Human resources in healthcare sector

Thèmes abordés

Healthcare, HR, human resources, challenges, recruitment, retention, public hospitals, control, evaluation, employees

Résumé du document

In the past decade there has been a growing concern about human resources practices and outcomes in business. The main conclusion of the studies is that getting the "right" human resources policies and practices has a huge positive impact on the overall organization, its performances and sustainability (Richardson & Thompson, 1999; West, Patterson, Lawthom & Nickell, 1997). Due to the nature of the healthcare sector that is very labor-intensive and in which people play a very significant role in quality, safety and more generally performance, this is very surprising to discover that human resources practices in the field are far from being the best. Some authors such as Bach, 2001 or Buchan, 2004 found out that current human resources practices and systems enabled healthcare organizations to use only 60% to 70% of the capacity of their workforce, at best. In this essay, we will try to understand why many organizations in the healthcare sector are "late" concerning human resources issues, by explaining how the healthcare domain is different from other sectors and consequently why "traditional" good management practices cannot be directly implemented. After a general literature review concerning the specificities of the healthcare domain, we will study the implications for human resources practices and their needed "adaptation", using two broad examples that are recruitment & retention and assessment & control in public hospitals.

Extraits

[...] 11/12/2009 HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT What are the challenges in implementing traditional human resource practices in health care organizations? In the past decade there has been a growing concern about human resources practices and outcomes in business. The main conclusion of the studies is that getting the “right” human resources policies and practices has a huge positive impact on the overall organization, its performances and sustainability (Richardson & Thompson, 1999; West, Patterson, Lawthom & Nickell, 1997). Due to the nature of the healthcare sector that is very labor-intensive and in which people play a very significant role in quality, safety and more generally performance, this is very surprising to discover that human resources practices in the field are far from being the best. [...]

[...] Human resources managers arriving in healthcare institutions should carefully tackle this problem. This is a challenging issue, healthcare institutions are known for providing not so good working environments but to counterbalance the shortages of skilled staff, they have to find a way of attracting and retaining talented people The use of temporary staff to compensate missing employees is very costly but also creates stress and decreases the performance of regular organization's employees (Barney, 2002). Concerning recruitment, managers should be aware of the skilled people shortage and plan recruitment duration & time in an appropriate manner (Siddiqui & Kleiner, 1998). [...]

[...] Scully, M. Carter, S. Anelay, M. Patterson, and J. Waring (2002) The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in acute hospitals. [...]

[...] Human resources managers should keep in mind the existence of such institutions and try to transform their own organizations to get closer to them. Control & evaluation in healthcare Performance assessment is a field in which human resources managers are likely to face numerous challenges when dealing with healthcare institutions. First, the diversity of the workforce induces a huge range of performance conceptions (Lawler, 1984) and requires customized performance indicators (Siddiqui & Kleiner, 1998). Medical processes cannot be standardized to be easily assessed as many things depends on the patients & particular circumstances (Natarajan, 2006), healthcare is a “handicraft industry” (Baumol, 1995). [...]

[...] References (The) Economist (2005) IT in the Health-Care Industry, April 28, available at: www.economist.com Anson, B. R. (2000) Taking charge of change in a volatile healthcare marketplace. Human Resource Planning 2'5 21-33. Bach, S. (2001) HR and new approaches to public sector management: Improving HRM capacity. Geneva, Switzerland: Department of Organization of Health Services Delivery, World Health Organization. Barney, S.M. (2002) Retaining our workforce, regaining our potential, Journal of healthcare management, 47:5 September/October Baumol, W.J. (1995), Healthcare as a Handicraft Industry, Annual Lecture, Office of Health Economics, London. Buchan (2004) What difference does HRM make? [...]