Time management and quality assurance strategies at ResCare Inc.

Time Management

At ResCare Inc. The time consumed between the auditing processes and conducting training is substantial. This time could be used more efficiently and there are opportunities to reduce the time frame between those two processes. There are methods that can be used to manage and reduce this time which fall under the realm of time managing process. Time management is processes of planning, creating awareness, and harnessing control over the amount of time spent on specific activities to increase the overall level of efficiency and effectiveness. Some of the more popular types of time management concepts are: The ABC analysis, Pareto analysis, The Eisenhower Method, and POSEC method.

The ABC analysis approach is a technique that organizes activities based on their priority and importance. The "A" category of tasks are those that are perceived as being the most urgent and important while the "B" tasks are important but not as urgent and the "C" category consists of items that are neither urgent or important (Babakhanlou, Behzadiohar, Kurnik, Rousta, & Zand, 2009). Simply categorizing different tasks based on these criteria can be very useful to ResCare Inc. because it allows them to focus on the most important and urgent tasks first. The Pareto analysis also prioritizes tasks by their importance but views this problem from a slightly different perspective. This rule states that eighty percent of the tasks can be performed by twenty percent of the disposable time available.

The Eisenhower Method is also a framework that also organizes tasks based on their importance and urgency and allows organizations to rate these tasks on a matrix. The POSEC model is an acronym that stands for prioritize by organizing, streamlining, economizing and contributing. As a consequence of all these models, organizations have many options to focus on the most important organizational functions first and find alternate ways to expedite the less important tasks.

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance, or QA, is the act of analyzing processes and monitoring operations to ensure that high quality standards are being met at all times. There are many models that can be used to meet these objectives and also many metrics that can be formed to monitor quality. There are also several tools that can be consistently engaged to minimize the chances of such a problem occurring in the future. In many cases simple tools such as scatterplots, control charts, flow charts, histograms and many others can help organizations find the root of the quality problem quickly.

Figure 1 -- Example of a Histogram (IMF, n.d.)

Not only can statistical tools be used to help troubleshoot problems related to organizational issues, but they can also be used as part of a more comprehensive Total Quality Management (TQM) approach. The goal of this approach is to foster improvements on a continual basis. Another tool is to construct dashboards that give quick insights to the efficiency and effectiveness of various important processes. These dashboards can represent a wide selection of different metrics or specific information and must be constructed to fit the organization. Once the dashboard is constructed it for organizational tasks they can offer reliable insights to the current state of the organization (Malik, 2007).

Risk Management

There is a newly forming field known as enterprise risk management (ERM) (Mikes, 2009). This approach views risk management practices in cultural environments that are heavily quantitative in nature. There have been a variety of models developed that rely heavily on mathematical calculations and various metrics to analyze probabilities of risks occurring in organizations. The value of risk management lies within unique circumstance in organizations which are plagued by risk inherently (Benta, 2011). Thus, from the perspective of risk management, the goal is to manage risk in the face of uncertainty. The organizations who are best equipped to identify, prioritize, and mitigate risks will inevitably the most sustainable in their industries.

Another risk concept is known as cost contingency. There are many best practices for risk identification, however there have only been recent developments in regards to adding an estimated cost for the contingency plan (Hollmann, 2009). Risk plans in the future many will be able to more effectively integrate contingency cost estimation. Although this may seem intuitive, as organizations and processes become more complex so does the cost contingency. Therefore, organizations should have a framework in which they can rate the expense associated with various risks in to ensure that they can plan for these risks in a more comprehensive manner.

Figure 1 - Example of a Contingency Cost Framework (Buggey, 2007)