Strategic Human Resources Management In Austin Health Heidelberg Facility

Company Vision and Strategy

Discuss about the Strategic Human Resources Management .

The Austin health is one of the main providers of health professional education as well as tertiary health services and research in the North east of Melbourne in Australia.  The institution is made up of the Austin Hospital, Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and the Royal Talbot Rehabilitation center. As of February 2017, the hospital operates 980 beds across acute, mental health and sub-acute with an estimated annual budget of over AUD700 Million (Austin, 2017).  The institution is international recognized as being a leader in the training, clinical teaching for affiliated eight universities. The facility is also the largest provider of training for specialist surgeons and physicians in Victoria. As per 2013-14, the institution completed 95,142 inpatient admissions, 75, 366 emergency attendance and 177,027 outpatient attendance (Austin, 2017).

The focus of this strategic Human resource plan will be in one of its branches the Austin heath Heidelberg facility. This facility was originally built in 1941 and became part of Austin health in 1995 (Austin, 2017). The main activities of the facility has been to care for war veterans and widows. As of now, the Heidelberg health facility is a major player in the treatment of war veterans and widows while at the same time providing service to the communities around. Some of the services offered in the facility include palliative care, day surgery, mental health services, outpatient services like nuclear medicine, radiotherapy, radiology and radiation oncology.

The strategic mission for the human resource management department will only be realized if every employee is aware of their roles and exercise these roles well through the facility’s core values. In this manner, each staff will be able to enjoy the benefits of the new human resource strategic plan by working through a common good.  By carefully setting up the Human resource strategy of Austin health, it is comes out clearly that as a hospital the facility is yet to deal with a lot of real human resources issues which leads to any form of disciplinary action.

With regard to Austin Health, the company’s vision is going to be to change the healthcare system for the better. This will be done through education, world class research and exceptional patient care (Anand & Daft, 2007). To achieve this, the facility is going to work through reputable values such as integrity, accountability, respect and excellence (Adler & Elmhorst, 2010). The mission of the hospital ensures the facility has adopted new circumstances that establish a workable human resource department that foster patient care and human dignity.

Key Strategic HR Issues

According to Benn & Bolton, (2011); Baumruk, Jr., Gorman, Robert, & Ingham, (2006) and Dowling, Festing, & Engle (2013), the human resources management functions in hospitals is one way of driving change in a hospital facility. This means that having a better workforce strategy will ensure better patient care as well as business performance for the hospital (Peters, 2011) (Best, 2008). Some of the Human Resources issues for the hospital facilities are identified as follows:

Poor Staff Retention – staff retention is one of the major human resource issue for a hospital in Austin Health Heidelberg (Austin, 2017). Some of the consequence that have been realized in the facility include high cost of employee turnover from time to time (Anand & Daft, 2007). The knowledge of the company also becomes at a greater loss and the staff seem to experience low work morale. All of the above issues are detrimental for an organisation. According to Peters, (2011), the retention of staff is one of the main factors that determine long term success and health of the facility. It is thus important that the health facility find a better strategy to retain their best employees and ensure that all patients are satisfied, the hospital is able to generate revenue (Lorshe, 2012). This will also ensure that staff, co-workers and other reporting staff are satisfied, there is an effective succession planning and organisation knowledge and learning is exercised.

The hospital staff assessment program is also one of the main issues in the Human resource department. There needs to be a well-defined assessment center specifically for the Heidberg facility based no competence selection for vacancies in the organisation (Armstrong, 2009). The approach is important as it ensures the hospital’s commitment to the delivery of dignity in care through a proper workforce that is led by requisite values and behaviors. In this regard, there should be modalities for induction process as well.

Recruitment Process – The recruitment process is also another human resource issue. A proper recruitment process will ensure that staff are well selected on merit and can be retained for a long time. Jain & Jain (2014) argues that recruitment process will also vary with the department and economic conditions of the country.

Cultural Shift – Cultural shift will also be a human resource management issue especially when it comes to employee retention. With the change in management, some employees will be resistant to change. According to Anand & Daft (2007), resistance to change in an organisation will usually take different forms, some of them will include those employees that will undermine the new director initiatives, others will withhold information and other active forms of resistance like planned strike (Securitas, 2015).  According to Baumruk, Jr., Gorman, Robert, & Ingham (2006), poor communication is also a cultural issue in human resource management that will surround the effectiveness of change management because an imposed change is bound to encourage employee resistance.

12 Month HR Plan

The

	Initiative	Rationale	Priorities	Time Frame	Success Measures
1	Recruit Highly Professional and experienced staff	This will ensure that there is increased patient satisfaction for services and less resistance to the new strategies. By doing so, the hospital facility will also be in a better position to effect new organisation culture.	Review staff information for each department and assess qualifications/ Hold a one day orientation workshop for that will introduce new policies and deliverables to staff.	March 2017	1. Improved services with regard to patient care and treatment. 2. Low staff turnover. 3. Cultural change taking effect with little resistance.
2.	Orientation Training for the new team	Orientation training will be very vital as the new management takes place. This will ensure that all staff understand the director’s mission and vision. It will also enable strong teamwork as all the staff in the organisation will be able to work towards a specific goal. Orientation training will also be a better opportunity for the old staff to address their human resource issues.	Conduct baseline assessment to identify strategic human resource issues. Come up with an orientation training curriculum that will address the human resource issue at the facility. Select staff to participate in the orientation training. Draw a budget for the orientation training. There will also be continuous seminars conducted as part of refresher courses for staff to ensure that they are up to date with the new technologies and patient care.	March 2017	1. Complete orientation training curriculum for the established and new staff. 2. Complete training done. 3. Implementation of the new strategies in the organisation by trained staff. 4. Employee satisfaction on the new human resource strategy.
3	Employee Assessment	The new strategy will ensure that each employee is evaluated each month. This is important as it will enable the director understand progress of each employee and find ways of improving. It will also ensure that the management knows whether employees are performing with regard to the facility’s mission and vision. Through continuous assessment systems, the management will be able to judge whether employees are matured for salary increase and other forms of reward. It will also make the management understand how employees view the company and if there is reason for change.	1. Formulate a continuous assessment program. 2. Select employees for assessment and assessment dates. 3. Formulated an appraisal system for best performing employees.	May, August and November 2017	1. High performance among employees. 2. Employee promotion and reward system implemented. 3. Increased employee morale and patient satisfaction. 4. Positive perception of employee about the new human resource management team.
4.	Initiate Compensation, Benefits and reward programs	This will ensure that every hired employee is compensated with a basic pay wage according to the standard of Melbourne. In addition, through this initiative, all ranks including those responsible for records and store keeping will receive an additional pay in terms of profit sharing in every four months. There will also be performance based incentives or reward, these will be used in motivating employees against poor performance and turnover. Through compensation and reward programs, the hospital facility hopes to retain well experienced and high performing employees, it will ensure that they are not bought out by other hospitals with competitive pay package.	1. The Human resource department will conduct and review the salary scale for each employee. This will be done in relation to qualification, work experience, experience with the hospital and performance levels of the employee. 2. New pay packaged will be implemented with regard to provided human resource guidelines. 3. Implementation of the new pay package will be in effect after approval by the board.	April 2017	1. Low staff turnover. 2. Increased performance. 3. Improved lifestyle among employees. 4. Satisfied patient.
5.	Corporate recognition during resignation, Promotion and Termination.	This is an important aspect for the new human resource strategy. Firstly, it will provide terminated employees with required support as they seek new employment based on the condition of termination or dismissal. The initiative will also be important as it ensures that employees will be looking to elevate their education or competency level are provided with assistance in case the facility is unable to provide them with requested position. In this regard, the company will also include employee resumes in the pool of recommendations and for future recruitment should the desired space be available.	1. The first point will be to ensure that there is proper filing system for all employees in the organisation. Employee data will all be entered in to a customized hospital software that shall contain all staff records. Information about employee being terminated will be provided by the human resource department upon request. There will be a follow up program and compensation package to ensure that employees terminated have been absorbed or continue well with their careers. A data base for best performing employees will be kept for future reference and selection.	Throughout the year.	1. Low employee turnover. 2. Absorption of former Austin Heidberg employees to other affiliate programs and health institutions. 3. Proof of compensation for terminated employees and recommendations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the hospital’s human resource management current strategy is not fluent. In addition, procedures were found to be put in a haphazard way. Some of the areas that need to be considered is an increase in financial resource and get rid of the facility’s out of date policies. The other important area is to ensure continuous implementation for training and recruitment programs. This should especially focus on work performance, employee motivation and patient care. These are important in reducing employee turnover among other legal personnel issues in organisations. At this, there should be very clear guidelines that are going to protect the hospital’s workforce, employee interests and the interest of patients. Succession plans should ensure that running of the hospital is effective. In addition, there should be clear channels of promotion, termination and recruitment of employees. This will ensure the hospital has established a culture of fairness and integrity in the human resource department.

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