LSM 412 Week 4 Controlling in the Lifespan Industry Example

Late Attendance at 41 Percent and a Labor Variance of $18,400: Controlling Results at an Adult Day Organization With a Monthly Scorecard and Corrective Action

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LSM/412: Management within the Lifespan Industry

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, its budget and its measures are composites written for a model paper; frameworks and research come from the sources listed.

Three months after a composite nonprofit adult day organization added early and late hours at its three centers, the leadership team met for its monthly review. The waiting list had fallen from 64 to 39 families, and families were enthusiastic, but two numbers were off track: attendance in the late-afternoon block was running at 41% of the places planned, and labor costs for the quarter were $18,400 over budget. This paper shows how the organization used the controlling function of management to understand and correct both.

What Controlling Means

Controlling is the fourth management function. Managers set standards, measure actual performance, compare it with the standards and take corrective action. It closes the loop that planning opens: the plan written in the spring set goals and a trigger for review, and control determines whether those goals are being met.

Three Types of Control

Feedforward controls act before work begins, such as screening participants at admission so staff know their needs. Concurrent controls act during the work, such as the shift handoff, a nurse's midday check of participants with diabetes and a director's walk through the dining room at lunch to see whether every participant who needs help is getting it. Feedback controls review results afterward, such as incident reviews and the monthly scorecard.

The Monthly Scorecard

The balanced scorecard was designed so managers could see performance from several perspectives at once rather than relying on financial measures alone (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The organization's scorecard has 10 measures in four groups. Participants and families: attendance as a share of licensed places by time block, family satisfaction and waiting list size. Operations: falls per 1,000 participant days, hospital transfers and van on-time arrival. Staff: annualized aide turnover and vacancies. Finance: revenue per participant day and cost per participant day.

Setting Targets

Each measure has a target set when the plan was written, in the SMART form familiar to managers since Doran (1981) proposed it. For example, late-block attendance was to reach 80% of planned places within six months, and cost per participant day was to stay under $118.

The Attendance Variance

Late-block attendance averaged 41% across the three centers, but the average hid a split: the largest center, near an industrial park, was at 88%, while the two smaller centers were at 22% and 19%. Families at the smaller centers mostly worked daytime jobs with flexible hours or were retired spouses, so they did not need late pickup. An average can make one success and two failures look like three mediocre results.

The Labor Variance

Labor ran $18,400 over budget for the quarter. The budget had assumed eight new part-time aides at regular pay. Hiring was slow: only five were in place by month two, so existing aides worked overtime to cover late shifts at time and a half. Overtime, not the new hires, explained about $15,000 of the variance; the rest came from a state-mandated minimum wage increase that took effect after the budget was set.

Applying the Plan's Trigger

The spring plan had said that if late attendance stayed under 50% of planned places for three months at a center, its hours would be adjusted. The trigger applied to the two smaller centers.

Corrective Actions

First, the two smaller centers returned to closing at 5 p.m., with late pickup available by arrangement, and their late-shift aides moved to the large center, where demand exceeded places. Owner: program director; date: within four weeks. Second, the van schedule at the large center added a 6 p.m. route to two neighborhoods where several waiting-list families lived. Owner: transportation coordinator. Third, recruitment focused on the large center's late shift with a shift differential, and overtime above four hours a week per aide required director approval. Owner: human resources manager.

Why Averages Mislead Managers

The attendance problem shows a general lesson about control. Organization-wide averages are convenient for boards but can hide very different realities at each site. The finance manager now reports every scorecard measure by center as well as in total, and the leadership team reviews the site with the worst result on each measure first. In the quarter after the change, this view also revealed that van on-time arrival was fine overall but poor on one route, where a driver's schedule overlapped a school zone; moving the route 15 minutes earlier fixed it.

Quality and Staff Checks

The team checked that the changes did not harm care. Falls and hospital transfers stayed within targets, and aide turnover continued to fall. Family satisfaction at the two smaller centers remained stable after the hours change, since few families there had used the late block, and caregivers at the large center reported that the longer day made their workweek manageable, consistent with research showing lower caregiver stress on adult day days (Zarit et al., 2011).

Results at Six Months

Late-block attendance at the large center reached 94% of places. The waiting list fell to 22 families, meeting the plan's goal of under 25. Overtime fell by 70%, and the labor variance for the second quarter was $2,100, mostly the wage increase, which was added to the revised budget.

Lessons

Look beneath averages. Break variances into causes before acting. Use the triggers written into the plan. Check quality and staff measures whenever finances drive a change. And treat control as part of a cycle that sends information back to planning; the next year's budget now assumes realistic hiring timelines and includes a line for mandated wage changes.

Conclusion

Controlling turned two worrying numbers into specific findings: late attendance was high at one center and low at two others, and labor overruns came from overtime and a wage change rather than from overstaffing. A balanced scorecard, clear targets, the plan's own trigger and corrective actions with owners brought results back toward the plan within six months, and the lessons fed into the next year's planning.

References

Doran, G. T. (1981). There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992). The balanced scorecard: Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 71-79.

Zarit, S. H., Kim, K., Femia, E. E., Almeida, D. M., Savla, J., & Molenaar, P. C. M. (2011). Effects of adult day care on daily stress of caregivers: A within-person approach. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 66B(5), 538-546. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbr030