Ch. 25; A New Brand for Senior Health Plus
UMUC- HCAD 670

Executive Summary
Growth and change in any organization can be a difficult time both for executives and for employees. When growth comes at an astounding rate, there are bound to be problems at all levels of the organization. Senior Health Plus (SHP) is a small, non-profit HMO based in Southern California. The company started as a grassroots organization that enjoyed a positive reputation for pioneering new ways to care for the elderly. This success has a price however, as the membership of SHP has grown exponentially in the past several years from 10,000 to 35,000 members. In response to this growth, management went on an expansion frenzy, moving all executives to a …show more content…

The CEO’s desire to quickly implement a brand has led his Marketing VP to take total control of the project and pay no attention to anything else.
Part III
The main issue within this case is the conflict between the VP of HR (Jamie), and the VP of Marketing (Rita). This conflict all stems from the mandate from the CEO to create a brand to set SHP apart from the competition. Jamie wants to be progressive and involve the employees with the change process and branding efforts, while Rita is seemingly more dictatorial in her methods. She wants to implement branding across the organization and hope that employees will fall in line. There are other sub categories to this main problem which are: 1. Employees were not involved with the brand development. This resulted in anger and resentment amongst the employees. Presumably, many of the employees have worked there for years, alienating them is a huge mistake. If it is time to shift from a small organization to a more centralized corporate culture, it is crucial to involve the people who will ultimately be the face of your organization. 2. HR was not involved with the brand development. Rita made it clear to Jamie that the brand creation was a marketing issue. Jamie and HR were most likely seen to be the “enforcer” of the marketing campaign. Charged with creating rules of conduct, where and when to wear branded shirts, etc. Jamie was made to look foolish by Rita when she was given the task of distributing