leaders will examine the list for any employees who could be transferred to another department. For example if it were determined that 3 certified nurse assistance in oncology could be downsized, the leaders would need to look at
The first …show more content…
Beginning with entire departments, leadership could determine if there were departments where the cost of maintaining that service line was necessary to the overall operation. For example, many hospitals will maintain a mammography department which has very expensive equipment and high salaried nurses and technicians that may not be necessary to the overall operation. Any patient in need of a mammography exam could be sent to an outpatient radiology center for this exam by their primary care physician, eliminating the need for the department entirely. Depending on the size of the department, this could encompass the entire 15% necessary but it is not likely. In the event, more employees need to be downsized to meet the 15% criteria the leadership would want to look next at productivity within a department to determine if it is overstaffed. The department list would need to be sorted by job title and then by seniority. Sorting by job title first allows the leadership to examine the makeup of a department and separate out the positions that are vital to caring for patients and remove these titles from the list. Next, using the mechanism of least seniority for layoffs, they could then cut the staff in departments where productivity goals were not being met while having a lesser impact on patient care. It is at this point where the details of the individuals being downsized must be scrutinized. It is very common that people in different departments with the same job title and responsibilities will have different seniority dates. To further protect the organization from the appearance of discriminatory actions, the leaders will examine the list for any employees who could be transferred to another department. For example if it were determined that 3 certified nurse assistance in oncology could be downsized, the leaders would need to look at