Management Styles
The management style most prevalent at the Burch House is the consultative management style. Consultative management opposed to autocratic management, where the manager general issues instructions and employees perform the tasks, involves or consults members of the organization. This style allows managers to gather information from members before making decisions. The decisions are ultimately made by the leader or manager, but are based on member input, ideas and knowledge concerning decisions.
Examples where consultative management is used at the Burch House include but are not limited to areas such as everyday planning; decision making concerning fundraising, overlapping job descriptions, and client assistance among others. The team leader at the Burch House recognizes her own personal lack of direct contact with clients and therefore, relies greatly on the input of employees concerning the quality of services. This high involvement is closely related to teamwork and employee involvement under Total Quality Management.
Virtua Health and Total Quality Management
Virtua Health is a hospital system consisting of four facilities located in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. Virtua Health a nonprofit organization began implementing a Total Quality Management program in 2000. Their reasoning for implementation was to improve financial performance and patient satisfaction.
J.A. Buck, as quoted by Lee Revere and Ken Black in states that "Despite having the best physicians, hospitals, and medical equipment in the world, our health care system produces more errors than any of us think is acceptable." Medical errors such as errors in medication, which often can be harmful to patients and even cause deaths, have influenced many healthcare organizations to turn to Total Quality Management.
Virtua Health recognizing the high costs and patient dissatisfaction due to medical errors began implementing a Total Quality Management program including detailed analysis developed by Six Sigma. “Six Sigma is an extension of the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis that is required by [Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations] JCAHO” (Revere, Black, 2003). In order to achieve a higher rate of patient satisfaction Virtua Health implemented the TQM program to eliminate medical errors. In addition analysis of the organization as a whole suggested various changes such as improvement in patient care in areas including operating room, nursing, nurse retention, and medication errors. Patient satisfaction through quality management at Virtua Health was achieved through patient data analysis.
Total Quality Management in Human Services
Total Quality Management (TQM) is being embraced by many fields including businesses and government organizations. The human services field should not overlook the potential benefits of implementing a TQM program for efficiency and client satisfaction. “TQM may also hold the solution for problems that exist in human services organizations today” (Lawrence, 2002). Implementation of a Total Quality Management program in the human services field requires a degree of change in the organizational operations and culture. TQM involves all aspects of an organization and demands close teamwork of all employees, including brainstorming, and working toward quality as an organizational goal.
Proposed TQM at the Burch House
The population served at the Burch House is a vulnerable one. Clients need for quality service including support and trust can be a deciding factor whether or not they receive or seek the help they need. Clients who are not receiving quality service may discontinue services and find themselves returning to a dangerous environment. Quality is therefore, crucial to the Burch House and its clients.
The staff at the Burch House works closely together in all areas. The client involvement of services, however, is fairly low. In implementing a Total Quality Management program the Burch House will have to direct much of its focus on client satisfaction in a similar way as implemented by Virtua Health. Client data analysis could be a successful way of assessing quality. Once a client data analysis is carried out, improvements can be made.
In addition to client satisfaction, the Burch House recognizes disorganization as a factor hindering Total Quality. The staff members tend to take on responsibilities of the other staff such as outreach, or fundraising, without possessing the proper training or knowledge to do so in a high-quality-every-time-way, as TQM requires.
The key concept of TQM is to produce high quality every time and cut costs that low quality and product improvement cause. If the Burch House were to become more organized and involved all members including not only employees, but clients and stakeholders as well, the costs of low quality could be drastically reduced. For example, if donation boxes were, instead of simply left at local stores leaving shoppers to use their own discretion as to what they will donate, set up with a cart, basket or table of filled with needed items that shoppers could choose from, the donations would closer match the needs of the center and its clients. Through implementing such a donation system the Burch House would reduce waste, and lower costs by not having to buy products needed which were not donated.
Conclusion
Total Quality Management which is based on the customers’ needs focuses on delivering who feel they are receiving a quality product, in this case service provided, are less likely to turn down the help they need to survive. If quality were not a priority serving this particular population, domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors, the clients may turn down help and return to an abusive, often life threatening, situation. Based on the implementation of TQM by Virtua Health this paper presented a TQM proposal that would focus on client satisfaction. Such a program can not only save the organization money but can assure client satisfaction, therefore, also client well-being.
References
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Black, K., Revere, L., (2003).
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Burrill, C., Ledolter, J., (1999). Achieving Quality through Continual Improvement. Hoboken,
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Lawrence, L. L., (2002). Total Quality Management in Human Services. University of Florida:
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