What is Organizational Development?
Organizational Development envisions competent and capable employees to provide safe, effective, and efficient services for the people of Western Newfoundland in a healthy, safe and respectful work environment. The primary clients of Organizational Development are the staff, managers, physicians, volunteers, and students that provide direct lines of service to the individuals, families and communities of the Western region.
Organizational Development is committed to assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating education programs and services that support the development of a learning environment for all clients. The fundamental programs, processes and practices of Organizational Development are guided by Western Health’s vision, mission and values.
Activities and initiatives of Organizational Development represent a planned approach to assist the alignment of organizational performance through training and development to meet the strategic and operational goals. Organizational Development endeavors to support organizational change by facilitating, consulting, coaching, analyzing, designing, and training.
The lines of business for Organizational Development within Western Health are:
- Learning Environment
- Human Resource Developing
- Professional and Staff Development
- Leadership Development and Support
- Audiovisual Services
- Library Services
- Volunteer Services
- Residential Services
- Regional Pastoral Care Services
Learning Environment
Organizational Development endeavors to enhance a learning environment for employees, managers, physicians, and volunteers of Western Health. The necessary training and development to attain organizational goals are provided and opportunities for professional and personal growth and development are supported. Specifically:
- Managing the learning environment by:
- Identifying and analyzing core competencies and professional and staff developments needs through an annual regional needs assessment.
- Providing training to develop staff to perform according to professional standards and organizational goals and objectives
- Analyzing, designing, developing, implementing and evaluating learning activities associated with workplace learning and performance.
- Prioritizing learning activities based on organizational direction, goals and objectives.
- Coaching individual employees, teams, and programs and services by:
- Using an interactive approach to produce more positive outcomes.
- Improving others’ ability to set goals, take action, and make better decisions by supporting the full use of their natural strengths
- Enhancing organizational knowledge by:
- Developing a plan for transforming the organization into a knowledge creating and sharing entity
- Leading innovation in knowledge delivery methodology.
- Promoting a culture by practicing and encouraging others to practice evidence based decision making, inquiry, evaluation, and lifelong learning.
Human Resource Development
Organizational Development, within the strategic direction of Western Health, supports program and service areas by participating in:
- Career planning by:
- Ensuring that employees have the right skills to meet the strategic challenges of the organization
- Supporting the alignment of individual career development to achieve a match between individual and organizational needs
- Promoting individual growth and development
- Education and Training by:
- Remediation - helping individuals meet basic screening or entry-level requirements for a job
- Orientation – helping to socialize employees into a desired organizational culture
- Qualifying – assisting individuals to meet basic performance expectations for a specific job and increase their productivity in that job
- Performance Improvement Training – assisting employees who may not be meeting organizational work standards
- Cross Training – assisting employees who are expected to master new jobs or job skills
- Retraining – providing upgrading to keep skills current as technologically or organizationally conditions change
- Outplacement Training – preparing individuals for departure from an organization in the wake of retirement or organizational staffing changes
Professional and Staff Development
Organizational Development engages in the development and delivery of education, training and professional development for all Western Health staff, managers, physicians, volunteers, and students. This would include: orientation for all new Western Health staff, managers, physicians, volunteers, students, and externally contracted services; specialty training programs such as ICU/ER training; basic, advanced and shared skills as defined in scopes of practice; product and equipment evaluation and orientation; and change management for organizational processes, such as model of care delivery, etc.
This mandate requires the development and deployment of a program planning profile to include:
- Assessing learning needs of all employees, managers, physicians, volunteers and students to include:
- Designing and applying a systematic process of identifying learning needs through an annual regional needs assessment
- Collating and analyzing data form the needs assessment
- Developing an annual education plan to meet identified gaps in knowledge, skills, and abilities
- Designing learning
- Designing, creating, and developing learning interventions to meet identified needs
- Analyzing and selecting the most appropriate strategy, methodologies, and technologies to maximize the learning experience and impact
- Improving performance
- Appling a systematic process of discovering and analyzing performance gaps
- Designing and developing cost effective solutions to close performance gaps
- Partnering with the manager/staff in identifying the learning opportunity, the education solution, and the performance indicators to be impacted by training
- Implementing the education solution
- Monitoring the change
- Evaluating the results
- Delivering training
- Delivering learning (e.g. courses, guided experience) in a manner that both engages the learner and produces desired outcomes
- Managing and respond to learner needs based on adult learning principles.
- Ensuring that the learning solution is made available or delivered in a timely, equitable and effective manner.
- Measuring and Evaluating
- Partnering with the manager and staff to identify performance indicators.
- Gathering supportive data to measure the impact of learning on performance utilizing performance indicators and best practice guidelines.
- Analyzing findings to increase effectiveness and provide recommendations for change.
Leadership Development and Support
Organizational Development enables the leaders of Western Health to improve employee performance by supporting Leadership Development by:
- Performance Management:
- Developing the process for Employee Performance Development
- Supporting the leadership of Western Health to provide meaningful feedback to all employees in a timely and effective manner
- Supporting the leadership in identifying staff and professional development to enhance the delivery of quality of service
- Supporting Leadership in defining job scope, objectives, and competencies which are aligned with organizational goals and objectives.
- Linking staff feedback to improvement opportunities.
- Management/Leadership development:
- Developing leadership training programs based on needs assessment, best practices, and organizational goals and objectives
- Supporting new leaders through a comprehensive leadership orientation program and as necessary mentoring and/or coaching opportunities
- Supporting accountability processes through leadership training
- Providing an awareness and understanding of the overall strategic direction, goals and objectives
- Capacity Building:
- Supporting and strengthening leadership skills and competencies
- Fostering partnerships to facilitate leadership development
For more information, please contact:
Jeanette Christopher, Director of Organizational Development
Phone: 709-637-5000 ext 5285
Email: jeannettechristopher@westernhealth.nl.ca
