The Problem
The line of approach for this project was initiated from a well-documented case pre-pared by local authorities to calculate time used in percent for employees in the local home care system – the BTP-project. The BTP-project war established for the reason to calculate a price per hour seen from the actual time spent, the time the employee used together with the citizen. The project was rejected because of to high margin of error. The experience was that the employ-ee should deliver the data collected from their work by using a PDA.
Our goal was to find an explanation why the data could not be used. When we went through the project definition, we wondered why the role and working procedure by the planner was not covered with writing or defined in any way. The planner have a central part in the home care system, she receives the data from the visits, uploads the data to the employees PDA, and again, collects the data centrally where its being updated and registered before the approval and statistics being calculated.
We wished to investigate the work field of the planner up close and thereby see if there was any connection in the personnel opinion and the data integrity. Furthermore we intended to get the knowledge on what criteria the statistics was calculated and how the controller took position to the work in the home care system.
The Background
On a national level there is a desire to cre-ate an overview across resources and effi-ciency, to gain the opportunity of bench-marking different local authorities. To en-sure this, there are often established new demands for documentation, resource con-trol and efficiency. On the 1st of April 2010 it was by law decided, that the local authori-ties should calculate the price per hour on the actual time the employee spent with the citizen.
Data should be available for download di-rectly from the local authorities computer-ized care journals system (EOJ).
The Methoed
We have established observations of two planners conducting their work and used questioners on other planners to get a foun-dation of their knowledge. In addition to the observations we conducted thoroughly in-terviews with two controllers.
Furthermore we created a national investi-gation using questionaries’ covering all IT coordinators in 98 local authorities in Den-mark.
We have evaluated the results from the method created by Malteruds and analyzed the results using the theory of Karl Weicks about sensemaking.
The Result
By virtue of our investigations it was brought to our attention that in this local authority, it was the time of the visit laying the result of calculating the price per hour, and not the method established by law, there stated the price per hour should be calculated by the time delivered.
By using the sensemaking theory we proved that the opinion of the planner have an im-pact on the data integrity.
We found, that the controller in this local authority had a big impact in the employee of the home care systems work. As well by using the sensemaking theory it came to our attention that this controller by prioritizing her common sense over what the law stated and thereby archived to implement her own idea.
Conclusion
By using the sensemaking theory we have shown the opinion forms itself all the time. If clear goals and visions are missing and if unclear communication is delivered, the employee will create her own opinion from her cognitive background. Many interrup-tions can also impact and result in the diffi-culty in forming a new opinion.
This concludes, if the organization wants a common and shared opinion between the employees, it is important to state clear goals and visions and implements them in a quiet atmosphere.