Strategic HR Case Study – Contract Writing
At Vanilla Healthcare, where patients’ lives are in the hands of the employees every day, engaged skilled employees are the organization’s best assets. Having a high performing HR team is critical to your success in a region where numerous organizations tap a shared pool of potential employees creating competition for the best candidates and making it difficult to retain your high potential employees.
Vanilla’s Human Resources Department is responsible for recruiting, hiring, developing, and retaining their employees. They also manage programs and resources (e.g., technical and soft skill training, employee safety, benefits and compensation, etc.) that effect employees’ daily lives. Vanilla’s CEO believes that high performing leaders increase employees engagement which ultimately results in better patient care and organizational performance. To make this Vanilla’s reality, the CEO determines that HR’s role needs to shift from a transactional focus to a consultative and strategic business partner role.
Vanilla Healthcare hired FIXHR Leadership Consulting for this project. The goal was not only to create a plan to develop a strategic HR function, but also enable HR leaders to implement the plan. Now, three years later, Vanilla’s HR team is a high functioning team serving the organization as the CEO intended.
Another round of mergers is occurring in the region and Vanilla Healthcare is acquiring CareRx, a small multi-hospital cooperative. Your role as a Vanilla HR Business Partner is to serve as an internal consultant and assess the CareRx HR department. Your charge is to determine if potential gaps exist between the skills and capabilities of CareRx HR employees and the expectations of Vanilla Healthcare.
Using Checklist 2 in Chapter 4 Contracting Overview to guide you write a contract for this engagement. Your client’s are the Vanilla Healthcare Vice President of Human Resources and the CareRx Director of Human Resources.
Block (2011) considers authenticity as one of the major behavioral elements of consulting. Because of that, we will explore the nature of authenticity in consulting before jumping into the more mechanical elements such of contracting, discovery, implementation, and the like. Authentic behavior, according to Block, means that the words used by the consultant are a reflection of how he or she experiences the interaction with the client. These internal experiences (and their resulting behavioral responses) have consequences. In this first assignment dealing with the Vanilla Healthcare Case Study, we will explore how being authentic as a consultant can impact both internal experience and external behavior on both side of the client/consultant equation. This assignment will also touch on Results, Accountability, and the Right to Fail. Please study chapter three of the Block text thoroughly before beginning your assignment response.
Directions:
1. Explain, according to Block, how being or not being authentic can impact the interactions between consultant and client. Then, offer 3 examples from the Vanilla Healthcare Case Study (create your own mock data based on the general parameters of the case study). Use the format detailed in the book for your examples (as follows):
- Client Says:
- Consultant Experiences:
- Non-Authentic Consultant Response:
- Authentic Consultant Response:
For each, offer an analysis of how/why authenticity could be of benefit to both consultant and Vanilla Healthcare (provide expert support here and not just personal opinion).
2. Briefly discuss the theory behind Results, Accountability, and The Right to Fail, followed by how each might be experienced using the case study as your base.
This analysis should be 4+ pages (not including the Title or Reference pages) written using an MS Word format. It must be formatted per APA version 6 standards.
- Download the file named Week 3 – Authentic Consulting.docx
- Complete the paper and rename it with the following format: Week 3 – Authentic Consulting_YourLastName.docx