image_project_management

By: Allison McCarthy, MBA

Project management is a widely accepted profession in industries such as IT, government, construction and engineering, etc….  You can even get a degree in project management from some highly reputable colleges and universities.  Like a lot of other management practices, it’s late getting a foothold in healthcare.

What does this have to do with onboarding?  Wikipedia describes project management as:

 

The discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables),[1] undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives,[2] typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations),[3] which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of these two systems is often quite different, and as such requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.

When compared to onboarding, I see a lot of similarities.

  • Onboarding is the planned and organized process of integrating and engaging a new recruit into the organization.
  • It requires a multi-disciplinary team – all with varying responsibilities – that must be “motivated” or influenced to support the onboarding effort.
  • The effort is temporary – for any individual physician/provider.  There is a beginning – a signed contract launches the effort – and there is an ending – although a bit less concrete since it’s dependent on how quickly the provider’s practice ramps up and he/she becomes engaged.
  • No one really owns onboarding – in fact it is outside of day-to-day operations.   Onboarding accountabilities even fall outside of performance standards and may only fit into that nebulous area of most job descriptions described as “and all other duties as assigned”.

My colleague, Lisa DiTullio, principal of Your Project Office, launched the project management function at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare when it was in receivership.  We recently agreed that onboarding not only lends itself but could benefit from the techniques and strategies used in the project management discipline.  From defining the team, having a leader sponsor, clarifying goals, working with tools and templates that track talks and milestones and ensuring that everything leads to a productive and engaged clinician; the project management methods can provide the foundation we need.  Maybe it’s time to look more closely at the project management practices and find ways to advance our onboarding approach without reinventing the wheel.  In the meantime, be on the lookout for some things Lisa and I are noodling on in the coming months.