Week 4 journal
Journal Assignment: Budgets play a critical role in management activities such as planning, controlling, and motivating employees. Used effectively, budgets can help a company achieve its goals and create a productive work environment. In contrast, budgets can also create a hostile work environment. Watch this video about budgets and employee morale and then reflect upon your own work experiences. Explain how budgeting was incorporated to achieve the company’s overall goals and objectives. Reflect on whether or not the budgets were effectively applied and whether your experience was positive or negative. In the past, I worked for a small for-profit mental health agency as a child/family therapist. Funding for the agency came from private pay; private insurance, Medicaid/Medicare, and levy generated matching funds for Medicaid/Medicare (fee for services). Minimal information was shared with staff about the fiscal health, or not, of the agency. Overall agency goals and budget information was not shared with staff. Most of my knowledge about the funding streams and reimbursement rates came from overhead conversations between the clinical director and the owners and my previous knowledge from working for a hospital in the same community. Yearly "productivity" standards were provided to clinical staff with the requisite billing hours within each area of service provided. These productivity requirements were individualized. They were presented to the staff as a contractual obligation requiring a signature with the onus that falling short in any way would jeopardize their employment. The owners began to hold staff to task for failing to meet the yearly-required hours of billing. For many years productivity was calculated at the end of the fiscal year. However, during one fiscal year, the owners changed the requirement several times. First they changed it to quarterly. After several people left or were fired, they changed it to monthly. Again,