Workforce
This is typical the largest expense in an organization. Crane has been through a number of reduction-in force-initiatives and has (not have) also examined leadership structures and span of control with an eye toward load leveling across the team seeking to improving efficiency of the most expensive category of employees. External benchmarks are interesting but very rarely drive improvement. Internal benchmarks are more useful where applicable. Crane has been through a number of reduction-in force-initiatives and have also examined leadership structures and span of control with an eye toward load leveling across the team seeking to improving efficiency of the most expensive category of employees.
“I cannot think of a time when there was a greater gap in the Human Resources needed to meet customer/patient demands than what we are experiencing today, yet we are wasting our human capital every day.”
— Aaron Crane
At Seattle Cancer Care Alliance they partnered with KPMG’s human capital practice to evaluate our workforce structure and talent development processes. This included the key elements of an operating model for communication, decision making, committee structure and effectiveness. They found broad inconsistencies in span of control including job descriptions. The led to definition of core competencies in each role that illuminated the path for individual progression. They invested in additional leadership where spans were too large and consolidated leadership in those areas that were too small. They standardized the process to charter committees ensuring authority was clear and purpose was value added. They also established a process to monitor the effectiveness of each committee.