One of the most successful initiatives in the healthcare industry: GHF from Pfizer Corporation
One of the most successful, forward-thinking initiatives ever launched in the healthcare industry is the GHF from Pfizer Corporation. It started carrying out its mission in 2002, and eight years later, in 2010, it had hired more than 250 people and set up camp in more than 40 nations. Although the program initially experienced some teething issues, which are usual for new programs, its internal organizational structure allowed it to weather these storms and quickly get through the challenges it faced. The organization's main goal was to implement a plan that would enable it to combat the scourge of A.I.D.S. and its consequent H.I.V (Human Infecting Virus). To achieve this, it had to work in partnership with other stakeholders both at international and local level i.e. World Health Organization body and the local territorial anti A.I.D.S programs in the countries they work to achieve their mandate efficiently.
Pfizerworks: Saving time and improving productivity
Great success in any field requires a formidable management and organizational system, failure to which the set goals would not be realized (Haller 2017). Pfizer isn't an exception, to have achieved the tremendous successes they boast of, they must have had an efficient system in place, and Pfizerworks was one of them. This is a system that allows employees of Pfizer Company to save time and considerable amounts of energies used in research works by sending their research queries as requests by the press of a button to a company that does the tedious work for them. I intend to analyze how this platform they deploy within their daily running of affairs significantly improved their overall productivity, at the same time relate it to the recommended six elements of the efficient organization as I will illustrate below. I will also be comparing how another organization; (The Justin foundation) that has mirrored the Pfizerworks system and the success they managed to achieve.
Justin Foundation: A nonprofit organization working towards the eradication of poverty
Justin Foundation is a nonprofit making organization whose mandate is to deal with the eradication of poverty among women in sub-Saharan Africa. I choose to use the Pfizer model to contrast the body systems deployed in their organization in the effort to give context to my evaluation of the Pfizerworks new structure. Justin Foundation was initiated in the year 2001 and has currently managed to impact positively and gradually eradicate poverty amidst women in the African states they now work in.
Work Specialization: Narrowing expertise and saving time
The first element of an efficient organization system or design is work specialization. This is the deliberate narrowing of one's professional expertise to concentrate on a particular field of practice as opposed to the wider area. Pfizerworks is indicative of a well-organized work specialized protocol. In a field of specialization, workers are expected to concentrate only on their narrowed task and not wasting considerable time doing other menial jobs or researchers that are not directly related to their functions. Pfizerworks helps the employees receive research responses that are only related to their specialization. That way time is saved trying to serve through the bulks of data they go through in efforts to find what exactly they want. Moreover, a version of Pfizerworks is also evident in the way the company contracts partner organizations to choose from the entire workforce a person with the best matching skills and professional experience to suit the tasks in question. Just as this platform helps save research time a version of it can contribute to saving human resource time as the company does. This is also practice in the Justin Foundation which other than recruiting its employees hires already trained and specialized professionals. They just as the Pfizer Company they too (Justin Foundation) contract other independent companies to do the work for them.
Departmentalization: Grouping related jobs and improving efficiency
The other element of an organizational system is departmentalization. This is the system upon which related jobs are grouped together and put into one group known as a department. Analyzing the organizational design in Pfizerworks, I notice a significant effort to departmentalize their internal structure. As indicated by the magic button, a lot of tedious research work, other than being handled by the relevant fellows or employees, has been directed to a particular contracted company that does the tedious work. If research requests and queries forwarded are departmentalized or relayed to the recipient as related bulks, then Pfizerworks can be very useful in saving the department time as it would allow the researching team time to have and assess all the relevant related queries before making any response. Such a platform enables the reaction to be exhaustive and comprehensive as opposed to the random requests sent from all other departments (Prajogo, 2005). Quite in similar but contrasting with this is the volunteer system in the Justin Foundation. As a non-profit organization, issues of funding are always very pertinent, and hence the organization has to have money if it is to achieve its goals. In place of Pfizerworks, it has volunteers doing the research work. As noted in the Pfizer Company, the requests are often billed against the relevant departments, but in a non-profit organization, the researching party is volunteered and hence no charges are involved, they are held respond to the needs of the organization in a manner mirroring that of Pfizer but toll-free.
Chain of Command: Structured authority and priority setting
The other element of an organizational structure is the chain of command. This is the structured continuous line of authority that proceeds from an upper executive platform to a lower implementory one. Pfizerworks was noticed to be very useful in designating the chain of priority. To run parallel with the chain of command that envisions the flow of power up and down an organization, prioritizing and de-prioritizing becomes the belt that moves things up or down. Hence, Pfizerworks was also structured to give priority to the request made into categories, by the department and by the urgency of the task (Miterev, 2017). What is more urgent was responded to, saving the organization time and improving effectiveness over critical issues, and what was not immediately urgent was stalled as the others were being dealt with.
Span of Control: Controlling the number of requests
Another element of an organizational design is the span of control. It is significant to a large extent because it determines the number of levels and managers an organization has. Pfizerworks has, in considerable efforts, managed to control the number of requests made from the Pfizer employees by billing their requests. Initially, the employees would make a request of just about any menial issue they encountered because the platform was in its pilot stage. But once billing was introduced, more relevant requests and queries related to the tasks assigned were relayed. Hence, traffic in the system was reduced, and efficiency in the feedback information was increased.
Centralization and Decentralization: Consolidating efforts and resources
Centralization and decentralization are another aspect of organizational design that Pfizerworks made efficient. As illustrated before, it is a system that deals with tedious research and technical queries raised by the employees of Pfizerworks (Garbutt, 2016). It helped consolidate the employee's energies (centralizing) into the prescribed tasks by saving them that research time as mentioned previously.
Formalization: Standardizing jobs and improving efficiency
The last aspect of an organizational design is formalization. This is the extent to which jobs are standardized, and relevant employees are guided by rules and procedures. This is the order that Pfizerworks brought into the company. It brought in the sense of decorum where employees were no longer rushing up and down the office in the name of conducting researches. It channeled that entire tedious job into one pool and dispatched responses individually, and the employees are free to concentrate on other important tasks.
Conclusion
Finally, having analyzed how the Pfizerworks platform greatly improved the productivity of the entire organization, we notice that it can be a considerable way to save time, resources, and significantly improve the efficiency of the workers. More time is now spent on critical matters than on the repetitive and time-consuming research tasks.
References
Garbutt, M., & Schuler, J. (2016). Towards an understanding of the integrative relationship
between Business Process Management and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems.
Haller, J. B., Velamuri, V. K., Schneckenberg, D., &Möslein, K. M. (2017). Exploring the
design elements of open evaluation. Journal of Strategy and Management, 10(1).
Miterev, M., Mancini, M., & Turner, R. (2017). Towards a design for the project-based
organization. International Journal of Project Management.
Prajogo, D. I., & McDermott, C. M. (2005). The relationship between total quality management
practices and organizational culture. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 25(11), 1101-1122.
