Staff of New Crystal in a group photograph
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the New Crystal Health Services, Dr. Wisdom Amegbletor, has described the self-management team leadership style, a non-traditional organizational model, as one of the effective ways of motivating staff to ensure productivity, efficiency and ultimately increase the bottom-line of organizations.
“While most entrepreneurs prefer to oversee every decision-making process, sometimes even to the point of micro-managing departmental structures, the self-management team leadership style relinquishes some level of planning and decision-making in the hands of employees,” Dr. Amegbletor explained.
New Crystal Health Services is one of the nation’s fastest growing private medical facilities with substantial growth in its client base across all branches.
From a team of nine persons in 2003 attending to about 5 patients a day in a four room facility in Ashaiman, the hospital currently operates seven networked branches in two regions, seeing over 300,000 clients yearly with staff strength of over 300.
“At NCHS, we have seen how this management style has empowered staff to come up with practical and quick solutions to some of the challenges they encounter daily as they attend to our numerous clients. And this has resulted in improved customer service and accounted for the many referrals the hospital has had in recent months,” he added.
According to Mr. Adjei, Human Resource Manager of NCHS, “NCHS has 14 teams that are self managed and can therefore make decisions on various subjects from staff disciplinary issues to whatever is required to get the work done. Instead of individual appraisals, there are team appraisals and our Maternal Care team has made the biggest impact since the implementation about a year ago.
“The ability to decide how staff contribute to the hospital’s growth has engendered this feeling of ‘ownership’ among everyone and management does not have to always be on the scene for work to go on,” Mr. Adjei added.
As to any downsides experienced by the New Crystal teams in implementing the programme, Elisabeth Ogbe, management staff of the hospital, observed “the tendency to cover up for friends who belong to same teams remained a big constraint but there are team leaders who are periodically trained to root out underperforming team members. Ultimately, teams’ goals remain the driving force for all workers.”
NCHS is responsible for 1 percent of the national NHIS received.
A business desk report