Merit Career Development Blog | Entries from November 2021

Optimize Your Training by Engaging Your Employees More Effectively

Senior Executives can commit vast resources and money to manage their employees, but if the staff does not feel valued or engaged in the business, it's likely that the desired results may not be achieved.

Improve Employee Engagement with Training and Professional Education According to a study from Gallup Inc, titled "The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders", effectively engaging and retaining employees is one of the biggest challenges that leaders can face. Over a three-year period, from 2010 to 2012, the research firm surveyed more than 350,000 respondents, Forbes magazine reports.

The findings indicated that 70 percent of American workers are "not engaged" and are disconnected from the workplace, which in turn can make them less productive. This lack of engagement can be significantly detrimental to business profits. Gallup estimated that disengaged employees can cost companies between $450 and $550 billion per year in lost productivity. These employees can also negatively influence their fellow employees, drive clients away and miss workdays completely.

With only 30 percent of employees working at their optimal potential, leaders need to begin improving their engagement strategies to retain staff and bolster their productivity as a business.

Trickle-down Engagement
Rather than focus strictly on lower levels of the organization, Gallup suggest that management leaders center their efforts at the top and have it disseminated throughout the company. As mid-level managers and employees feel empowered, they can begin to identify barriers to effective engagement and help develop methods for organizational improvement. Staff members can be the most knowledgeable when it comes to the company's processes and clients, which might result in better performance when given the right tools for the job.

The training process can be an area where leaders engage their employees directly for the betterment of the company, according to Training magazine. Merit Career Development offers a range of teaching techniques that engage employees and increase learning retention. To learn more contact us by phone, 610-225-0193 or send us an email.

Risk Management in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical Industry

Risk Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry The biotech and pharmaceutical industries are no stranger to risk - organizing clinical trials for medications that may never reach the open market due to inefficiency can place a significant financial burden on companies. When it comes to managing them, identifying procedures can be essential to avoiding or minimizing the financial impact of risks.

The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a survey of senior management executives in the pharmaceuticals and life sciences industry regarding risk in their respective companies. The 65 responses were combined with those of an earlier survey of 353 executives in a wider range of other industries. It mainly focused on North America, with 65 percent of respondents hailing from the region, but also included international areas such as Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

Management is C-Level
According to its findings, the EIU reported that the ultimate responsibility of risk management was falling on CEOs, CFOs, CROs and general counsel. The survey found that the senior executives could be doing a better job of defining the company's interest in risk, ensuring that information gets to the appropriate people for assessment.

Most Time Spent on Compliance
Following controls and monitoring, compliance takes up most of their time with risk management. However, this leaves managers and executives with less freedom to watch for emerging threats that could create financial hardships. As a result, companies are failing to spread risk awareness throughout their organizations.

Mismatch Between Barriers, Risk Processes
The results showed that two-thirds of respondents had no intention of recruiting a chief risk officer, with less than one-third saying their organization has one on staff already. While breaking down the risk management silo may have been beneficial, the lack of awareness diminishes an organization's ability to understand new risks.

The Benefit of Third-Party Training
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, quality systems are becoming integral to the pharmaceutical industry. In turn, risk management is a valuable component of an effective quality system.

The biotech and pharmaceutical industries can greatly benefit from outsourcing their risk management training to third-party experts. Merit Career Development offers courses specific in project risk management for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. For more information, click here.

The EIU study underscores the advantages that extra training can bring to risk management in the pharmaceutical industry. With a healthy roster of subject matter experts, Merit can help executives not only manage current threads but also look ahead to potential emerging risks.

Avoid Financial Sanctions with the Proper HIPAA/HITECH Compliance Plan

Doctors Studying Data on Computer The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH) as amended by the HIPAA Omnibus Rule in 2013 define the regulations for the private and secure management of health information. Covered entities and business associates that neglect adhering to these regulations can face rigid sanctions from a multitude of agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), its Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General.

Each regulatory agency can impose fines against covered entities and business associates that fail to document, investigate and remedy HIPAA and HITECH violations. Without the proper compliance planning, covered entities and business associates can be slammed with heavy financial penalties and regulatory oversight, as happened to Cignet Health of Prince George's County in Maryland.

Learning from the Past

According to Healthcare ITNews, Cignet denied 41 patients access to their medical between September 2008 and October 2009, a right guaranteed by the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Cignet further failed to cooperate with OCR's investigation of the patients' complaints and with HHS' subpoena for the records, which was enforced by the District Court.

The court levied a $1.3 million fine against Cignet for failing to grant access to the patients' records, and an additional $3 million for willful neglect of the HIPAA Privacy regulations.

The time for proper HIPAA and HITECH compliance planning is now.

Training Modules Available

"HIPAA and HITECH, Pathway to Compliance" is a four-part do-it-yourself instructional series that guides its users in drafting a HIPAA/HITECH Compliance Plan. Each part provides regulatory information and resources necessary to build a customized plan. Documentation developed in this series can be used when faced with OCR investigations and/or audits to demonstrate compliance efforts.

In this series, Patricia Wynne, Esq., CIPP, a seasoned HIPAA/HITECH subject matter expert familiar with the day-to-day challenges of compliance, presents guidelines for drafting a Compliance Plan that are easy to understand and practical to implement - not bogged in technical jargon. Each course is one hour in length and includes case studies and questions to enhance learning, as well as resources that can be downloaded and used in the compliance planning process. Now is the time to build your HIPAA/HITECH Compliance Plan with the professional insight of Merit Career Development.

HIPAA and HITECH, Pathway to Compliance on Udemy
Click here to access Part 1: Policies & Procedures
Click here to access Part 2: Complaints & Breaches
Click here to access Part 3: Assessments & Risk Analysis
Click here to access Part 4: Workforce Training

HIPAA and HITECH, Pathway to Compliance on Arbington
Click here to access Part 1: Policies & Procedures
Click here to access Part 2: Complaints & Breaches
Click here to access Part 3: Assessments & Risk Analysis
Click here to access Part 4: Workforce Training

Customer Conversations

A two-step learning experience to boost listening skills.


Customer Conversations What do you do when your own field technicians cant' seem to communicate effectively with your customers? That was the challenge faced by a large global technology company who came to Merit Career Development with a solution.

The answer was a two-step process: measure employees' listening skills and follow-up with a two-hour webinar reinforcing the key aspects of listening and interacting with customers.

The goal: empower field technical personnel to manage client conversations to ensure accurate communications and to create satisfied customers.

Measuring
We first asked employees to complete a simple assessment to gauge their listening skills. The Listening Skills Assessment (LiSA™) measures three related aspects of listening: understanding the overall situation, attention to detail, and inferring personal interpretation.

Students watch realistic technology-related video scenarios and answer questions about the big picture, details about the situation and what they think was really going on in the example. It's interactive and fun.

Before the webinar, students receive the results of their listening assessment. This establishes the baseline for the training session, the focus of which reinforces the key aspects of listening measured by the assessment.

Learning
The goal of the two-hour interactive webinar is to increase students' self-awareness of their verbal and written communication styles as they work with customers. But it's more than that. How can employees show they are really attending to the customer and want to leave both sides of the interaction satisfied?

Students learn how to observe non-verbal communication cues and follow-up on them, strengthening the customer relationship by showing good, attention skills. Important listening skills like asking open-ended questions, reflecting back to the speaker, paraphrasing and summarizing help the individual obtain accurate information from the customer and make sure the employee is getting the real message.

And the webinar covers more than just verbal communication skills. It also highlights effective electronic communications. Students learn how to create effective and appropriate electronic messages, write messages that are clear, concise, coherent, and project a positive voice image. These are all crucial communication skills in today's business environment.

In the end, participants leave the course being more self-aware and carrying some new tools to use in effective customer communication.

To learn more about how Merit Career Development can solve your business challenges, please contact us.

The Blended Project Plan

Why Using Just One Methodology Isn't Always the Answer


Blended Blue AbstractAs projects become more sophisticated in nature and content, a host of project management methodologies have been developed to address the needs of managing these complex projects. From the early years of CPM/PERT to the current complex computer-based project management systems, we are still mired in a high percentage of failed projects. Twenty years ago, the failure rate of IT projects was 87%. Today, despite an increase in project management knowledge and methodologies, the failure rate has only dropped to 82% (Standish Group, 2009).

While project management tools and methodologies have improved vastly, the tools do not support the speed of business change. Ironically, this fast-paced and changing environment is driven by the hyperbolic increase in technology.

Despite the hundreds of project methodologies and tools available – and many home-grown methodologies developed by independent PM organizations (PMI®, IPMA, et al) – the success rate remains low. To combat this low success rate, we create even more specific and directed project management processes.

For example, on change control and requirements, for companies that adhere to and enforce a strict requirements and change control process, there has been no appreciable change in the success rate. New methodologies such as Agile serve to further complicate the landscape. All of these methodologies have proven successful in limited and controlled environments; however, when pressed into a general and expanded business world, we continue with this abysmal failure rate.

We don’t need another new methodology
We need a more adaptive approach whereby the project is planned and managed according to the project directives and the needs of the business. The Blended Project Plan approach allows project managers to adapt various project management techniques to different components of the project. We can “chunk” the project to “match” a suitable project management methodology.

For example, at a recent client site we had three distinct groups present during our introduction to Agile. One group thought that it might work but preferred their current process. The second group completely supported the approach, and the third group stated that not only would Agile not help them but neither would their current process. The first group was responsible for building the hardware, the second group developed the software, and the third was responsible for the contractual implementation of the system. So we developed a Blended Project Plan under one project manager where the hardware development was managed with a traditional waterfall approach, the software development used Agile, and the field deployment team used a contract-based methodology.

The Project Management Officer implements and enforces PM standards based on a well-intended corporate policy; however, the strict adherence to these standards often stifles the project with unneeded, distracting, and cumbersome practices that unintentionally do not provide added value to the project plan. Adapting various project methodologies to specific “chunks” of the project provides for more flexibility and added value.

A parody that can be used to help explain this is the old Risk Management adage of known/knowns, known/unknowns, and unknown/knowns. This can be expanded to:

  • We know the requirements, and the approach to complete the task is known and standard.
  • The requirements are known; however, the process is dependent on project constraints.
  • The project requirements are not well-defined or fully understood, but once they are detailed we know how to implement

Broadly, this can be fitted to the standard project management process simplistically consisting of:
  • Standard Waterfall - sequential processing of project tasks
  • Compressed/Accelerated - overlapping of project tasks
  • Agile - spiral development

The project components can be better managed with the Blended Project Plan approach. The chunking of the plan allows the application of different measurements and controls that are in tune with the development process. The process to develop software is not the same as the process to implement hardware; however, we try to manage them using the same process. A Blended Project Plan eliminates the “one size fits all” mentality when trying to manage projects. The standard waterfall methodology contributes to understanding the critical path and the overlapped tasks impact project costs. The use of a spiral development methodology helps to control user requirements.

The roles and responsibilities change for the PMO, the project manager, and the business partner; however, the Blended Project Plan provides a greater degree of flexibility to ensure the successful completion of the project.

Merit Career Development provides project management training to fit your needs. From the fundamentals to PMP exam preparation, we can help you improve your project management skills. Whether it’s self-paced online learning, instructor-led virtual or classroom training, or exciting simulations, Merit provides quality, innovative and interactive professional education.

Learn more about Merit's project management curriculum here.