Question

Identify what you believe are Greenvale Correctional Facility’s key issues. Explain your assessment process and the factors you considered during your analysis. Be sure to include how organizational culture affects assessment in organizations.

Organizational culture is so ubiquitous that it affects all areas of group life. Though organizational culture is not always immediately obvious in organizations, its outcomes (e.g., turnover, morale, productivity) can be. Some workplaces require employees to wear business attire whereas others allow employees to dress casually. In some workplaces, formal address is used and in others, people use first names regardless of position. Both examples reflect organizational norms, or “the way we do things around here,” otherwise known as organizational culture. Organizational culture may be subtle yet pervasive and may have a profound effect on employee attitudes and behavior.

Organizational culture affects each of the levels of organizational assessment: individual, small group, large group, intergroup, and organization. As an organizational consultant or practitioner, it is beneficial to have a toolbox of assessments for organizational evaluation for each of these levels. By assessing organizational culture, practitioners and consultants can then develop evidence-based interventions to address the issues identified by the assessment and evaluation processes.

Consider how the information above may be applied to the Greenvale Correctional Facility case study that follows.

Greenvale Correctional Facility is a large, privately-owned, medium-security prison in the southeastern United States. The prison opened in 1988, and, until recently, it employed 300 security, operational, facilities, maintenance, healthcare, and administrative employees.

The prison’s salary and benefit structure are comparable to other prison systems around the country. However, Greenvale is currently experiencing significant attrition, creating an unsafe and unstable environment, both for the inmates and remaining employees. Staff has reduced from 300 to 210 employees during the last 6 months, and attempts to recruit and hire new staff have been challenging. Online recruitment, employee sourcing, and participation in various job fairs have not created a plentiful base of trained, experienced employment candidates, and efforts to retain existing personnel have been unsuccessful. Exit interview data point to leadership issues, and poor working conditions.

Prison leadership is comprised of Warden Bob Jones, who started at Greenvale when it first opened; Sergeant Dave Lee, the senior-level correctional leader with over 15 years of experience; and Officer Stan Phillips, a correctional manager who joined the leadership team in 2015. All three leaders work collaboratively, but they tend to remain siloed away from the other employees. All of the prison’s communications are top-down and authoritative; the leadership team believes this style is necessary given the work environment and inherent risks involved. While the team believes they are fostering a management-by-objectives culture, many employees feel excluded from the process and perceive more of an in-group/out-group mindset. Consequently, several recent attempts to implement new policies and procedures have met with resistance from the current employees.

Answer 1

Organizational culture is the shared value that influences the people, these can be the code of conduct like how to dress, how to address each other, and how to perform in an organization. An organization to run smoothly and successfully teamwork is required, from the management to the lower rank employee.

Organizational assessment is the systematic review of the working environment and its structure. By doing an organizational assessment it recommends and guides the organization to adopt an action plan that enables the organization to serve better and achieve its objectives. Through an organization assessment, the organization can know its strength and weakness. Thus it provides an opportunity to adopt the new techniques for its betterment.

Greenvale Correctional Facility is a large, privately-owned, medium-security prison in the southeastern United States. It was at par with other prison systems around the country, with the same salary benefit structure.  Warden Bob Jones, Sergeant Dave Lee, and Officer Stan Phillips are the current leaders of the prison.

But recently the Greenvale is going through a rough patch they have reduced the security strength thus creating an unsafe environment for the inmates and the employees. They were unsuccessful in getting better and trained people through online recruiting facilities, and retaining the existing employees is becoming difficult as the complaint about the leadership issues and poor working conditions are cited as the reason by the exiting employees.

The three leaders of the prison work collectively but they are not involving the other employees of the prison. It has created an in-group and out-group feelings in the employees. The leadership is an authoritative type that gives the instruction and it has to be followed by the employees at the lower rank.

Through Organizational assessment, it has come to the light that they require a change in the working pattern. They should get new and trained employees for the safety of the inmates. In an organization to work smoothly, there should not be any communication gap. But in Greenvale, there is a huge communication gap found between the leaders and the employees. The in-group and out-group culture produces a bias behavior towards each other and create a feeling that they do not identify with each other.

The Greenvale culture is authoritative it creates a gap between the leaders and the employees. When there is no communication between the leaders and the employees all the choices and judgments are bases on the leader's ideas there is no opportunity for the other employees to give their view or question the leaders. The employees would work out of fear but not as a duty, and this is making the employees leave the job and exit rate is higher.

During the organizational assessment of Greenvale, out-group was a major factor the employees are facing.

The organization requires a change in their working pattern they should involve their employees who are in direct contact with the inmates to find out their difficulties and how it can be sorted out. By giving orders one may follow it but on the ground level, it may not be effective. Instead of being authoritative they should do meetings and take other employees' views to make changes and adopt a more positive approach. For an employee to remain in the job they should have job satisfaction and their identity.