pratikkk

MP Guru
Organisational Structure of DaVita : DaVita, Inc. is one of the largest kidney care companies in the United States, with corporate headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Their offerings include in-center hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, home hemodialysis, vascular access management, chronic kidney disease education, and renal diet assistance.

Current teammates holding leadership roles can apply for the Redwoods Scholars program. Teammates selected for this program will receive exceptional leadership development, such as a scholarship to attend a highly-ranked MBA program or continuing executive & leadership development courses at top-notch schools across the country.

Additional training and guidance for our Redwoods Program participants can include development sessions, executive exposure, mentorship, and specialized enrichment.

DaVita was the featured company of a Stanford case study by Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. DaVita is looked at in the case study as a "distinctly unique corporate culture that has yielded impressive growth and employee retention over the past seven years.


1. Provide short and long term staffing strategies and support that aligns with succession planning and business strategy.
2. Facilitate performance and management processes as well as implement and enforce employment policies.
3. Assess and recommend solutions that impact employee retention, reward, leadership, and development.
4. Provide coaching and counseling to employees and manage conflict effectively.
5. Research and suggest new programs/systems to management concerning human resources processes.
6. Serve as primary HR liaison between the local Business Office and the home office.
7. Conduct ongoing analysis of executive and management development needs. Deliver in-house programs, and evaluate/select publicly available training programs for both management and staff.
8. Create and maintain a close partner relationship with mid-level and above management members.
9. Provide guidance to individual managers regarding their managerial styles, skills and performance.
10. Partner with management and HR staff in establishing and managing an effective performance goals and evaluation program.
11. Develop and manage a recruiting team that includes client managers, recruiters and administrative staff.
12. Perform on-going community outreach activities, including internal and external job fairs, involvement with community-based organizations, etc.

Attention to detail also mattered a lot for obtaining good clinical outcomes. It was important to
take care while putting the patient on the machine, monitoring the treatment as it was occurring,
and taking the patient off the machine at the end of the session. It was also critical to monitor the
patient’s health status generally so that treatment issues could be foreseen and addressed. Good
clinical outcomes had many positive effects on the company. Since the beginning of the
turnaround, the focus at DaVita was on the quality of care. Every management presentation
began with the clinical outcomes, including presentations made to investment analysts. On the
bulletin board in the centers where results were posted for the team to see, the clinical outcomes,
captured in the DaVita Quality Index (DQI), were listed first before the financial measure of
labor hours per treatment. The patients were, after all, people’s husbands, wives, fathers,
mothers, and friends, and it was important to take good care of them. Good clinical outcomes
also enabled DaVita teammates to take pride in working in a company that provided the best care
in the industry, an advantage in recruiting and retention.
In addition to attention to detail, clinical outcomes depended on the emotional tone and bond
between the center’s teammates and the patients; another important success factor was the
morale and emotional commitment of the DaVita team.

The final critical success factor was the attraction and retention of teammates. DaVita competed
for nurses with hospitals, doctors’ offices, other health care providers, and, of course, with other
dialysis companies, and the chronic nursing shortage in the United States meant there were
always unfilled positions. Hospitals typically paid more per hour than DaVita or its competitors.
Moreover, nursing now attracted people with different motivations than it had decades ago, when
nursing and teaching had been among the few skilled occupations available to women. Nursing
was now well-paid and offered employment security because of the number of unfilled positions,
so people were entering the profession not just from a sense of wanting to take care of others but
also for career concerns.
Patient care technicians, the largest category of employees, typically earned less than $15 an
hour. Only about 10 percent had college degrees.

Retention of teammates was important because turnover was costly, entailing finding and
training replacement people, and possibly paying overtime labor rates if a center was temporarily
short-staffed. High turnover could also impair clinical outcomes, because a nurse’s or PCT’s
experience in doing dialysis and working in a team enhanced patient care outcomes. Being an
employer of choice was not just part of DaVita’s mission, but was also important for business
success and better patient care.

technicians, nurses, social workers, and the people who serviced the dialysis machines) that by
the end of 2005 had been offered some 57 times (Thiry had attended every Academy) with total
attendance of some 13,000 people. The program was run at various locations throughout the
United States to minimize the travel time for those attending and expense to the company.
Originally offered on a voluntary basis to people who were interested in attending, the Academy
was evolving to become an activity that facility administrators were encouraged to send new
teammates to, preferably within the first 90 days of joining DaVita. Data showed that people
who attended an Academy had a turnover rate of about 12 percent compared to 28 percent for
those who had not, so attending an Academy was critical for both retention and also for engaging
people fully in the DaVita spirit and way of relating to each other.
A typical Academy session had between 250 and 400 attendees, and consisted of a combination
of lecture and experiential sessions on subjects such as communications, team dynamics, and
conflict resolution. The evening activity between the first and second day was always the
DaVita Olympics. When people arrived, they were assigned to a group designated by a color
(such as orange, purple, and so forth). The groups were comprised of people from different
facilities and different jobs within the facilities. At the DaVita Olympics, teams competed with
each other in various indoor light physical activities and also performed skits with songs and
music that they developed. After the competitions, there were refreshments including beer and
wine, and music with dancing. This informal social interaction, singing together, acting silly
together, and working together to compete against other teams helped break down barriers and
build energy and spirit.
 
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