The mission of the North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services is to improve the health care for citizens in North Carolina and transform the traditional approach to the health care delivery in the state. From this point, the value of the agency to the U.S. citizens is in an opportunity to provide the high-quality health care and social support in different areas because the department is divided into several divisions proposing a range of services in public health, rural health, child development, social services, and aging and adult services among others (NC Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). This division allows focusing on the population’s specific needs in different areas.
The success of the NC Department of Health and Human Services depends on the authorities’ initiatives and activities regarding the development of partnerships in the state, implementation of public programs, and development of the ethical and legal policies to address the needs and interests of the public. Thus, the NC Department of Health and Human Services succeeded in realizing such goals as the implementation of the effective leadership model in the organization and the improvement of the approach to human resources (NC Department of Health and Human Services, 2014; Starling, 2010, p. 344). From this perspective, the NC Department of Health and Human Services follows the appropriate transformative leadership model in order to contribute to completing strategic goals and empowering employees to add to the decision-making in the organization.
However, the NC Department of Health and Human Services should improve its approach to the organization in such areas as coordination of the work of different divisions; progress of the ineffective complex hierarchy in the organization; and ineffective workforce’s cooperation. The other area for improvement is budgeting because currently, the NC Department of Health and Human Services receives fewer financial resources than it is necessary to address the public’s needs.
Therefore, it is important to recommend three strategies for improvement in the NC Department of Health and Human Services. The first strategy is simplification of the organizational hierarchy with the focus on optimization of departments’ functions and activities. This strategy is necessary because bureaucracy is a problem for the NC Department of Health and Human Services, and more effective approaches are necessary to organize the vertical communication in the organization (Milakovich & Gordon, 2012, p. 23; NC Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). This strategy can lead to the improved decision-making and saving costs within the department.
The second important strategy is improvement of the cooperation between the divisions of the NC Department of Health and Human Services because of the necessity to address the public’s needs in complex. The improvement of the quality of services depends on focusing on the careful analysis of the public’s demand. Thus, the development of the cooperative team is necessary to provide the careful analysis of the citizens’ needs and to deliver the complex care. The third strategy is associated with changing the approach to planning the budget in the organization. The reason is that the NC Department of Health and Human Services develops the recruitment strategies and increases the workforce to contribute to the improvement of healthcare services within the organization (NC Department of Health and Human Services, 2014; Stredwick, 2005, p. 54). As a result, the investment into the employees’ compensation and benefits sector should be increased in order to guarantee the increases in employees’ compensation and benefits associated with the growth of the employees’ commitment and the level of the provided services.
The experience in researching the agency and interviewing the representatives of the NC Department of Health and Human Services is important and interesting because it provides the opportunities to understand how agencies operate under the influence of complex internal and external factors. In this case, it is important to focus on the agency’s employees’ opinions regarding the observed changes, organization’s goals, and perspectives for the development. Focusing on the corporate information and subjective visions of the department’s employees, it is possible to build the full picture of the department’s development at the current stage and evaluate the effectiveness of the leaders’ strategies and approaches.
The value of the project for the career in the field of administration is significant because the project allowed focusing on different aspects of administration in the large agency, where it is necessary to lead several divisions and where the internal and external political forces are influential. Having completed the project, it is possible to improve the knowledge in analyzing the effectiveness of the agency’s organization, leadership, ethics, management, and budget and in proposing appropriate recommendations to improve the situation. This experience has many positive aspects such as the development of skills in researching and analyzing the complex objective and subjective information on the agency’s operations and development of skills in the practical application of the theoretical concepts to the process of analysis. The main challenge associated with the work at the project is the necessity to analyze the complex financial data regarding the agency’s budget. However, the challenge can be overcome with the focus on the detailed analysis of the department’s budget while comparing it with the interviewees’ answers.
References
Milakovich, M., & Gordon, G. (2012). Public administration in America. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
NC Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). Web.
Starling, G. (2010). Manage the public sector. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Stredwick, J. (2005). Introduction to human resource management. London, UK: Routledge.