Managing Human Resource in Health and Social Care - Essay Example

? Managing Human Resource in Health and Social Care Human Resources, the most sensitive component of management, started to gain an independent identity in business organizations in the 1930s (Fallon & McConnell, 2007, p.xiii). Its significance has steadily grown over the intervening decades, and in the new millennium HR continues its relevance and its usefulness. In the last couple of years, growing attention has been paid to the development of health and social policies. But with the supposed benefits of policy, many share the view that a major drawback of health and social is their failure to make room for issues of human resources. Current approaches in human resources suggest a number of weaknesses: a hasty, stop-gap attitude towards problems of human resources; dispersion of accountability within human resources management (HRM); a limited notion of personnel administration that fails to include all aspects of HRM; and finally the short-term outlook of HRM (Dussault & Dubois, 2004, p.iii). Performance monitoring and promoting Performance should be monitored in the health and social care system, as they are instrumental in stimulating, creating and maintaining health and social care improvement. Around the world, rapidly changing landscape between acute and chronic diseases is placing various demands on the health and social care workforce. To provide effective health and social care for chronic conditions, the skills of the health care professional have to be extended along with the existing ones, to fulfill the new complicated situations. First, the workforce must adopt a patient-centric approach. Second, service providers need the necessary communication expertise, which should enable them to cooperate with other providers and patients. Third, the workforce must equip with expertise to ensure that the security and quality of patient care is continuously improved. Fourth, the workforce needs expertises that assist them in checking patients across time and using and sharing information through available technology. Finally, the workforce must develop broadest perspective to consider patient’s care and provider’s role (WHO, 2005, pp.11-12). Methods of Monitoring Performance Management by walking around: Getting out of your office and being physically present on a regular basis is an important place to start. One will gain a great sense of “what’s going on”—as well as a first-hand feel for what is not understood or what needs to better communicate. Managers of a health and social care unit should take ad-hoc approach in this case. They can visit and revisit same premises during change of shifts of nursing staffs with special emphasis on the ICU after a critical surgery to check the activities of nursing and other staffs. Visits or walking around monitoring without any prior notice is very important in a health care set up where work division is very important. Visiting the reception at least thrice a day by the management personnel is very important because that is where the patients get the first impression about the care they would get within the unit. 360-degree assessment: It involves polling various people who have contact with a particular employee, to get an idea about the employee’s performance. The employee also is polled regarding his or her own performance, with those results then compared to the feedback collected from others. People involved respond to speci?c questions on a feedback form. One can either make up your own form or purchase a generic one developed for use within your business area (Dorio and Shelly, 2011, pp.61-64). The required staff should to be evaluated occasionally (in six months or annually) by many evaluators including his boss, direct subordinates, equals, internal clientele and external clientele. In a hospital doctors can provide feedback about nurses and vice versa. And it is quite possible about feedback among intra-nurses or intra-doctors can be used for performance monitoring purposes. Identifying training and development needs- Assessment for training and development generally occurs at the organizational, departmental and individual level. At organizational level, through strategic planning the need of proper training and development can be assessed. Routine survey by managers and employees or new organization wide initiative such as adapting the Planetree model may highlight the needs of training and development. In case of departmental level, annual employee evaluation process from patients and stakeholders can be conducive to judge the need of training and development. Grievances, patient’s safety care reports can be helpful to identify ways to improve care delivery. Each department (such as cardiac, pediatrics) should identify the required skills, knowledge, abilities and attitudes that are essential to achieve department goal and objectives and should evaluate the present expertise the staffs possess. As performance gap are recognized, next steps should be to build, maintain or enhance performance. Annual training and development goals are ideally linked to overall job performance. Finally, each individual staff should maintain a training and development plan that ought to be evaluated annually. Employees, human resource professionals and direct supervisors should act collectively to establish training goals, develop and schedule training sessions and tracking employee progress. (Hernandez, and O'Connor 2009, pp.213-214) In a training needs analysis for a specific worker, the person conducting the analysis (who will usually be a qualified trainer) should be tell in details what the employee is supposed to the trainees themselves, the eventual trainers and the company management. Further, individual training sometimes is needed to effectively discharging one’s duties. Their special training needs would determine their training contents. Evaluation of present sills an individual possess and the additional skills and knowledge required reaching a higher standard of work should be examined in detail and the gap between the two can then be filled by appropriate training (DEVI and Rao, 2012, p148). Different strategies for promoting the continuing development of individuals in the health and social care workplace Mentoring: Coaching and mentoring are gaining wider appeal day by day as more companies want their employees to be equip with these skills by the medium of training programmes and procuring external provision of these services. Mentoring is a cost efficient and sustainable means of nurturing and developing talent. Exposure to high performing colleagues can motivated talented employees to perform even better Experience can be passed on more effectively one-to-one. Incentives and rewards: For motivating an employee, performance incentives is also necessary. It may take various forms from hiking salary to providing rewards. It is not necessary that it always take pecuniary form. Motivations can be related to social and professional advancement (Ehiri, 2009, p.526). In case of non-financial reward, best employee award, providing early leave or more day shifts, rewarding with surprise gifts can be considered. Theories of leadership and Health and Social care Transformational theory revolves around how leaders can transform their followers positively, and how followers can do the same for a leader. Few studies have been conducted on transformational leaderships especially among nurses and it has been found that scores on transformational leadership were positively related with staff satisfaction and work group effectiveness (Marshall, 2011, pp.19-20). Behavioral theory endorses the value of leadership styles with an importance on concern for people and group effort. It promotes participative decision making and team development by supporting individual needs and aligning individual and group objectives. How to manage a working relationship- Improvement in communication Skills: Careful listening and focus on the speaker's message is absolute necessary in the health and social care segment. This will allow one to respond appropriately and avoid misunderstandings in health and social care segment. When the speaker (patient) is finished, one should state his/her doubt to ensure there is no chance of misinterpretation. One should not be rude or express impatient in listening patient’s problems. Resolve Conflicts Early: In a negative situation always one should not allow it to evaluate him or herself. Direct interaction with courteousness should be adopted as soon as possible. Developing a plan of action to address the problem with one’s co-worker could be an avenue to solve the conflict. A mutual act over erasing of the conflict should be there, a priori before escalating the matter to the higher authority. Emotional Intelligence (EI), the capacity to recognize, manages and communicates one’s emotions, and responds appropriately to the emotions of other people, plays a major role in work relationship. One should mentally rehearse how one should effectively conduct oneself to be productive and achieve one’s desired result. Skill development and increasing awareness might help an individual to successfully conduct oneself in a tricky situation (Weisinger, n.d.,p 25). This can be an important component of conflict management strategy amongst the doctors and management of a hospital and social care unit. I started to work in a UK-based insurance company as an insurance consultant. I was a fresher at that time and was no knowledge about the field. After completing my Graduate degree from a prestigious college of UK, I bagged that job. Initially, I was happy but soon I realized my lack of skill in interaction with customers would not lead me anywhere. So, I approached the management. They also realized the same and arranged a training and development programme for me along with other guys who also joined with me. This training program was extremely good, addressing all my needs and I was equipped with confidence to interact with clientele, including institutions. My immediate manager played the role of a positive leader who encouraged me to speak spontaneously and showed me how to keep the clientele engaged. He taught us about customization of insurance policies with different riders and also encouraged ‘out of the box’ thinking for keeping the existing client and bringing the new one. He inspired or motivated us to face different clientele and addressing their needs in proper way. Thus he helped a lot to boost our morale. References 1. Barr, J. and L. Dowding, (2012), Leadership in Health Care, London, SAGE Publication 2. Dussault G and Dubois C A, (2004), Human Resources for Health Policies: A Critical Component in Health Policies available at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/HEALTHNUTRITIONANDPOPULATION/Resources/281627-1095698140167/DussaultDuboisHRHealthPolicies.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2013) 3. Dorio M and Shelly S, (2011), The Complete Idiot's Guide® To Boosting Employee Performance, New York, Alpha Books 4. DEVI V. R. and Rao M. M., (2012), Training Needs Identification of Nursing Staff – A Case Study of A Health Care Organization, International Journal of Multidisciplinary Management Studies, Vol.2 Issue 5, available at http://zenithresearch.org.in/images/stories/pdf/2012/May/EIJMMS/12_EIJMMS_MAY12_VOL2_ISSUE5.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2013) 5. Fallon F & McConnell R C, (2007), Management in Health Care, Principles and Practice, available at http://www.jblearning.com/samples/0763735310/35310_FMxx_Final.pdf (accessed on May 24, 2013) 6. Gill R, (2012), Theory and Practice of Leadership, London, SAGE Publication. 7. Improving Work Relationships (1999), Stanford, available at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/scie/Career/Wisdom/positive.htm (accessed on May 24, 2013) 8. World Health Organization, (2005), Preparing a healthcare workforce for the 21st century, Switzerland, World Health Organization 9. Hernandez S. R, O'Connor J S,(2009), Strategic human resources management in health services organizations, New York, Delmar Cengage Learning. 10. Marshall S E, 2011, Transformational Leadership in Nursing, New York, Springer. 11. Weisinger H, (n.d.), Emotional Intelligence at Work, retrieved on June 3, 2013, from : http://www.txcouncil.com/userfiles/file/2010%20Conference%20Presentations/Emotional%20Intelligence%20at%20Work%206-17-2010%20Wei.pdf Read More