EDAC 632 Course Reflection Video.
Michael White
EDAC 632 Fall 2023 Final Project
Organization:
1. Intro:
I work for and educate employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs, my wheelhouse is Lean Healthcare and any program for Continuous Process Improvement within our Local, Regional or National Improvement Office. I host Local Sessions Face to Face for the employees that are representative of Price's Law. Each of my applicants for training is usually an expression of this algorithm and they are very driven unless they are voluntold. I work for Quality Management, and not education in the VA.
Our Education Department covers all forms of continuing education required by the many facets of Clinical and Non-clinical staff in the Department of Veterans Affairs. This opportunity is to offset costs of maintaining licensure with the free CEU opportunities.
Institution for Learning, Education and Development (ILEAD) is the place that VA employees can seek any sort of professional improvement. https://www.va.gov/vhaleadershipdevelopment/Links to an external site.
Residing within the Office of Human Capital Management (HCM), the Institute for Learning, Education and Development (ILEAD) is responsible for the life cycle of an employee’s career journey within VHA, providing virtual and in-person training, products, services and cohort-based experiential development opportunities for employees in all phases of their career, from entry-level, through mid-career, to aspiring and new supervisors and managers, and for budding, future and current senior leaders at the executive level.
WASHINGTON — Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced an updated version of its 1959 mission statement. The new mission statement is: “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.”
2. Organizational Structure:
This structure has a Hierarchy from National Office, down to Regional Office and into Local VA Medical Centers. Educational Opportunities are structured by Student needs, whether Virtual/Recorded Conference Sessions or even Face to Face. Being the largest Federal healthcare institution in the world, the Department of Veterans Affairs and its internal obligations remained on Covid Emergency Status until May of 2023, which put a damper on many Face-to-Face options.
3. Findings/Implications:
· The main functions of educational program management
· Mission and vision of an organization
· The types of adult education programs and the organizations which offer adult education programs.
The largess and the broad size alone make navigating all of the opportunities afforded to employees within the VA a difficult task. One of the organizational strengths is their Mentoring Program, which helps employees’ network and find answers from local and regional on out to National Subject Matter Experts or Points of Contact. The VA, until 2014 was slow to address shortfalls. Employee satisfaction, internal education, and many other components of keeping a workforce engaged and finding solutions for issues internal to the VA are a driving force. Since 2015, there has been a national drive to address these things and the VA workforce as a whole is becoming more competent in their positions with robust opportunities driven by each employee personal and professional needs.
The VA has been very Mission Oriented with becoming an agile system where local systems don't require national responses as often as was prior to the agile mindset.
Many systems I have seen address adult education internally and the large external institutions address it as well. Internal or External, the path to success is self-improvement and that stems from Personal and Professional Development.
Leadership and Administration:
(1) Roles and Positions
At the VA, we have the full pyramid, Executive Level with 4 responsible for all of the departments. Service Chiefs are the ones next in line, responsible to ELT and responsible to their individual departments. Middle Managers are not quite frontline supervisors, usually campus supervisors at the VA. Frontline Supervisors usually have the title of Supervisor on their position and handle all of the staff below them that are frontline employees.
Veterans’ Health Administration (VHA)<reference in link. Links to an external site.
The Veterans Health Administration Links to an external site. (VHA) is home to one of the United States’ largest integrated health care systems, consisting of 171 medical centers, more than 1,400 community-based outpatient clinics, community living centers, Vet Centers and Domiciliary. Together these health care facilities and the more than 53,000 independent licensed health care practitioners who work within them provide comprehensive care to more than 9.1 million Veterans each year.
VA medical centers provide a wide range of services including traditional hospital-based services such as surgery, critical care, mental health, orthopedics, pharmacy, radiology, and physical therapy. In addition, most of its medical centers offer additional medical and surgical specialty services including audiology and speech pathology, dermatology, dental, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, podiatry, prosthetics, urology, and vision care. Some medical centers also offer advanced services such as organ transplants and plastic surgery.
(2) Daily Routines and Activities
I am a direct report to a Service Chief and interviewed her, Dr. Jennifer Hiester, Chief of Quality Management. Her daily activities are being the liaison between Quality Management/QM and the rest of the organization. QM isn't directly responsible to any department, as we don't fall into their governance structure. We work 1 step removed from the Medical Center Director who is basically the local CEO. Activities of the Chief include issue briefs with the QM staff reporting on incidents occurring at all 7 campuses so that our Executive Leadership Team/ELT can be made aware of the 10,000-foot view of the problem. Since the VA/VHA is a government entity, it has several duties to many other agencies in circumstances of patient care. The Chief may issue a response to a congressional inquiry, participate in a root cause analysis of a Sentinel Event/Event causing harm to a Veteran, hold meetings with QM staff for pre briefing analysis. Our entire QM team is the administrative team that keeps Northern Indiana Healthcare aware and compliant with so many government agencies and external inspectors of healthcare organizations. Being Data Analysts and usually field experts in the lane of expertise, the QM team is always busy with inspections- around 38 a year.
The QM team are the liaisons to the departments and will be the auditor/inspector’s scribe during the inspections to report back to QMs chief about possible findings and things that need fixed. Usually, in an inspection, items addressed and corrected during the inspection process only turn into notes. Findings stem from things that our VA has no current process to fix. That's how I jump into the mix on my Lean instruction with Process Improvement. We have now developed a wing of High Reliability Organization into my Section of QM too and they work with employees to address patient care concerns regularly. I am a High Reliability Master Trainer, tying all of the HRO principles into the Lean Method for the students so that the students have a better understanding of current VA culture and wanting to fix problems instead of leaving them be because that's just the way it is.
(3) Qualifications
My Chief practices Servant Leadership and keeps in contact with all of QM on a weekly basis if not daily as needed. Servant Leadership works for my chief, since she was a candidate external to the VA and worked in Private Sector healthcare. Her notions personally are that effective leadership has to be visible, and competent or you won't gain traction or buy in with the staff. Also, there needs to be clear and concise communication from the top down, or the masses will never know what the needs of the organization are to begin with. As an Administrator working for the Chief and the Director/ELT, I do my best to maintain my Lean program from the National Curriculums to keep from drifting away from the National direction with my own lens of what I think things should be. The biggest qualifier for any position is the fact that you can do the job successfully, on your own and with little direction after your initial 6 months’ probation.
(4). Implications
I have learned from this assignment, that most of the things in a regular organization governmental structure always have hidden gems of information that nobody knows unless there is gossip. The why factors for most reassignments can be surmised by the what happened to a person that caused the reassignment. QM has the position to understand what happened and not spread gossip about the situation, just the factors that created the determination. What surprises me most, is the results of the All-Employee Survey annually, since the ELT have to be responsible for all of those factors because our results are reported to the National Secretary to the VA
Budget and Funding:
(1) Income and Expenses
What are the organization’s sources of income?
All of the Department of Veterans Affairs budget is taxpayer dollars. Each director has a fiduciary trust to the US citizens to make sure all of the items going to the Veteran as far as programming and healthcare are maintained to the highest integrity.
What are its main expenses? Which are fixed and which are variable expenses?
Main expenses are Providing healthcare and transportation for Veterans proven to be Service Connected for their disabilities they suffer. Healthcare has a broad definition and doesn't necessarily mean chained to the Department of Veterans affairs. I as a Disabled Veteran can opt into the VA or opt out and get care in the community services or Telehealth/ Veteran Video Connect services depending on the location of availability for the services in reference to my home address. Items that are on a fixed expenditure would be things like how the VA pays external providers and schools much like Medicaid has a final payout to the payee. Variable expenses are things like the items in logistics and supply chain that would need more coverage during times of shortages.
(2) Budget and Funding
What are the factors which affect the budget for adult education in this organization?
Factors usually come with some source of National Finding or Shortage being addressed by an inspection that has been found to be total across the VA nationally. If it is a minimal impact, then there will be localized budget reinforcements. If it's a national impact, the full force of congress will bare its weight on the problem until it's fixed within the VA.
What are the funding sources for adult education in this organization?
The sources of funding for all of the adult education in the VA is from the Taxpayer. The only part that isn't necessarily tax burden is the Veterans using their education benefits that they paid for during their evolution of training.
What are the challenges in terms of budgeting and funding the adult education programs?
Inflation is a difficult one to peg. Also, many shortages during covid that turned vital resources into scarce items.
What are your suggestions in terms of how to better support the adult education program and make it financially stable and sustainable?
My assertions here would be to have the federal government get fee basis training for the employees needing it, so that they could develop internal skills with a contract education provider so that it was less internal and would be more appropriate for a nationalized system. Too many variables inside the VA that each and every location struggle with.
(3) Implications
What have you learned from this assignment? What surprised you or what impressed you the most after you completed this assignment? Please use the knowledge you learned in this assignment to frame your ideas.
What I learned; most citizens don't know the ramifications of being a fiduciary trust to the tax burden. Most employees don't register the idea that anything we do costs our friends and family more money from their checks.
HRM:
(1) Introduction
In the Department of Veterans Affairs, the goal of Human Resource Management is to provide oversight and establish short- and long-term goals for training, performance management, learning management systems, labor management, discrimination complaints, EEO, investigation processes, alternative dispute resolution, diversity, and inclusion, and telework in the Office of Operations, Security, and Preparedness. Human Resources and Administration/Operations, Security, and Preparedness (HRA/OSP) (va.gov)Links to an external site.
HRA/OSP sets the strategic direction and articulates the vision that places the VA Human Resources community at the very cornerstone of the VA mission of care and service to the Nation’s Veterans and their families. VA service begins with VA people, and HRA/OSP works to ensure that VA is positioned and resourced to hire, develop, and retain a world-class workforce in service to our Veterans. HRA/OSP champions quality VA work life with Veterans employment programs, innovative training, human resources management, robust diversity and inclusion programs, proactive conflict resolution, worker safety and wellness, building management, positive labor/management partnerships, and structured management of investment projects. HRA/OSP scope and reach touches every member of the VA workforce: from hire to retire.
Mission: Lead human capital management strategies, policies, and practices that cultivate an engaged, proficient, and diverse workforce to transform and continually improve services to Veterans and their families.
VA Human Resources Strategic Plan
Mission Statement for Human Resources – Recruit, develop, and retain a competent,
committed, and diverse workforce that provides high quality service to veterans and their
families.
Vision Statement – The VA Human Resource community is a dynamic, innovative, flexible
organization that thoroughly understands VA’s business lines. VA Human Resources
ensures that VA has the right people, in the right jobs, with the right skills and abilities,
with a true sense of personal value, and a commitment to providing high quality service to
our Nation’s veterans.
VA’s Mission – “To care for him/her who has borne the battle and for his/her widow/er and
his/her orphan” - President Abraham Lincoln
VA’s Core Values - The men and women of VA are dedicated to fulfilling the
Department’s mission and they commit their abilities and energy to continue the
rich history of providing for those that have served America. In doing so, we will
strive to uphold the following core values that represent the basic fabric of our
organizational culture.
(2) Routine of the HRM
At the VA, as a human resources specialist you are responsible for a variety of duties that support the VA workforce. You have the opportunity to excel in recruitment placement, classification, compensation, employee relations/labor relations, human resources information systems, training, and development, and more.
Daily Goals at the VA: (Need to provide daily activities here. Bo)
Underlying and supporting the planned systemic changes in the Human Resources
environment is the development of an effective, user-friendly, Human Resources
Information System. The key part of this system will be a web-based HR Resource
Center, a tool that HR professionals and managers can use to address local
classification actions while staying consistent with both Office of Personnel
Management and VA classification guidelines. It will include position descriptions,
performance standards, functional statements and competencies, performance-based interview questions and eventually, electronic employee records. In practical terms, this
system will, when a performance measure for a certain grade is needed, enable an HR
professional to go on-line and look up and select from several examples of performance
measures at the grade in question.
In addition, this system will make both historical and current workforce data available so
that HR professionals will be able to do trend analysis to help VA managers determine
future workforce needs based on retirements, promotions, re-assignments and other
significant personnel actions.
The next step in the strategic process is to ensure that VA’s human capital plans and
strategies are developed and implemented in such a way that they serve the mission,
goals, objectives, and budget of the entire Department. This requires clear lines of
communication, effective planning processes between the Administrations, Staff Offices
and HR&A, skilled HR staffing throughout VA, and a One-VA approach to marketing
and staffing. The five major goals of the HR Strategic Plan are replete with
commitments that will appropriately align HR activities within the One-VA context.
Workforce and Succession Planning encompasses a substantial part of VA’s human
capital program. A properly functioning human capital program will provide an adequate
supply of qualified prospective employees for planned departures and new openings.
VA is developing new information systems that will help identify an appropriate pool of
internal VA candidates for these openings. Also, by expanding the collection and
dissemination of personnel data, additional benefits will accrue. Databases that
maintain an inventory of employees’ skills, core competency requirements for each
position, and training programs to fulfill the competencies and to prepare employees for
their future posts, will establish the critical base for a successful human capital program.
Closely related to the Workforce and Succession Plan is our “One-VA Marketing and
Recruitment Program” where our focus will be on hiring veterans, an expanded minority
outreach program that will move us to the point where our workforce mirrors the
Nation’s workforce, and a well-integrated Co-Op and Intern program that targets and
nurtures VA’s future leaders. Inherent in our recruitment activities, is the necessity to
ensure that all employees have a VA career plan so that they and their supervisors
know what lies ahead and what training they need to get there.
Training and development are also critical to the transformation process defined in this
plan. We will formalize the programmatic links between training and career progression
in our leadership development programs – the Senior Executive Service Candidate
Development Program and Leadership VA – so that targeted openings for candidates in
the Senior Executive Service exist once the training is completed. We will also ensure
that career mapping takes place and Individual Development Plans (IDPs) are
developed for all employees at all levels to support their career progression. The
creation of this kind of commitment to all VA employees is an important part of the
planned transformation within VA’s HR environment. A key aspect of training and
development is to ensure that VA’s leaders and managers have the ability to effectively
manage people, ensure continuity of leadership, and sustain a learning environment
that drives continuous improvement in performance. VA will provide programmed core
competency training for supervisors and leaders to assure that the people in line for
leadership positions have the training they need to perform. We will also be formalizing
the programmatic links between training and career progression in leadership
development programs.
To achieve the transformation described in this plan, VA cannot work in a vacuum or in
stovepipes. VA will collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and partners to
identify, develop, and integrate tools and systems that meet business needs. VA will
also endeavor to improve internal cooperation within the HR community to ensure
consistent implementation of policies and procedures, improve corporate-level training
and development, enhance operating systems, and build a corporate HR information
system. This philosophy of collaboration will transcend all five of the goals included in
this Plan and serve as a basic operating principal for Human Resources Management.
The factors within HR that affect adult education are unqualified and incapable staff hired to do a job outside their capabilities regularly.
(3) Implications
What have you learned from this assignment, what could be done differently if you were the director of the HRM in this organization? Why? Please use the knowledge you have learned in this unit to frame your ideas.
Currently, the VA is under congressional oversight and has many national initiatives to increase staffing since the trend in healthcare staffing all across the nation is in a downward spiral. The healthcare industry lost many devoted professionals in the VA, and external to the VA during the Covid situation. VA stats say that all 139 VA medical centers show a position listing for 285 different occupation lines, from Food Service to Healthcare Providers. At this point, the VHA isn't able to keep up with retirement attrition at my local facility, much less people leaving the VA due to conditions of employment issues.
What would I do if I were the director of HR, I would shorten the on-boarding process considerably. It shouldn't take 9 months of waiting to get a job anywhere. I have stuck with the VA since it's one of the few opportunities left to collect an actual retirement not anchored to an annuity account or 401k. VA health staffing shortages back on the rise after years of progress | Federal News Network Links to an external site.
Marketing:
(1). Introduction
Tell us the purpose and goals of your marketing plan and how many people you plan to reach in your marketing plan.
My marketing plan is to increase saturation within my Northern Indiana Veterans Medical Centers which covers 7 locations and over 2500 employees.
At this point, my Lean Training Curriculum has a saturation rate of just under 8% of the employee population.
I have taken simple national processes and developed marketing tools with our Public Affairs/ Digital Design Officers to make Universally acceptable marketing tools to give people the information in their hands, and simple Tiny URL links on the items to increase their use. I tried QR codes, but the VA hasn't really set up a dedicated QR reader for the enterprise-wide use. QR readers are not all the same, but a Tiny URL seems to let Veterans and Employees alike get to the website destinations I select and convert.
(2). Marketing strategies
Tell us your strategies of how to market your adult education program and also the rationales of why you want to use such strategies (read chapter 6), and what goals and possible results you want to achieve through these strategies.
My strategies: Outreach, Transparency, Ease of Use, Triangulation to Consistent information and constant pursuit of new items that cover more reach effectively.
One of the things I constantly hear about the Veterans Administration by employees, who are not Veterans is "That's just the way it is" and I personally take offense to that statement, since I'm a Disabled Veteran seeking healthcare in the actual VA I work for. I have been banging the drums of change and process improvement for several years now and landing my job as the Systems Redesign and Improvement Specialist for the Northern Indiana Healthcare systems, I can lead the change quite effectively with my 30 plus years of Change Management and Process Improvement expertise. I come into this being a subject matter expert that has completed projects inside and external to the VA. I have industry experience in plastics with ISO9000 and Lean Six Sigma as a LSS Black Belt. I have no problems attempting any project, since I was a trailblazer everywhere I have worked, trying new things, and innovating new ideas from the people's suggestions around me. My goals/results I would like to achieve. A deeper saturation rate of Lean trained staff that use the lean method effectively. My Vision is to have 50% saturation rate with Lean trained staff in the Yellow Belt ranks so that any department can just fix itself, since Lean Healthcare teaches the Yellow Belts to undertake inside their department improvement projects. I feel like a preacher in a church, keeping the fires lit with a simple and consistent message of Yes you can, and We will succeed in making the VA a better place for the Veterans we serve by creating a simpler process for the employees that serve the Veterans. Job satisfaction increases, and ownership of issues can be more effectively distributed with a methodology that can improve processes and sustain the improvements.
(3) Implications
Please provide some specific suggestions in terms of how to market an adult education program. You can use bullet points or tables to present your suggestions.
My specific suggestions:
~Supervisor Awareness. This would leverage the workhorses that are certified in Lean to create better systems internal to the VA and possibly streamline systems attached to the VA from external sources to make them better. Supervisor awareness brings in the ability to help trainees and certified lean belts to have ownership, by the supervisors enabling the employees with some protected time to participate and supervisor awareness can play a large part in the success of a project by the supervisor being a champion for the project along with aiding in sustainment through reinforcement.
~Employee Job Fairs with a booth manned by a few Certified Lean belts that could attest to the veracity of the training and its effectiveness to the students and their job satisfaction by improving things that they touch.
~Fliers available around the departments, printed off by the supervisors and shared at their daily huddles.
~Leveraging the VA's Public Affairs teams to target and deliver the fliers and training dates to employees that want to attend the training. This puts the message in our approved social media points for employees inside our system and external to our system to see the marketing materials and the Tiny URLs to find more opportunities to participate.
~Face to face professional sales techniques employed throughout daily interaction and spot audits to locations that don't have much participation in the Lean Methodology.
(4) Summary Table
Please summarize the main ideas of your paper in the following table
Goals | Strategies | Rationales | Possible results |
Increase Saturation of Lean Trained Staff | Employ multiple marketing techniques to net a larger return | There are many ways to find new trainees. | A higher job satisfaction index with employees that can fix their own problems with processes |
Increase Awareness of Lean and its methodology to Supervisors and Service Chiefs | Push the new condensed version of Lean 4 Leaders to the department heads. | With Department Support in place and a deeper understanding of the concepts, the departments could fix themselves without much assistance. | Departments would have less emergencies and go from a reactionary stance to a proactive stance to issues that arise. |
Transparency to the National Improvement Office | Being a person that leads the change instead of reacting to the change, the NIO pays attention to the trends going on at my VA Medical Center | Leading with the provided, targeted software, creation of reports is easier to provide and having the data for all things embedded in those processes is an easy show through those software items since that is where National pulls their own data. | Less National Findings against my VA Medical Center from the portions of the process that I control, since I am following their guidance, instead of making my own decisions to follow the wrong pathways not nationally provided. |
Consistent Training | I pull the curriculum with all of its updates each time I host a training session so that the information is current and up to date. | There is no reason in the age of current data to be pulling anything out of date, not in alignment with national curriculum to teach students with. | Less variation in student understanding of the basic VA Lean Methodology that has changed very little over time since the VA Lean Enterprise Transformation put in place in 2014. |
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