Strengths
The Hospice has a focused, goal-oriented, and engaged administrative staff that can meet the organization’s objectives while ensuring efficiency. According to the case study, some administrative staff is concerned that the Trustees have self-interests in expanding the organization, which risks focus. Such sensitivity to efficiency and operations shows engaged staff. The administrative workers are also skilled in organization management, including human resources. For example, the team successfully motivates volunteer workers by assuming ethical issues when they assign them training responsibilities.
Weaknesses
Despite the strengths, the administrative staff experiences work overload, which affects their productivity. Continued expansion of the organization leads to higher working time among the staff, interfering with physical and mental energy. The administrative staff is also weak in recording and reporting patient data and experiences that affect the proper management of the facility. According to the case study, volunteers are more efficient and accurate in reporting than administrative workers who own the role to make the Board happy.
Opportunities
The administrative employees create an opportunity to develop other staff once recruited following turnover or organization expansion. Despite the high workload, the team focuses on the organization’s course to serve the community and is cautious about areas that risk services, such as continued growth. Such experience and engagement create a strong team to train new and effective staff.
Threats
Community Hospice faces a threat of demotivation and turnover among administrative staff following reduced funding. The organization has experienced reduced finding from the Health authority that affects wages and incentives. In the future, administrative workers might look for better places to support their careers. The organization’s ongoing expansion also risks-high workload, demotivation, and tune-over among the administrative workers. Despite the limited staff, the Board of Trustees is expanding the Hospice, which will cause burnout and poor work-life balance and influence tune-over. There is also a threat of interference from the volunteer workers. The volunteers sometimes take administrative roles while assuming “public face”.
Recommendations
The Board of Trustees should involve the administrative staff in decision-making that affects their work and overall organization purpose. The analysis of the strengths shows that the administrative staff is engaged with the organization, focusing on its general objective. Including the staff in overall decision-making will influence trustee-administrative staff bond and sharing (Osborne and Hammoud, 2017). Such sharing creates opportunities to identify where the organization goes against its purpose, including staffing and expansion, which are issues that risks focus and efficiency.
The Board should also use the staff in training volunteers on administrative duties to overcome demotivation and interference while preparing for any emergency turnover. Following analysis of opportunities, the Hospice has skilled and dedicated executive staff who have efficiently managed the work. The staff can use their skills and experience in the organization to prepare potential replacements or workers for promotion and avoid risks of delayed recruitment and getting an unfocused team. Such training will also motivate administrative staff who view volunteers as risks and hindrances to their job.
Critical Review on Deployment of Voluntary Workers and Recommendations
Hospice has allowed voluntary workers to sometimes work as administrators without an appropriate plan for leadership and lines of communication between them and the administrative staff. Although such a situation results from understaffing among administrators, the interference influences demotivation as volunteers can report directly to the Trustees due to a lack of transparent reporting lines. For example, the administrative staff has complained about overpowers that the volunteers sometimes take whenever on duty. The failure to have volunteers work under the administrative workers is a potential for interference in the management process. Such over-reliance on volunteers to assist the administrators can create conflict and poor working relationships to affect efficiency. The volunteers are also untrained for such administrative work and might affect the organization’s strategic plans.
On the contrary, the Hospice uses volunteers to cover areas that lack appropriate management, such as reporting. Volunteers are also standing in for absent administrative staff to ensure continuity in services. Deployment of the volunteers even in administrative work is a solution to many issues which the Hospice is facing, such as understaffing and unavailable skills, for instance, in reporting. The volunteers are also essential to ensure that the Hospice remains committed to the community, although the Trustee is not using them to check their goals such as expansion.
The Hospice should implement training and development programs to train its administrative staff in unskilled areas, such as reporting to minimize interference from volunteers. Skills in reporting require information on essentials in the task and not an engaging course that can make the organization lose. Regular training of employees as work becomes complex ensures such skills which affect their performance (Sheeba and Christopher, 2019). The Hospice should also develop lines of communication and make the volunteers work under the administrative staff while providing small wages. Although there is an over-reliance on volunteers, the organization still needs the team because of understaffing among administrative workers. There are no funds to employ more skilled administrators, creating the need to utilize volunteers, which attracts low operation costs. Volunteers are also essential to guarantee commitment to community service. Making the volunteers work under administrators would limit their control over the organization while supplying the needed services. The Trustee would not rely on the volunteers in administration work since they will serve as manual workers receiving direction from the administrative staff.
Board of Trustees’ Commitment to the Charity Governance Code
The Board of Trustees is not committed to the Charity Governance Code on purpose. According to the Good Governance Steering Group’s (no date) principle of purpose, a charity organization should have clear aims and ensure effectiveness and sustainability in its delivery. The Board of Trustees does not serve its purpose of supporting community health following a reduction in local funding. Failed focus on purpose implies a lack of responsibility to stakeholders, including those who fund. The witnessed failure to attract funding indicates disappointment in serving the purpose since stakeholders would not support the Board that serves self-interest. Another indicator that the Board is against the charity’s purpose concerns the administrative staff’s over-focus on ‘growing the Hospice.’ Expansion of the Hospice beyond the area it serves disconnects with the primary goal because the staff and other resources will not maximize the health needs of the local people.
The Hospice Board also lacks appropriate leadership despite the skilled leaders. Among the Good Governance Steering Group’s (no date) principles is leadership requiring effective boards that develops strategies that align with the charity’s purpose. An effective board is one where individual members and as a whole accepts responsibilities to establish and meet charity aims. Such a Board should have the organization’s values in organizational culture, ethos ad all work.
At the Hospice, the Board is ineffective because it does not collectively agree on values. The two new board members contradict in focusing to expand the Hospice with the existing staff. Older Trustees also support strategies that oppose the charity’s purpose of serving the local community. Proposals and actual expansion of the Hospice beyond the community have compromised effective healthcare and charity.
Another principle that the Board does not serve is integrity. According to Good Governance Steering Group (no date), Trustees should uphold ethical practices with a supportive and welcoming culture to meet the charity purpose and serve public confidence. However, the Hospice Board compromises public trust through decisions that weaken overwraps with its goal. The move to expand the organization outside the community does not maximize good for the locals due to the burden on resources. Sponsors provide resources sufficient for community needs. Sharing such donations with others would mean low-quality healthcare services and reduced confidence. The Board is against the charity purpose and trust from stakeholders and the public to develop strategies that serve the local’s needs.
Proposals to Ensure Engagement in Strategic Direction and Effective Governance
The Board of Trustees should develop a code of conduct and policies to focus on the Hospice’s strategic direction and proper governance. Code of conduct guides and limits the expected behaviors of the affected persons (Andrade, Hanza, and Xara-Brasil, 2017). The principles provide standards for interaction between individuals and an organization to ensure practices that align with the overall purpose. At the Hospice, the Board’s practices are out of touch with the organization’s values, including not profit-making and goal of charity. There are no limitations on Trustees’ decisions, such as changing the organization’s original intent. A code of conduct would define the role of the Trustees to control behaviors in ways that serve strategic directions. The values also influence board members to see the prescribed practices as right and make them a habit leading to good governance (Andrade, Hanza, and Xara-Brasil, 2017). Adopting a code of conduct would train the Trustees to focus on overall charity purpose and become engaged to improve governance.
Another recommendation to guarantee Trustees’ commitment to strategic direction and proper governance is the development of s strategic plan that will control decisions and members’ responsivities. Strategic plans provide organizational goals and actions to achieve them by matching the current position and expected destination. The plans limit and control the Trustees’ decisions, such as expanding the Hospice outside the local community. Strategic plans also define the Board’s responsibilities to avoid instances where members assign themselves duties that would not lead to charity purposes. Properly defined actions needed to meet specific goals provide a framework for describing the functions of Board members. The roles are vital in ensuring that members commit to the strategic plan since the results are the needed outcomes, for instance, free and quality healthcare services. As a result, a strategic plan would provide good governance by defining board members’ responsibilities and functions while limiting decisions that they can make.
Conclusion
The Board of Trustees also learns to accommodate the diverse views of every member and discuss them to ensure commitment to strategic goals and good governance. Currently, there is a disconnection between members as the opposition between new and old Trustees on Hospice expansion reveals. The old members are reluctant to discuss views of the new ones and are rigid on expanding the organization. Diverse membership in such boards helps in checking powers and controlling each other towards strategic directions. Allowing an informed and open discussion about each other’s views would lead to appropriate decisions which align with the Hospice objectives.
Reference List
Andrade, J., Hanza, K. and Xara-Brasil, D. (2017) ‘Business ethics: international analysis of codes of ethics and conduct,’Brazilian Journal of Marketing, 16(1), pp. 1-15. Web.
Good Governance Steering Group. (no date) Charity governance code for small charities, Charitygovernancecode.org. web.
Osborne, S. and Hammoud, M.S. (2017) ‘Effective employee engagement in the workplace,’International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, 16(1), pp. 50-67. Web.
Sheeba, M. J. and Christopher, P. B. (2019) ‘Exploring the role of training and development in creating innovative work behaviors and accomplishing non-routine cognitive jobs for organizational effectiveness,’Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(4), pp. 2020-2025. Web.