Diagnostic Laboratory Services (DLS)

By taking the lead in service delivery, Diagnostic Laboratory Services (DLS) has made a name for itself as a community-driven healthcare service provider. The organization's main goal is to support the communities where they operate and raise the standard of living in such areas. The company is present in fifteen Northern American cities. This indicates that, in comparison to other healthcare organizations, it has a wide outreach.
DLS possesses innovation skills, which have helped the company become a dependable partner for patients in the provision of healthcare services. The organization has a culture that is entrenched in the organization and that helps the employees and the staff to understand that employees are equally important as their patients are. Based on this insight, the organization has taken a high interest in its employees and therefore, the value of the organization is in its employees.
The challenges that the organization is bound to face in future is completion from emerging players in the same field of healthcare. Small firms that are in and trying to establish themselves in the market would target employees that are working for established organizations like DLS.
The other challenge is the slowing economy, which is having a ripple effect in the sales of drugs. According to the DLS news, the sales dropped in the third and fourth quarters, which is an indication of decrease in the client purchasing power. The other challenge is the rise in cases of drug abuse in the Hawaii workplace. The number of employees reportedly abusing opiate which is not supposed to be sold over the counter.
Some of the core competencies required to succeed in this organization include leadership skills, teamwork, analytical skills,
2.  Total rewards model describing the current total rewards philosophy of the organization
Total rewards model is a human resource management strategy that helps an organization to attract, motivate and retain talented workforce. Total rewards models address employee needs through compensation, benefits, work-life effectiveness, recognition, performance management and talent development. In order to achieve the objective of having a rewards model, Diagnostic Laboratories Services (DLS) applies a range of the rewards scheme to satisfy and motivate its employees (Armstrong, & Cummins, 2011).
The first category is competitive salaries and wages for the staff. Salaries and wages are important part of an employee terms of service in an agreement with their employer. Attractive salary is important in convincing an employee to pledge the greater part of their productive career to the organization.
Benefits; the employees of DLS enjoy a wide range of benefits aimed at making them motivated in their roles. The benefits at the disposal of the employees of DLS include a paid time off and sick leave, employee assistant program, health insurance that covers dental and vision services. The other benefit include subsidy for relocation of employees within the organization's group of laboratories (Glowa, Spinks, Kuper, & White, 2016). The organization also offers employees with one-on-one personal financial advisor to help the employees to manage their finances.
Training and development: training and development is critical in empowering the employees to be able to handle their tasks with competence. DLS offer employees with an opportunity to continue their education and develop in their careers. This approach starts at the hiring level and continues once an employee is recruited to DLS. The training covers safety aspect, computer, compliance aspects, and lab procedures among other areas. This program enables the employees to grow their expertise and qualify for better compensation based on their skills and qualifications.
3.  The segmentation of the workforce
Diagnostic laboratory services like many competitive organizations, have moved from traditional workforce segmentation strategy to a skill based segmentation approach. Skill is the best currency in the 21st century workplace and that makes it the core aspect of categorizing employees in an organization. Skills set are critical to the organization's ability to achieve long-term and short-term objective, and remain innovative. Skilled discrimination approach takes into account the category of employees like accountants, nurses, engineers, and managers. This category of employees is very influential in lowering the cost of operation and increasing efficiency of decision-making process (Cantrell, & Smith, 2010). The suitability of this mode of discrimination to the organization is demonstrated by the way it influences its human resource strategy and operations. The decision to recruit good talent and train enables the organization to mould employees that embody the culture of the organization. DLS is using this strategy to eliminate the need to outsource other services by ensuring that its employees are empowered to develop the needed technology through innovation. The need to align the workforce with the business strategies is a complimentary aspect that is associated with segmentation. The nature of work in DLS is that it requires highly skilled employees. This aspect gives an insight that skilled segmentation will offer the organization an opportunity to allocate critical roles to competent team of employees (Davies, & Kourdi, 2010). This approach enables the organization to allocate employees roles based on their abilities to deliver on their roles. Using skills as the distinction between employees in a workplace is a more dignified way of recognizing the achievements of each employee in the organization. This strategy will thus reinforce the total rewards scheme where recognition is an important pillar.
4.  The current requisite capabilities of the organization and the competencies
The employees at DLS have competent skills in laboratory science and education and that provides a good base for retraining and career development among the employees. The organization has sufficient resources that enable them to facilitate training and at the same time, conduct research and development. The expected changes will target accommodating reasonable employee demands, and limiting distractions in relation to abuse of drugs.
Some of the needs of the employees are subject to the challenges that stand in the way of the company coupled with the dynamics of handling a large population of employees. Abuse of drugs would limit the ability of the employee t concentrate on their roles and deliver services in the ways that the organization expects of the employees. Laboratory services are critical in the healthcare system of a country and that is the role played by DLS. Some of the abilities needed in DLS include cognitive abilities and analysis skills. The demand for these capabilities is critical for the organization in terms of developing a workforce that is reliable in service delivery.
The company I also focused on improving the turnover rates and that means making changes is a major step towards realizing the same course. Despite there being challenges, the changes in the current system will not be to the extent of limiting the employees from delivering on their roles. The capabilities of the organization will need to improve to match the expectation of the market and those of the management. An organization is as strong as its employees, and therefore, the best way to respond to rising demands for better services is to change approach to the training and development of the employees.

5.  Recommendation on changes to the total rewards program
Although the current total rewards scheme is competitive, some changes would make it stronger in the eyes of the employees. Changes needed should be objective and the management should focus on reviewing each reward metric in the current total rewards scheme. Some of the desirable changes would involve eliminating some of the rewards and pecking them to performance as opposed to rolling out a general rewards scheme.
The specific plans will be making the rewards scheme a catalyst to performance and that means making it a competitive. In this case, the best performing employee will have more bonuses compared to an average performing employee. Through this strategy, the plan to motivate all the employees to be hardworking will be realized.
The new metrics should be communicated during quarterly meetings to enable the human resource to plan for demand of the employees that are about to go on leave and holidays. The supervisors should be used to explain to the employees under them the details of the new changes and allow for interactions within the departments and employees to take place at lower levels of management.
The communication should also reach out to the potential recruits for the company and therefore, when publishing adverts for job openings in the organization, the changes should be made part of the underlying terms of service. Depending on the turn out for opportunities, the suitability of the changes will be put to test.
The response from each employee and the management is also important in understanding the impact of these changes. Some employees may embrace the changes while other will resist as they wait to adapt. The organization will eventually need to shake up and realign the system to reflect its mission in the healthcare field.
6.  Justification for your recommendations
A reward scheme is a tool that an organization uses to enhance productivity and efficiency in the overall operation of the firm. This means that the organization should constantly review how effective each reward scheme is in terms of spurring research innovativeness among the employees. The company should know that pulling out the whole reward scheme would change DLS from what employees have known to be and that can result in a shift in loyalty.
The company covers for the cost of training, learning, and facilitating research, and therefore, the impact of that in performance needs to be evaluated and communicated. This approach will help the company to strategize on establishing efficient ways of facilitating learning, and training among employees.
The other justification is the fact that employees are not indebted to the company but have a performance contract that is not pecked to any of the benefits offered by the company. Any rewards that the company will place forward for consumption by the employees should have a positive impact that is realized in the forms of increased productivity. The company should therefore ensure that strategies are there to help them harness the development they input in their employees through training.
Changes are also necessary for the organization to realign its objectives with the current demands among the employees and vice versa. The organization has to take a position and make a decision regarding how the organization should approach matters from now and in future. The organization's needs to exercise authority among the staff will enable the organization to ensure weaknesses among the employees do not affect the performance of the organization in service delivery.

7.  The risks of not implementing the program and the opportunities the program will give the organization
The implementation of the program will no doubt be subject to setbacks and positive revelations as well. Depending on how the employees view the changes, the organization could lose its most prized assets through resignation and termination of contracts. If the employees feel that the new changes are not favorable, they could become de-motivated and less enthusiastic at their roles and that will be a major setback in terms of quality of services. There are also major risks at failing to implement the program and that could affect the performance of the organization (Lam, 2017). For the organization, a program that is not making an impact to the performance of the employees should be de-activated. This means that failing to implement the program will mean the organization is paying for unjustified expenses. The other risk of is employee wanting to move to new workplaces and experience new challenges at higher capacities with better roles and responsibilities.
The implementation of the project is however, an opportunity for the organization to establish the best combination of total rewards scheme that represent value for money. The organization also has the chance to evaluate the impact of each specific reward program in terms of helping the organization to achieve its human resource strategic objectives. Implementing the changes will also give the human resource the ability to gain more insight into the personalities of the crop of employees at the disposal of the company (Marchetti, 2012). This aspect is important in planning for the future of the organization. Efficiency is the ultimate prize that the organization will gain by implementing the changes and that is because every resource spent will be justified unlike in the current system where the organization could be overspending unnecessarily.
8.  Metrics for evaluating the total rewards program
Organization like DLS and others providing total rewards programs to its employees need a means of evaluating the impact of that reward program in terms of productivity of the employees. In the event that the total reward is not impacting productivity, the organization can opt out of offering the rewards or review the reward with the aim of ensuring that it can achieve the need to motivate the employees. The objective of the organization is more than attracting and retaining the talented employees (McConnell, 2011). Making them productive is the core objective of the total reward program.
Some of the metrics that DLS should consider includes compensation and training cost, health cover, and holiday and leave pay. The suitability of compensation as a metric is the fact that employees are able to earn at rates that are commensurate to their performance. This approach enables the employees to show commitment in their roles. The suitability of the other metric, training cost is critical in enabling the organization to perform a cost benefit analysis between hiring trained staff and recruiting talented and taken them through training. Health cover is another metric that the organization should consider, since it is the difference between itself and other competitors. The organization should review how effective this metric is in terms of motivating and even retaining the employees in the organization (Akira, Hirose, Seiichi, Ozawa, Kenji, Doya, Kazushi, Ikeda, & Minho, Lee. (2016). The last metric is also important for the organization to review because employees need to show loyalty and commitment after having all these rewards. Paid holidays are an expense to the organization and therefore, besides being a reward, a review is needed to evaluate the future of having it in the rewards scheme.


9. General explanation for the timeline for implementation
The implementation of the timelines is based on the urgency of an event. However, some activities in the timeline can be implemented in parallel while others are succeeding events. The allocation of roles to different staff members to oversee implementation takes into account the availability of each time in each department. Each department is also expected to plan their work with a background that meets the objective of delivering and improving the reliability of the employees in the organization.










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