BUS-FPX3007-Leadership- Application Questionnaire- Assessment 1

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Capella University *

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3007

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Management

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Apr 3, 2024

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docx

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1 Western Medical Enterprises Application Questionnaire- A Capella University

2 Leadership Experience During the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United States in 2020 I had an exceptional professional experience that will stick with me throughout my life. At the time, my employer had just been awarded contracts with multiple state unemployment agencies. The unprecedented number of unemployment cases that the state agencies were leveraging was causing some of the agency’s computers to crash due to inadequate servers. Quite simply they were using the old-style green screens with several commands in the system to complete the cases and suddenly had to do quadruple the number of cases daily. The states staff were also deluged with telephone calls from applicants, and this was an unexpected experience for the agencies because their previous systems, which had been in place for decades, had never fallen below wait times like they were experiencing at that time. There were not enough staff from other areas qualified in the unemployment insurance programs to process the flood of cases each day. When cases reached a system failure point, staff were able to manually batch some cases but most of the time they entered the cases manually. My employer put numerous specialized teams in place to process all the state’s contracts. The team that I worked on was a team dedicated to one specific state. I had never seen so many crashes from one group of clients. The outages with their datacenter of applications were simply out of control most days. In one instance, one of the state agency systems was down seven or eight times within an hour. The workload at the state agency had quadrupled overnight. All the team members who were dedicated and pulled up their sleeves to help the states navigate this crisis, but they needed assistance. I created an external team consisting of IT, project management, data entry, and IT crisis response professionals. I cross trained the team and went to great lengths to onboard them so that

3 they knew the infrastructure and Nuances of my selected state. Going forward we coordinated efforts and strategically began to create solutions to shorten system time, created efficient workflows, and addressed an increasing volume of work. I religiously communicated with the team using many communication platforms to ensure our progress was always maintained and our priorities and that we utilized the deadline driven work the govt is well known for. Through several online platforms - we leveraged both formal and informal communications to embark on this difficult and trying journey. I was also able to employ an aggressive mitigation plan – further enhancing proper workflow and built efficient components in the workflow to mirror the government's ULU. Following established Government principles, we created a sound monitoring method to ensure our team continually aligned to serve the priority initiatives. This group entered the Government's most significant crisis that required firsthand help, hands-on documentation, and the use of hands-on tools. The concept of an external team technically overseeing a function 450 miles away from the central office building is tangible proof of the true effectiveness to proper crisis management. I had to spearhead the formation of a centralized team for the state I was assigned to, that was responsible for not only efficiently managing these cases but also ensuring the emotional well- being of the applicants. The team, which consisted of customer support specialists, was fully trained, and equipped to oversee the complexities behind unemployment policies and do so with the empathy, understanding and support the applicants needed. Our strategic plan was well thought out for our client, but it had to be rolled out very quickly. We aimed to bring in external partners such as mental health professionals for collaboration, regular check ins and concentrate on employee’s well-being as well who had the job of taking call after call to take each case or

4 deal with the emotional issues of the folks who never received their benefits. The objective was to create not just a case management approach but to go above and beyond, recognizing that unemployment creates an emotional toll and therefore it had to provide a full circle of support for the employee and their totality. It was equally important for me to manage my own emotions during such a trying time both professionally and personally, so that I could be that strong leader for my team and be there for them as it was an emotional project to say the least. I had to be strong for my team who were on the front lines while also providing the best solutions for our client dealing with a once in a lifetime situation, one that we will never forget. Leadership Approach When attempting to deal with the unemployment cases it was important that you also touch the psychological well- being of the person while overseeing the case. With that said, the following solutions was how I managed the approach of dealing with the cases and employees. In this case, I took the human resources strategic approac6h, also identified in the: Principles of Management book (Griffin, Ricky W., Ebert, Ronald J. 2018.) as the best style that should be employed in dealing with employment cases. The approach was composed of empathy, a strong collaborative nature and initiative-taking support. Leaders must be able to build teams that are diverse and complementary but carry out their work fully; when assembling your team, you must make sure they have the technical expertise to

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