Provision of day-care services at the workplace presents several benefits both for an organization and the employees. These benefits include attracting a diverse pool of job applicants due to a better working environment, especially for parents, lower employee turnover, and enhanced employee morale. This is particularly essential for such organizations as the University Memorial Hospitals, which have recorded high levels of employee dissatisfaction and low morale due to lack of affordable child care services, which in turn leads to low employee productivity, as well as low quality services. Often, the provision of workplace day care services is considered expensive; however, Smith et al. (2013) postulate that most organizations realize significant saving on cost when they provide child care services since it lowers employee turnover as well as employee absenteeism. Organizations may use different approaches in providing child care services, including joint ventures between small companies, on-site day care centers, as well as bring-your-baby-to-work schemes. In the case, University Memorial Hospitals are weighing the options that they could provide employees to ease their burden on child care, which is a leading cause of low employee morale and dissatisfaction in the facilities ( Olden, 2015) . This paper examines the hospitals’ decision to construct and operate their own day-care center.
Stakeholder Expectations
UMH comprises of different groups of stakeholders, including child caregivers, social service providers, policy makers, managers, and parents. Care givers form a key stakeholder group since they would be responsible for taking care of all the children enrolled in the facility on the behalf of the parents working at UMH ( Olden, 2015) . Key expectations of this stakeholder group include availability of adequate and quality facilities to enable them to effectively take care of the children. Moreover, the group would expect that the organization has sufficient resources to ensure that they are well compensated, as well as an ideal environment that allows for optimum caregiver practices. On the other hand, the expectations of the managers would include access to adequate resources and finances to effectively run the facility for optimal outcomes. Other expectations of the management include maintenance of professionalism in running the center, and well as promoting effective rapport and communication within all the centre’s stakeholders (Johnson, Kirk & Muzik, 2015). Parents, on the other hand, expect that their children would receive high quality care at an affordable cost, while policy makers would require the organization to ensure that the center meets the minimum standards requirements for child-care services centers. However, quality remains a key concern among all the stakeholders, while a key concern for the hospitals’ management is cost and the subsequent efficiency of running the child care facility.
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Stakeholder expectations form a key element in determining the extent to which a project will be successful. In this context, provision of child care services is a delicate affair, since it involves constant monitoring of children to protect them from accidents, diseases that may emanate from an unhealthy environment, as well as ensuring that children are comfortable and well-fed. On the other hand, parents have to be assured that their children receive quality services within a safe environment for them to feel comfortable and enhance their productivity at work (Mendes et al., 2014). Further, the management must ensure that the facilities are well-maintained, and safe, while ensuring that care givers are well compensated. The management is also responsible for networking with such crucial parties as policy makers and social service providers to ensure that the facilities meet the set standards to avoid negative legal implications. Hence, assessing vital data pertaining to the key stakeholder expectations is crucial to ensuring that the facilities meet the set organizational goals, including lowering operating costs and promoting employee productivity.
Gathering Data and Monitoring the Performance of the Facility
Fulfilling the expectations of the different stakeholders would require gathering data on different elements. For instance, one would require to gather information about the key equipment that would be essential in the centre to ensure that caregivers meet their objectives effectively. In addition to the required equipment, the manager of the facility would require to gather information regarding the construction design of the facility to ensure that the facility meets the safety standards required for the children who are susceptible to accidents as well as health complications associated with inappropriate environments (Kozhimannil, Jou, Gjerdingen & McGovern, 2016). Further, I would ensure that the objectives and goals of the facility are well outlined prior to its construction. These goals and objectives would then play a crucial role in the evaluation of the facility’s performance, since the manager would compare what the facility has already achieved against the expected standards.
Following the construction of the facility, I would ensure that both the care givers and parents complete a questionnaire after every three months. The questionnaire would act as a vital tool in collecting information regarding the expectations that have already been achieved as well as the areas that require improvement. The feedback, in this context, would help in enhancing the quality of services granted by the care givers through such measures as improving the equipment at the facility, motivating the caregivers through a reward system, and enhancing the infrastructure at the facility to ensure that the safety of the children is improved ( Olden, 2015) . These factors would particularly enhance employee productivity as they would serve to eliminate fear among the working parents since they would be guaranteed of a safe environment for their children. Additionally, the employees would be motivated to bring their children at the facility rather than staying with them at home, a factor that encourages absenteeism and turnover, thus low productivity.
Conclusion
Building a day care center is the ideal approach for UMH in addressing the problems of low employee morale and low productivity due to lack of reliable and affordable child care services. Some of the major stakeholder expectations with regard to the intervention include quality of child care, availability of resources to run the facility effectively, and compliance with the existing quality standards and child safety. Ensuring that the expectations are achieved required constant monitoring and evaluation to establish the extent to which objectives are achieved and establishing interventions to bridge gaps between the current performance and the expected performance, especially in terms of the quality of child care services provided.
References
Johnson, A. M., Kirk, R., & Muzik, M. (2015). Overcoming workplace barriers: A focus group study exploring African American mothers’ needs for workplace breastfeeding support. Journal of Human Lactation , 31 (3), 425-433.
Kozhimannil, K. B., Jou, J., Gjerdingen, D. K., & McGovern, P. M. (2016). Access to workplace accommodations to support breastfeeding after passage of the Affordable Care Act. Women's Health Issues , 26 (1), 6-13.
Mendes, A., Aelenei, D., Papoila, A. L., Carreiro-Martins, P., Aguiar, L., Pereira, C., ... & Viegas, J. (2014). Environmental and ventilation assessment in child day care centers in Porto: the envirh project. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A , 77 (14-16), 931-943.
Olden, P. (2015). Management of Healthcare Organization: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Chicago: Health Administration Press; Arlington, Virginia: AUPHA Press.
Smith, J. P., McIntyre, E., Craig, L., Javanparast, S., Strazdins, L., & Mortensen, K. (2013). Workplace support, breastfeeding and health. Family Matters , (93), 58.
