Monthly Archives: March 2023

Each individual is asked to prepare a case analysis on FORD (found in our text C277). The expected length of this Case Analysis is 3 – 4 pages, 1-inch all-around margins, single-spaced and Times New Roman 12-point font.

Counselors As Contributors to Health Care Reform

The training of counselor educators and supervisors provides for instruction in the wellness model, developmental stages of lifetime adjustment, early intervention and prevention, and empowerment of clients. These values seem perfectly matched for the re-focusing of health care on the early stages of care rather than end-of-life care. An example of a health care model that utilizes early identification of mental health issues and has a client-centered approach to care is Intermountain Healthcare’s Mental Health Integration model.

Intermountain’s Mental Health Integration involves licensed mental health professionals working side-by-side with primary care physicians. Together they are administering or reviewing clients’ mental health screening instruments, consulting with physicians on mental health issues, providing same-day brief counseling and psycho-education, recommending referral for chronic and severe patients, and working in a health care team along with other professionals. This model engages community agencies such as the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) to support patients and families in the treatment process. Studies at Intermountain indicate that the Mental Health Integration model provides higher quality health care at revenue-neutral or reduced costs. The idea is for mental health workers to collaborate across professional fields to increase quality health care.

The Committee on Crossing the Quality Chasm: Adaptation to Mental Health and Addictive Disorders offers the following six aims to achieve high-quality health care:

“The Six Aims of High-Quality Health Care:

• Safe—avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them.
• Effective—providing services based on scientific knowledge to all who could benefit and refraining from providing services to those not likely to benefit.
• Patient-centered—providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.
• Timely—reducing waits and sometimes harmful delays for both those who receive and those who give care.
• Efficient—avoiding waste, in particular waste of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy.
• Equitable—providing care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status”

Source: Institute of Medicine (Eds.). (2006). Improving the quality of health care for mental and substance-use conditions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11470&page=57

To prepare for this Discussion:

• Review the article, “Integration of Mental Health into Primary Health care in Uganda: Opportunities and Challenges.” Consider the challenges to integrating mental health care into primary care and think about strategies for overcoming these challenges.
• Review the article, “Far West Area Health Service Mental Health Integration Project: Model for Rural Australia,” and think about how mental health care can be improved by using a primary health care model.
• Review the article, “Reducing Harm Through Quality Improvement.” Consider the challenges and opportunities presented by Intermountain Healthcare’s mental health integration quality improvement program.
• Think about how you think the implementation of the mental health integration model might affect you personally.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 4 an explanation of how you think you would be affected personally by the implementation of the mental heath integration model. Be specific, using the model and your situation to illustrate your points.

Please respond to the following:

• Discuss at least two areas, or policy changes, covered in this course that you believe will have a significant effect on the field of public personnel management in the next ten years. Explain why you selected those areas or policy changes.

Instructions

Introduction: Throughout this course, you will be working on a staged project researching a public policy issue as identified in your project proposal. At this point, you are being asked to write and deliver your findings and evaluation to your classmates and instructor in a final Research Paper.

Instructions: At this point, you will submit your final Research Paper evaluating your chosen policy and making recommendations based on your research. Your Research Paper should include the following components:

   Abstract: Please provide an abstract (one paragraph) for your paper. (I did not see this in your instructions but I do want it included.)

:Introduction

• Identification of the issue
• Description of the background context and significance of the issue
• The research question behind this project
• Literature Review
• Methods
• Findings from your data collection
• Public Score Card
• Recommendations regarding this policy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Remember to support your evaluation of this issue and your recommendations with the data you collected and any additional information you learned from your literature review.

Submission: Your Research Paper should be about 12-15 pages (about 3,000-3,750 words) in length.

Learning by Doing

Conaty & Charan write that, “Developing talent through experiences expands capability and capacity… This is learning by doing, and no book or classroom teaching can substitute for it.”

• Describe an example of “learning by doing” that has helped you or a colleague to grow professionally.
• What did this experience teach that could not be taught through formal training?
• What part of the experience could have been learned through formal training? 
• Should your organization create formal training to complement its hands-on learning activities? Why or why not?

Post your initial response by Wednesday, midnight of your time zone, and reply to at least 2 of your classmates’ initial posts by Sunday, midnight of your time zone.​​

1st Response to this classmate

 RE: Week 4 DiscussionCOLLAPSE

Hello Class and Professor, 

In most organizations, formal training is an essential component of keeping up with new trends and technologies in the industry. However, training may not solve all performance and behavioral problems. Hence, an organization should conduct a training needs assessment before introducing training programs to assess whether training may solve a performance problem. Other than training, learning by experience may be an option. As such, evaluation of learning by doing or experience is essential in informing its effectiveness in complementing formal training. 

Describe an example of “learning by doing” that has helped you or a colleague to grow professionally.

After graduating from university with a bachelor in Statistics, Kelvin joined our local animal feeds manufacturing company as a data analyst. His university training was majorly mathematical and had nothing to do with animal health and nutrition. However, his new role required him to have insights into animal nutrition. He quickly got in touch with the production manager and was occasionally involved in the production team while formulating the food rations. With time, Kelvin developed the skills of accurately preparing feeds’ components such as proteins and minerals while retaining acceptable profit margins. Soon, Kelvin became an essential component of both the production and analytics teams. 

What did this experience teach that could not be taught through formal training?

Although the training was an option in learning animal nutrition, it would take time to cover all aspects. Still, the organization does not use all aspects of animal nutrition modules. Learning by doing was the most suitable learning method as it incorporates relevant theoretical and practical elements of animal nutrition. Nevertheless, training modules hardly existed at the organization to enhance the incorporation of animal health and data analytics. 

What part of the experience could have been learned through formal training? 

Animal health and nutrition training is available at the organization. Employees within the production team regularly participate in formal training relating to trends and new technologies in line with animal feed production. However, Kelvin’s case stood out, as it required integrating skills in feeds formulation, production, and data analytics. 

Should your organization create formal training to complement its hands-on learning activities? Why or why not?

Kelvin’s case depicts a situation where learning through experience may yield significant outcomes. However, it is rational to analyze such a situation in the context of the problem at hand. Organizations should also adopt formal training to complement learning by experience. Learning through experience enhances personal growth and competence aligning with new roles (Fernández-Aráoz et al. 4). Formal training improves collective responsibility for success among current employees and new teammates by sharing experiences, challenges, and insights (Stibitz 3). A blend of learning through experience and formal training enhances performance and employee outcomes.

Fernández-Aráoz, Claudio, Andrew Roscoe, and Kentaro Aramaki. “Turning potential into success: The missing link in leadership development.” Harvard Business Review, vol. 95, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1-9.

Stibitz, Sara. “How to get a new employee up to speed.” Harvard Business Review, 2015, pp. 1‑5.

2nd response to this classmate

Dear Professor Dibenedetto and Class

1. Describe an example of “learning by doing” that has helped you or a colleague grow professionally.

I am a long-life learner in all aspects of my life. I have developed a growth mindset. I have improved my life quality and work as observe people doing things that I will not ordinarily do well. One example that stands out in my pursuit of learning by doing is how to do proper workforce planning, which is a combination of HR concepts such as organization design, budgeting, and job pricing. These are competencies that involve knowledge in HR, finance and remuneration, and data analytics. I realized that I do not have a budget to hire an employee who is an expert in workforce planning, as it is a critical skill in the insurance business. Most actuaries do not want to work in HR but were keen to design a workforce tool. I approached our CEO, who agreed that he would second an actuary into HR to develop the tool. I used to watch him with the design and play with the tool until it was executed.

2. What part of the experience could have been learned through formal training?

There is no part in the learning process that I would say required formal training. I am already a seasoned excel spreadsheet practitioner; otherwise, I would have preferred formal training as a beginner. I still believe that 70/20/10 learning is still relevant, where 10% is about formal learning.

3. What did this experience teach that could not be taught through formal training?

I currently do all my annual workforce planning and reporting using the tool, and I have trained others in the team through action learning and are using the tool in all our 33 countries. We used the same tool during COVID-19 to schedule the workforce and understand who can work from home indefinitely (and only come as required), hybrid model, and tracking those on sick leave due to the pandemic. We are also using it to plan for the workforce plan during the recovery phase caused by the pandemic as we want headcount growth not to increase by 2% over the past three years. I would not gain a portfolio of diverse skills in reward, budgeting, and data analytics at the same time if it were not through action learning.

4. Should your organization create formal training to complement its hands-on learning activities? Why or why not? My organization has formal training programs supported by a learning management system. Our main challenge is that learning it is isolated from the day to day work requirements of employees. I believe learning on the job through the 70/20/10 action learning process should be the norm. Learning can be powerful if it is integrated into the daily workflow. As scholar Josh coined, “there is a new paradigm of learning in the flow of work.” The fourth industrial revolution tools such as AI, automation, podcasts, youtube has enabled an environment where lifelong learning is part of the economic imperative. For employees, research now shows that development opportunities have become the second most crucial factor in workplace satisfaction (after the nature of the work itself). In my view, the traditional corporate learning portal (the learning management system) is rarely used (other than for mandatory compliance training), and it often takes many clicks to find what you need. Learning, therefore, ends up being reduced to important-but-not-urgent matters.

References

Dr. John. E. Di Benedetto, H.R.M. ANNUAL, Executive On-Boarding… Successfully Assimilating New Leaders, Week 4 JWI 521. 2020 JWI 521, Week 4 Lecture Notes, 2020

Discussion is to be submitted in 12-point Times New Roman font using APA format with a minimum of two sources 

use the answer sheet to answer all questions. 

People often use advocacy to create positive change for society. Advocacy represents the strategies devised, actions taken, and solutions proposed to influence change for the betterment of society. The key to successful advocacy and creating a successful strategic plan is to conduct a needs assessment to determine the needs or priorities for a given agency, organization, or community.

A needs assessment is a systematic way of determining the gap between what an agency, organization, or community has and what is desired to meet the needs of individuals, groups, communities, or societies. The needs assessment will reveal whether there may be unmet services. It can then provide information about those needs and help inform your planning to meet them. The needs assessment also consists of planning who you need to target, how you will effectively gather new data, and/or how you will use existing data to inform your planning decisions.

To prepare:

• Think about the needs of the agency, organization, or community that you identified as being the focus for your strategic plan.
• Consider how you might collect data from stakeholders regarding met and unmet needs.

By Day 7

The Assignment (2–3 pages):

• Outline/describe steps you would take to conduct a needs assessment.
• State which stakeholders you would contact and why you would contact each.
• Develop a stakeholder survey related to your professional or societal issue.
  • The survey must be at least 10 questions.
  • Provide a justification for each question on the survey.
  • Provide a rationale for the type/format of questions on the survey.
  • State how you would vary items on the survey based on the role of the stakeholders who would complete it (administration, leadership, staff, recipient of surveys).

Respond to Ashley Dunaway post 

Please read and respond to the attachment(s).

Note: Only up to 20% of the written response content can be quotes from third parties.