Interview Story - Solved a Problem

This was one of the most rewarding challenges I faced as a leader. As a new manager of a specialty home infusion pharmacy in a very established organization with long-term employees, I was brought in to provide a fresh look at processes and bring new, creative ideas to deliver services.

To understand the organization better, I set aside time to get to know each employee. I knew their product knowledge and years of experience would be a great asset. Initial one-on-one meetings included questions to determine their overall feel for the workplace environment and areas they deemed could use improvement.

As I considered their feedback, I immediately noticed that due to the linear aspect of the work provided by each department, the front-end teams which included intake, benefits verification, and the clinical team would process orders and set up shipments which proceed to the back-end team which consisted of picking, compounding and shipping. The employees in the front office, although very knowledgeable, lacked a sense of urgency. The production staff on the other hand, as the end of the day approached, were rushed to meet the FedEx deadlines. They were often times detained after work hours to wait for another pick-up or driving packages to the FedEx location.

I wanted to break this cycle to create more efficiency and efficiency in the operation. With buy-in from my immediate supervisor, I decided to use a cross-training method. Front end and production staff would learn each other’s roles. This would create depth in staffing, but more importantly, allow each employee to walk in the shoes of his fellow employee, and ultimately create equity in terms of work hours.

Immediately I was met with an uprising of push back from front-end employees who were accustomed to leaving at 5 PM. I held fast to the plan, knowing that it would be temporary, creating a schedule in which employees could plan in advance to work in production no more than 1 day per week and thus be subject to working late. I understood that some people had obligations and did all that I could to be flexible.

The new model proved successful. Due to the linear nature of the work, front-end employees now understood that it was imperative they move expediently to send work to production so that everyone could finish during work hours.

In less than 90 days overall job performance had improved such that everyone was able to leave at the end of the workday because all obligations had been met. Once the objective had been met, employees were asked for feedback. Many of them wanted to continue working one day per week in production, as it gave them satisfaction knowing that they could master different aspects of the job and it made them a more valuable asset to the team. They expressed that after having walked in the shoes of their co-workers, they had a broader perspective and understood how everyone’s contribution was valuable to the process. A few months later, two of the senior technicians in production were out on leave at the same time, newly-trained front-end team members were able to step up to continue operations, eliminating the need to hire per diem, resulting in savings of wage revenues to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.