Managing Human Resources in Health and Social Care - Case Study Example

Managing Human Resources in Health and Social Care: St - Patrick’s Nursing Home Case Introduction Staff management is a significant aspect in the current health and social care environment. Issues like medical errors and spread of infectious diseases pose great threats to health safety across the world. Evidences suggest that increased job stress and poor worksite relations often lead to most of such problems. Hence, today health managements give particular focus to proper staff management by investing more time and money on HR activities. St-Patrick’s Nursing Home, located at Halton, is a nursing care organisation operating as per Health (Nursing Homes) Act 1990. In the current health and social care environment, recruitment and selection processes are very important because qualified and skilled employees can deliver improved services to health beneficiaries. However, the St-Patrick’s management must pay specific attention to the country’s legislative framework while proceeding with the recruitment and selection process. A well structured performance evaluation plan is essential for the St-Patrick’s Nursing Home so as to identify its best performers and underperformers, and hence to adopt appropriate changes to improve the situation. This paper will explore the significance of teamwork in a health and social care and evaluate various approaches that can be used by the St-Patrick’s management to maintain strong work relationships. This paper will also analyse different leadership theories to improve the management of a health and social care workplace. 1. Recruitment planning and selection approaches 1.1 A number of factors need to be considered while planning the recruitment of individuals at St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. First the St-Patrick’s top management must ensure that the candidates maintain sufficient qualification to meet the job requirements of the organisation. In addition, the nursing home may make sure that it has better access to a large pool of well-experienced candidates before planning employee recruitment. For this, the organisation should advertise its job vacancies to maximum number of people using various modern advertising techniques like social media in addition to conventional advertising channels like TV, newspapers, and printed notices. It is particularly advisable for the nursing home to make better use of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube because it is a potential way to attract more qualified candidates to the recruitment process at cheaper costs. The top management must also make certain that there is a well-developed recruitment process in operation to select skilled and potential employees who can significantly contribute to the overall organisational objectives. In other words, the recruitment procedures must be capable of identifying employees who are really able to work in line with the organisational culture of the St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. Finally, the organisation must offer attractive salaries and other benefits to candidates so as to influence well qualified and experienced employees who are currently working with other reputed nursing homes to attend the recruitment. 1.2 It is clear that relevant legislative and policy frameworks of the home country influence the recruitment, selection, and employment of individuals to work in health organisations. Since St-Patrick’s Nursing Home operates in UK, the recruitment and selection processes must be in compliance with the legislative framework of the United Kingdom. Recently the UK parliament passed ‘The Equality Act 2010’ in order to establish a more effective legal framework for fighting employee discrimination. This Act has a set of ‘protected characteristics’ that covers common areas of discrimination, including age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity (The University of Sheffield). These protected characteristics will certainly influence the recruitment and selection policies of St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. The St-Patrick’s management cannot discriminate candidates based on their sex, religion, politics, sexual orientation, or gender reassignment as per the terms of this Act. Similarly, ‘The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006’ can also affect the recruitment and selection of individuals to work in the nursing home. According to this Act, the St-Patrick’s management has to pay specific attention on preventing the employment of illegal migrants. In the UK legal context, the organisation has to perform a ‘Criminal Records Checks’ while recruiting employees so as to maintain a secure workplace environment (The University of Sheffield). Since St-Patrick’s Nursing Home manages various vulnerable groups and clinical situations every day, the organisation is legally required to perform pre-employment criminal records checks for identifying employees having no criminal background. 1.3 For the St-Patrick’s Nursing Home, it is better to follow the different approaches described by Bullock (2012) to ensure the selection of best individuals. The author says that general mental ability (GMA), structured interviews, and situational judgement tests are some of the most effective and valid methods employee selection. GMA is generally considered to be the single most effective selection approach to predict the future performance of employees under different job situations (Krausert, 2009, p.171). Another advantageous feature of this approach is that it is greatly flexible and affordable because paper and pencil tests or online computer adaptive tests can be used under GMA according to the needs of the organisation. In contrast to standard interviews, “applicants are asked a series of specific, predetermined, job-related questions while their responses are scored using detailed criteria” under structured or behaviourally-based interviews (Bullock, 2012). This is an effective method to reduce the chances of personal biases from interviewing managers. Finally, under situational judgement tests, candidates are asked to choose the way they would respond to specific hypothetical situations that are extremely relevant to the job position applied (Ibid). When it comes to filling manager-level vacancies, situational judgment test is more effective to predict the future performance of candidates. It is recommendable for the St-Patrick’s Nursing Home to rely more on situational judgment tests to select skilled and potential candidates because this approach is effective in assessing candidates’ decision making skill. And, identifying this skill is important to generate better outcomes in a health/social care environment. 2. Employee performance 2.1 It is important to analyse the theories on how individuals interact in groups with regard to the types of teams that work in the health and social care. The theories such as functional theory, symbolic convergence theory, and the naturalistic paradigm give an overview of the way individuals interact in groups. Referring to Miller (2014, p. 146), the functional theory reflects that individuals’ interaction in groups is specifically related to the outcomes of group behaviours and communication is used as a key tool to solve problems and to form sound decisions. This theory states that interactions in groups help group members develop critical thinking and rational judgment skills. It is clear that the element of communication is inevitable for ensuring efficient performance of teams that work in the health and social care, and promoting patient safety and community wellbeing. The symbolic convergence theory particularly emphasises the sense-making aspect of communication; and, in this theoretical framework, the term ‘symbolic’ stands for verbal and nonverbal messages whereas the term ‘convergence’ refers to ‘shared understanding and meaning.’ (Small group communications, n.d.). Referring to this theory, group members develop specific codes and signals that individuals outside the group cannot understand. In a healthcare environment, nursing staff use many code words and signals to communicate each other easily and they maintain a shared understanding of different standards, procedures, and events. The naturalistic paradigm assumes that “communicators construct social reality as they interact” (Ibid). The major strength of this framework is its focus on natural human interactions. This theoretical framework has also a significant influence on the way health/social care groups perform. For an HR manager, it is particularly important to ensure that employees use their full potentials to improve the operational efficiency of the organisation. An effective performance evaluation plan is required to perform this task successfully. It is recommendable for the St-Patrick’s top management to employ the balanced scorecard approach to measure the performance of its employees. The balanced scorecard approach is an effective performance evaluation tool that can assist managers to keep track of the various activities executed by employees, and the possible consequences of those actions. 2.2 Various approaches can be used by the staff at different levels to develop and promote effective team work at St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. First, the staff members must give specific focus to interpersonal communication, which plays an important role in enhancing team spirit. According to West and Turner (2010, p. 362), interpersonal communication will definitely assist team members to make friendship with their teammates and feel a sense of belongingness. Undoubtedly this situation would create a positive worksite environment, and hence staff members would be motivated to contribute to their overall team success. It is advisable for team leaders to select best performers in the team on a weekly or monthly basis and appreciate their efforts so as to keep them motivated to maintain consistency in their performance. The team members may also find leisure time to discuss their personal matters, political views, and other general matters as this practice is better to increase the efficacy of team work. Staff members must specifically try to be honest in their dealings with teammates because a dishonest attitude would hurt the scope of effective team work. In addition, team members should not hesitate to appreciate their colleagues’ efforts as even a simple ‘pat on shoulder’ can have a great psychological impact on individual employees. The team members who maintain a supportive attitude work with relaxed minds and make significant contributions to the team’s success. In short, staff members at different levels must try to promote a collaborative atmosphere in the workplace to achieve effective team working at St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. 3. Performance evaluation plan 3.1 Arranging periodical training sessions for the care staff is essential to keep them informed of the changes in the clinical practices and recent developments in the healthcare. However, proper and effective care staff training is possible only if the current performance of individuals working in the health and social care is appraised. While measuring the performance of health and social care workers, it is vital to assess the way the staff members meet their goals in addition to identifying whether or not they have accomplished the tasks assigned. It would be better to use a computerised system to appraise the performance of the care staff because specific indicators can be clearly focused under such a system. To illustrate, if a healthcare facility wants to know how money it is spending on infection problems, it can develop an evaluation tool with the help of a software company to specifically focus on this indicator (Bensing, 2011). The team leader or the nursing manager has to consider special contributions made by the staff members (if any) while dealing with the performance measurement. It is important for the measuring managers to perform the evaluation process fairly and effectively to obtain reliable and accurate outcomes. Health facilities may hire the service of outside management professionals to perform the staff performance appraisal process flawlessly. 3.2 In order to enlighten St-Patrick’s employees about various techniques and leadership skills that they can apply to their roles to improve performance, it is essential to identify the individual training and development needs. For this, the HR manager has to first evaluate the job requirements of individual staff members. This strategy would greatly assist the HR manager to identify what the organisation expects from its individual employees, and what skills and abilities they should develop to meet those expectations. The HR manager must arrange personal meetings with departmental managers to find individual workers performing below par, and identify staff members who are really in need of professional training. By organising a counselling programme for employees, manager can easily identify employees whose performance is affected by personal and family problems and worksite stress. The HR manager may also examine the work profile of individual staff members to find underperforming employees. In addition, the HR manager can monitor on-site job performance of individual workers to make a clear sketch for meeting the individual training and development needs at St-Patrick’s Nursing Home. Once the manager recognised the individual training needs at the organisation, it is vital to frame a comprehensive training programme that can benefit employees to improve their performance. 3.3 A variety of strategies can be implemented to promote the continuing development of individuals in the health and social care workplace. First, it is essential to arrange periodical training sessions for employees to keep them informed of the recent changes in the healthcare practices because regular updation of knowledge is inevitable to enhance the continuing development of the care staff. It is important to ensure active engagement of care staff in decision making because currently many employee skills and abilities are going untapped. When care staff members are required to do only what is asked, health/social care organisations leave too much talent on the table. Therefore departmental managers must try to uncover maximum skills and abilities of staff members, and develop a potential way to encourage them to contribute it to the overall organisational productivity. Team work can greatly increase the work spirit of employees to a great extent because they feel a greater sense of belongingness and involvement (Berkaman & Harootyan, 2003, p.na). Hence, managers should foster team working among staff members in the health and social care workplace to generate better outcomes. Finally, it is better to frame long-term career development plans for care staff members as this strategy is a great way to promote the development of individual staff that are keen to achieve fast career growth. 4. Management of health and social care workplace 4.1There are many leadership theories relevant to the health and social care workplace including Deming’s theory, Drucker’s theory, contingency theory, management grid theory, connective leadership theory, and emotional intelligence theory. The Deming’s theory of leadership reflects that personal interaction is an important element for creating trust in a health and social care workplace as this element increases the probability of effective communication (Finkleman, 2008, p.7). This leadership theory gives particular importance to group or team work and team ownership of work. As Madhukar (2009, p. 7) points out, the central idea of the Drucker’s theory is that leaders are not born and the art of management can be learnt. According to this theory, nursing staff can be transformed into great leaders by providing them with an opportunity to take part in planning, establishment of goals, and decision making. Individual autonomy is an integral part of this theory of leadership. The contingency theory was developed by Fedler, and is concerned with “the situational variables that affect the leader-member relationship, task structure, and position power” (as cited in Finkleman, 2008, p.8). Management grid theory identifies five approaches of leadership including impoverished leadership, country club leadership, task leadership, team leadership, and middle-of-the-road. Leadership grid is a popular approach related to management grid, and it particularly focuses on two central aspects such as concern for people and concern for production. When the connective leadership theory pays particular attention to caring, the emotional intelligence theory gives emphasis to feelings and self-awareness. 4.2 In order to maintain a collaborative and relaxed working environment at St-Patrick’s Nursing Home, it must keep good working relationships throughout the organisation. Team working is an effective strategy to promote working relationships in the organisation because individual staff members obtain the opportunity to interact and mingle with others when they work in a group or team. When tasks are performed on a group basis, the staff members can spend more time with their colleagues and use the free time to share their personal or family matters. Such an interpersonal relationship will certainly assist the management to keep its employees motivated, and reduce the rate of absenteeism and staff turnover. Similarly, it is necessary to promote strong management-staff relationship at this nursing care to ensure the smooth flow of up and down management information. The nursing managers must identify staff problems timely and respond quickly to those problems without any bias and prejudice. In addition, the management must respond to staff needs such as pay increases, incentives, or other financial benefits on time. Every individual staff must be free to approach his/her manager whenever necessary, because open communication is the key to strong worksite relationships. The St-Patrick’s management must pay increased attention to managing worksite conflicts timely and effectively as this issue can dreadfully affect workplace relationships in the organisation. 4.3 In my personal experience, management approaches have had a great influence on my personal as well as professional development. For instance, during 2001-05 I worked in a consultancy service firm that was committed to provide better suggestions to emerging entrepreneurs. The firm’s manager was spirited to keep her followers engaged in all managerial functions including decision making. Hence I got the opportunity to participate in planning, organising, leading, and controlling activities of the firm, and this situation greatly assisted me to develop many crucial leadership skills. For the last few years, I worked in multinational IT firm that employed thousands of workers from different countries. Cultural diversity was a major issue in the firm’s workplace, and it often led to severe worksite conflicts. Under such conditions, it was not possible to list what strategies were needed to manage a specific situation. Therefore, my team leader encouraged employee creativity and thereby allowed us to respond to various management situations according to our own plans. Undoubtedly, this working experience greatly benefited me to handle complex worksite situations strongly and confidently. Conclusions From the above discussion, it is clear that St-Patrick’s Nursing Home must strictly comply with a set of UK legislative frameworks and policies including The Equality Act 2010 while recruiting and selecting staff members. Employee selection techniques like general mental ability (GMA), structured interviews, and situational judgement tests can be used by the management to choose skilled and qualified employees. The theories including functional theory, symbolic convergence theory, and the naturalistic paradigm provide good understanding of the way individuals would perform in a group or team environment. It is recommendable for the top management to promote employee creativity within the organisation to improve the overall organisational productivity. Likewise, group work is the key aspect of success in a health and social care environment because it assists care staff members to maintain shared understanding of different matters relating to care delivery. References Bensing, K. 2011. “Nurse Performance Appraisals: What purpose do they serve?” [online] available at: http://nursing.advanceweb.com/Regional-Content/Articles/Nurse-Performance-Appraisals.aspx [accessed 18 June 2014]. 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The University of Sheffield. “Human Resources: Key Legislation regarding Recruitment and Selection”. [online] available at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/hr/recruitment/guidance [accessed 18 June 2014]. West, R & Turner, L. 2010. Understanding Interpersonal Communication: Making Choices in Changing Times. US: Cengage Learning. Read More