Question

Neera was baffled by the way HR and management was dealing with her concerns. She wondered if this was an accepted way of execution in a professional setting. She was discriminated and no one was lending ear to her concerns. She thought that objective and transparent system were good only for books and did not hold merit in a practical setting. Neera had been working at "Your health my health" (YHMH) for the past 10 years. YHMH was an organization working in hospital consultancy for more than 20 years; in fact, it would be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year. Over the years, it had earned a great name and reputation for its contribution in improving quality of health services and patient satisfaction. It had not only contributed in streamlining delivery of services at public health facilities but also in private hospitals. It provided consultancy services for setting up a new hospital, planning and infrastructure development in a hospital, feasibility analysis for new services to be introduced by the hospital, exploratory studies for increasing the retention and motivation of the hospital staff, improving patient outcomes and patient satisfaction by focusing on quality of services, facilitating accreditation of hospitals by Quality Control of India (QCI), NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers), JCI (Joint Commission International), etc. In a nutshell, the organization was working on multiple aspects of hospital management and had earned rich experience of working in almost every area related to the industry. The organization could achieve this experience in a short duration of 20 plus years due to its committed and competent multidisciplinary staff members. One important aspect which contributed to quick rise of YHMH was its culture. It was an amalgamation of empowerment, autonomy and accountability. While the staff at the senior position had the freedom to execute the projects the way they wanted with all the required support from the administration, they were responsible for its success or failure. The successes were applauded and duly credited, the failures were analyzed with a view to avoid repetition and learn lessons. It empowered the persons involved in the exercise and infused accountability. From its early days, YHMH had associated itself with some of the renowned persons from Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior (OB) as experts in its regular advisory panel. YHMH took pride in stating that it had imbibed some of the integral values of OB in its culture and it was the key behind its success. The organization was, however, not immune to the emerging market forces. In past five years, many other organizations had emerged with a similar proficiency and were posing threat to YHMH not only in terms of competition but also in terms of staff retention. Many of its old veterans had joined the competitors, leaving the organization high and dry. The organization was left with a handful of its old stalwarts who were not only committed but also competent and understood the nature of work at YHMH. Most other people at YHMH were in the learning process and trying to understand how YHMH operated. As far as its hierarchical structure was concerned, the organization had three major layers. At the helm of affairs, was the Director, then programs officers followed by project officers. There was another line of support staff including HR and administration, IT and accounts department. All Program Officers had full autonomy and were accountable to the Director. The position of Program Officer was a permanent one but its nomenclature changed for different works so as to be in tune with the nature of work. The organization was struggling to bring in structural changes by introducing new positions in its set up and also modus operandi so that would not lose its grip in the market and was able to retain talent and coach new entrants. An additional layer of position, Additional Director, was created above Program Officers which became a point of detest for many who viewed it as an unnecessary imposition and widening of the distance between the Director and the self. The management did not throw much clarity on this position of Additional Director, its authority and autonomy and the objective of introducing the position. The employees were simply informed about the changes which were being implemented. The employees however held mixed opinion and were skeptical whether changes were for greater good of the organization. The management was attempting to ensure that the staff was committed to quality work and trying to distinguish and reward hard working people to reinforce high-performance culture, the reality was that the culture which was reflective of high ethos for 20 years was undergoing a change. A gradual deterioration in culture was being sensed by staff which was further validated by the trend seen in annual survey showing the decline across past few years on some of the key dimensions such as openness, trust and authenticity. Compared to the industry norms, the status was better at YHMH but it was definitely not which they could take pride in. As can be viewed in the table, other than dimensions of autonomy, collaboration and experimenting, all dimensions of culture underwent change, rather declined in a period of three years (Table I). Most employees did not even understand the direction in which the organization was attempting to go. There was ambiguity on many administrative and personnel issues. Employees whispered about lack of objectivity in work allocation, work appraisal and tolerance of mediocrity and neglect of the talent. The newly appointed additional director attempted to make some modification to ensure quality. As part of his first initiatives, he made prior review of the proposals a mandatory requirement before submission to the agency. This was viewed as taking away of autonomy and as a suspicion on the quality of the work submitted by Program officers. Not overt, but covert resistance and displeasure could be observed in the behavior of many staff members towards the procedural and administrative transition. Task and the team Amid all this, the organization bagged a prestigious project on reenergizing hospital services from one of the apex bodies of the government system. The project was very crucial as it was reported to be the one whose success could lead YHMH to get many other similar projects across the country. A lot of hopes were pinned into its success. Though YHMH had some earlier experience of working on such projects, many of the staff members who had worked on such projects had already left the organization and YHMH was in a dilemma as to which staff member should be heading the project. One of the concerns of the government - funding agency - was that the project could be headed only by a person who had earlier experience and who was a domicile of the state (province) where the project was being implemented. After a lot of deliberation, two of the staff members were assigned the responsibility of implementing the project, Neera and Vijit as Project Coordinator and Co-coordinator, respectively. Neera belonged to the province of Jammu and Kashmir where the project was to be implemented and also had experience of working in this sector on similar type of projects but not of the same type. Vijit had conducted same kind of work earlier in a different province and that was the reason behind teaming them up. In this way, the criteria laid down by the government were adhered to. Both, Neera and Vijit were PhDs, had an experience of more than 15 years and had earned a good reputation for their past work. Though both had been working at YHMH for more than 10 years, they had never worked together. It was for the first time that they were working together but not without apprehensions. Neera was perceived as a person with a strong personality, who had no patience for tardiness. She was viewed as an internally motivated, conscientious person, a cheerful team player with absolute commitment to YHMH and its values. Vijit was more of a laid-back person with some high headedness. He carried an image of "always smiling", happy-go-lucky person who was sincere, competent, and committed towards his work. Given a choice, they would have preferred to work with some other colleague of their choice. But, they were not asked about their willingness, simply put together as a team as per the task requisite. As far as performance appraisal is concerned, both Neera and Vijit were considered as good performers. YHMH had culled out some parameters of performance (KRAs) with respect to research and consultancy and provided benchmarks according to which the staff of this level could be categorized as underperformer, performer, good performer and excellent performer. For the past two years, while Vijit was counted as good performer, Neera was among the excellent performers and both received the reward as per the decided formula -7.5 and 10 per cent of the basic salary to the good and excellent performers, respectively. This was a transparent system as after the annual appraisal, all the staff members were sent an email about those listed in good and excellent performance category. In the current assignment, public health facilities across the state were to be assessed on sample basis and recommendations were to be given for re-engineering health facilities at all levels. The assessment of the facilities was to be done in a detailed fashion so that all service related aspects could be covered. Thereafter, suggested recommendations were expected to be introduced. Its financial worth was also quite big at INR 5.7 crore (USD 867,418.63). Neera and Vijit both felt the stress of the big challenge, but it energized them and both started pulling their socks up so that a good show could be presented. It was a herculean task which needed competent guidance and a large team to execute. Hence, a number of personnel were recruited for effective implementation of the project. Various positions were created to work at the bottom-most public health facility, i.e. a sub center level to the highest level of a district hospital. In all, 132 field level functionaries were appointed for a period of 12 months to work in all 22 districts of the state. The organogram of the team is presented in Figure 1. In this task, the Program Officers were designated as Project Coordinator and Cocoordinator. Challenges and accomplishments Neera and Vijit's experience proved to be an asset in the project. Both were technically qualified and committed to the work. Both wanted to excel in their work. Neera knew that with a big team, verbal instructions will get diluted and therefore written instructions were important. Manuals were prepared for each aspect of assessment and the entire field staff was meticulously trained so that clarity about the work and mechanism to complete it is ensured. From his previous experience, Vijit knew the importance of logistics and got everything streamlined for smooth flow of the project. They wanted to get regular feedback for the work, so monitoring systems were created to know the status of the work on regular basis and so that corrections could be made well in time. After the initial hiccups, the assessment work started. In addition to the technical aspects, managerial aspects were a big issue and took lot of time and energy of the core team. The hilly topography of the state coupled with hostile weather also posed a lot of problems as the transportation channels were adversely affected. Many a times, communication and travel was hampered and the teams were forced to halt at a single place, which caused delay in work. Neera was mostly in the field for technical and moral support of the team. She visited each district at least once. On some occasions, Vijit also accompanied her. Both visited all types of health facilities and developed a good understanding of the lacunas and challenges faced by each type of health facility. The prior experience in handling such big teams helped Neera and Vijit in anticipating the probable technical, logistic and management problems and prevented deadlocks and big conflicts. The limitations of one were filled in by the expertise of the other. The smoothness with which the work was done and the efficiency with which it was executed in the field made Neera very satisfied, she felt very strong and powerful. Neera and Vijit could foresee that the weather would lead to delay in completion of the project, they wrote a request letter for an extension for three months which was granted to them. The work contract of the entire team was also extended for three months. Despite the delay, the results of the work were very promising. Neera and Vijit could come up with evidence-based recommendations required for re-engineering the hospitals which were greatly appreciated by the state team. The challenging work was to implement the suggested changes. Though the work was strenuous, the team had developed good rapport by then and everyone implemented the work with a lot of enthusiasm. The pilot work was extremely successful. YHMH team received excellent review and applause for the brilliant work. By the end of the project, Neera and Vijit had developed a good understanding. They recognized each other's strengths. After the completion of the project, both started writing and bidding for other consultancies together as a team. As Neera and Vijit had graduated from different disciplines, professionally they complemented each other and the experience of working with each other helped them in appreciating each other's competencies. The other older friends and colleagues of both Neera and Vijit who till now had been working either with Neera or Vijit also joined them and it was not long that this team increased in its width. All these staff members who had come together because of management's decision now actually started looking for opportunities when they could work together. While the team including Neera, Vijit and other colleagues were engrossed in their own work, holding technical discussions and critiques, it was started to be recognized as a self-sufficient competent team by other staff and colleagues. This was reflected from the amount of proposals submitted by them in that small duration and complementary remarks by other colleagues. The team also started attracting the annoyance and disgust of some other colleagues who probably felt ignored and sidelined. The incident One day, Neera received a phone call from the department of administration with a request to meet the HR Manager. On meeting, she was handed over an appreciation letter in which good work for the project was appreciated and a cash reward of INR 71,000 (US$1,065.26) was declared. The first thing which struck her was the odd amount (In India, there are some auspicious amounts e.g. Rs 11,000, Rs 21,000, Rs 51,000 and so on which are usually awarded unless it is based on some formula). It was obvious for her to ask as to how the amount was determined and if any formula was used in deciding the amount. She also inquired about the reward to other members of the team. The administrative head informed her that all the core team members would be given some reward for the good work but politely declined all questions about the amount. Neera urged in the name of transparency and explained that since she headed the project, she needs to know about the amount being distributed to her team mates and also the basis of deciding the amount. The administrative head stated that sharing the details of award amount is not transparency and cannot be disclosed. Neera kept on thinking about the definition of transparency. She also thought that if it was reward, why was it being given behind the closed doors. The administrative head off course assured her that all team members including Vijit had been rewarded. Neera thought that it would not be ethical to take away the reward amount without the knowledge of Vijit who equally contributed in the good work. She was anxious as to what would be the award for Vijit. She did not want it to be any less as they had worked as equals. It was only the designation which she had in the project was above Vijit. Pondering over all these issues, Neera showed her appreciation letter to Vijit and also told him about the reward amount. Sharing her apprehensions with Vijit, she asked him to let her know the reward amount given to him with her as she would prefer discussing with management if some unfair treatment had been done. She wished in her heart that the management would have been fair as she did not want any unpleasantness for the project which was completed so remarkably. There was some hope somewhere that discrimination would not have been done as among other things, Vijit was a good friend of the administrative head so quite understandably, the head would not let discrimination happen with him. Almost a month was gone after the reward distribution, Vijit did not discuss about it. The reward money had been reflected in the salary slip so Neera knew that even Vijit had received it, but she did not understand the silence of Vijit. It was true that both had been busy in their respective works too-consultancies and travelling for other projects, so did not get time. It was, however equally correct that they had interacted many a times but Vijit did not utter anything about the reward money. Whenever she wanted to discuss it, Vijit avoided it. Neera was anxious and wanted to be sure that fairness was maintained and was looking for a proper time to speak about it. While all this was going on in her mind, the other colleagues came to know about the reward through their own information sources. Officially, it was a private appreciation! So the colleagues inquired, congratulated and also shared their opinions about the amount. And through multiple sources, Neera come to know that Vijit had been awarded a sum of INR 100000 (USD 1,521.75) Neera's reaction Neera was completely taken aback, also because Vijit did not share this with her. She had worked with Vijit for a year, is it that she did not understand him? Is her assessment for people so poor? Is it that Vijit knew from the very beginning that it is not him, but Neera who was going to face discrimination and therefore remained silent or was he under some discomfort because of the discrimination and so hesitant to discuss it. Is it that Vijit did not want to hurt her sentiments so had tried to avoid this. Neera knew that it was not a matter of INR 30,000, which had upset her; it would not have made her any richer. She had worked in the organization for 10 years, but was never rewarded, over and above her annual appraisal. She had always received positive reviews by the agencies she worked with and was content with her work. She kept on pondering what type of reward was this which had rather stressed her more; it had left her self-esteem bruised, her trust shattered. Had she become target of some office game? Had she been a victim of politics? Was this a tactic to introduce conflict in the team and lessen their power? She started looking for other job opportunities. Her interest in all organizational activities faded away. She wanted to know why she had been discriminated, what were the performance issues? She wrote a request letter to the management asking them to share the objective standards of reward distribution. She wrote to all concerned-the HR Manager and the Director. Nevertheless, she did not get a reply. It was not something which was unexpected owing to YHMH's not so transparent policies. Neera was hoping a response as she thought that she had earned credibility by her good work and long association with YHMH and therefore the management would take her dissatisfaction on a serious note and would care to respond to her. She knew that YHMH was never good with transparent policies and open norms, but those things did not bother her until the time her own hands got burnt with it. Favoritism was becoming a norm in last few years, but it was done in a secretive way by instructing the recipient to remain silent about it. Those who became the victims or were ignored in this type of financial appreciation could not raise the issue as they came to know about it quite late. Moreover, in absence of parameters of assessment, the management's decision could not be questioned. This time, Neera came to know about it quite timely and also decided to confront by demanding the objective parameters of the decision on rewards by refusing to accept the discrimination made. This issue made it the talk of the office. As the news of this discrimination started spreading, office colleagues come to her and expressed their concerns and pondered about the deteriorating culture of YHMH. From office colleagues, she came to know that one another colleague, who was working on some other project also got the reward of the same amount as Neera but he was the one, whose project had incurred financial loss and was also the one which was not much appreciated by the funders. One quality which he possessed was closeness with the office management. Neera was all the more disturbed that she was equated with the person who carries an image of an incompetent and insincere person. The actions which warranted penalization, had not been even reprimanded, rather rewarded! The other employees would murmur, "It is pointless to work hard here, they will reward only a few, whom they like?" "Why worry, they have no value for competent people??" "This organization has learnt to lend hand to those whom they like not those who are to be liked for organizational good?" Neera was reminded of an article in Harvard Business Review in which Susan David, co-director of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching, founding director of Evidence Based Psychology LLC and a contributor to HBR's The Conversation blog, wrote, "I think who an organization promotes is a very strong index of their core culture". The article had elaborated that managers should recognize that who they reward sends a signal to the rest of the organization and therefore, they need to be sure they are endorsing behavior that is in line with the organization's values. Neera comforted herself with the thought that the episode made her learn that good work by committed people was not endorsed at YHMH, it was being in good relations, regardless of good work which was important. Though she could not know what led to discrimination against her but the entire office along with her came to know that good work was not the criteria for rewards. In one of the meetings, when the Additional Director tried to convey that good and streamlined work is an important determinant of reward, Neera got into an argument with him and questioned about performance management system at YHMH, which he could not reply satisfactorily. Employees joked among themselves that this is the only organization where other than work and competence, everything else was important. There was a performance which was beyond the parameters provided in Performance Management System of YHMH. For Neera, such things brought both pain and peace. While deterioration of culture of the organization where she had been working for 10 plus years pinched her, at the same time, it provided solace to her bruised self-esteem. She knew that this very organization which was recognized for its excellence was changing and changing for worse. She herself became reactive and excessively sensitive to petty issues. Past few days, she entered into many hot altercations with her colleagues, that too at slightest provocation. She had become skeptical about involving new people in her work and said that she preferred to work alone. This surprised the ones who had known Neera as a team player who had supported colleagues and youngsters in their career building. She had declined the requests of funding agencies which had approached her to write proposals for new assignments. She was happy to be not contributing as "contributing or not contributing"; the organizational treatment was perceived same. She knows that the reward has brought out not the best but the beast in her!

Required:

In the emerging markets, employees are viewed as most important internal ambassadors, discuss the implications would such an episode have on managements' image, and overall organizational culture? Discuss what could have been done at the organizational level to prevent the situation from occurring and later becoming bad? (20 marks)