Strategies To Improve Healthcare Employee Job Satisfaction: A Case Study Of HealthTech

Background and Discussion

Discuss about the Healthcare for Human Resource Studies.

The healthcare industry HealthTech operates in a highly dynamic and competitive world, and hence it becomes imperative that each organization operating in this industry offers higher quality of healthcare service to its consumers so as to ensure patient satisfaction. However, herein lays the importance of job satisfaction of the healthcare workers, in absence of which workplace productivity as well as consumer satisfaction both will be affected (Betsch, 2014). Hence, the present report intends to analyze and evaluate the importance of increasing the job satisfaction of the healthcare workforce at HealthTech, and at the same time recommend strategies that can effectively help in achieving the same.

The healthcare workers at HealthTech are usually entrusted with multiple job roles at a time, that professionally exhaust them. The same healthcare worker has often been assigned with the duty of taking care of the patient, supervising the maintenance of the patient’s room, as well as billing the medical expenses for the patients. This causes professional burn-out in the healthcare workers, who thus fail to stay motivated for a long period of time (Chima, 2013). Besides, researches also suggest that the healthcare workers also receive a very small sum of money and dissatisfaction with salary scale has been found to be a major factor linked with high turnover rates of the workers.  Besides, an unpleasant working environment, lack of appraisal and recognition at workplace and poor relation with co-workers are also important contributing factors to the low job satisfaction rate of the healthcare workers at HealthTech.

However, job satisfaction issue is a highly important factor in any organization, as it helps in maximizing the profit of an organization by increasing the productivity and efficiency rates of the respective workers. However, most importantly the hospital managers have an important obligation to serve the needs of the patients who are seeking medical facilities from the organizations, and yet it has been noted that the healthcare workforce fails to serve well to the patients if their needs are not being fulfilled (Chao et al., 2015). Lack of attention to the dying patient, or a rude reply by the receptionist to the patient’s family is all at once undesirable, and hence should be shunned. Such incidents can easily affect the good will and brand reputation of the company, and hence job motivation of the healthcare workforce has become an important issue presently.

Option and Recommendation

In case the workers are not well-motivated, it will result in low performance of the working staffs, low consumer satisfaction and higher rates of workers turnover that will anyhow imply loss of profitability in the coming years. The people getting affected as a result of low job satisfaction, is not only the shareholders, but also the consumers. Besides, other employees existent in the healthcare organization may be de-motivated to discover the high employee turnover rates at their workplaces (Azeem & Akhtar, 2014). The local significance of this situation is confined to the loss of profitability of the concerned, specific organization, while in the wider sense, low job satisfaction of the healthcare workforce would imply a deterioration of the healthcare service, that will not only affect the productivity of the global working citizens but will also imply higher mortality rates.

While many research reports have already suggested that just like any other organization, the organizations operating in the healthcare industry should have more effective, employee friendly Human Resource policies, others have opposed this. According to some, healthcare industry workers should work with the motive of causing a change in people’ s lives, and thus they should dedicate their lives to humanity overlooking petty, materialistic considerations. However, research has proved that around 71% of the healthcare workers claim that they work for money and career advancement only, and recognition matters to them, as it is their vocation that they chose to earn money (Boev et al., 2015).

Keeping into consideration, the importance of employee motivation, healthcare sectors of Singapore such as Sing Health and Raffles Medical Group have already revised the salary package of the existent workforce, and has arranged for annual recognition functions for recognizing and acknowledging the contribution of the most efficient healthcare workers of various designations, such as the physicians, nurses and receptionists.  However, as a small scale organization HealthTech has confronted a major challenge here, because of the financial constraints. Hence, salary hike had been impossible with the result of low retention rates among the employees.

However, organizations like HealthTech overlooking this problem are unknowingly harming their organizations, as unmotivated healthcare workers leave jobs in pursuit of more appealing job opportunities. This does affect the motivation rate of the other employees, and needless to state that the induction and training method of a new employee would imply higher financial expense. Above all, unmotivated workers at HealthTech deliver low quality healthcare service to the patients, and low consumer satisfaction directly affects the revenue earning capacity of the workers.

Implementation

Since job satisfaction is the ulterior factor making or marring a healthcare organization, motivating the workers in the right way is of paramount importance. First of all, while speaking of enhancing employee job satisfaction at HealthTech, financially incentivizing the workers is the most important thing. The organization should revise the salary scale of the employees, and should ensure minimal amount of hikes for the workers working over a year. Besides, there would be workers who work harder and with greater devotion to their clients, and these employees should be recognized. Incentives for working overtime can easily motivate the employees to work for greater number of hours, ultimately implying higher rate of employee engagement and productivity. Non-financial incentives, such as flexible week off, or flexible job schedule on a specific day, rewards and recognition can also enhance the job satisfaction of the employees. Research suggests that an average employee will only work hard if he knows that his performance is getting evaluated by the upper management authority, and hence a performance measuring system introduced within the company can also satisfy the employees (Dall’Ohra et al., 2015). Another potential source of employee job satisfaction is to offer training to the employees so that they can enjoy learning opportunities and be assured of career advancement opportunities. Besides, it is imperative to offer the employees health insurance and pension benefits so that they can think of long-term commitment with the organization. Again, it is equally important to involve and actively engage the workforce in every decision-making situation. This empowers each worker, while also making them feel valued by the organization they are working for (Forkney et al., 2013).

However, though each of the above discussed factors are important motivational factors that will help in satisfying the employees, it should be noted that there are risks and challenges here as well. First of all, for the small and emerging healthcare sectors, it is not possible to revise the salary scale of all the employees, or offer bonuses and other financial compensations for working overtime. Besides, if all the employees are being asked to actively participate in decision-making processes, erroneous and biased decisions can be taken, and it is unsuitable for organizations with autocratic workplace culture. Similarly, offering training programs is very resource intensive, since it would imply huge investment and employees need to stay back for training courses.

However, the aforementioned solutions will require to be implemented at any cost. First of all, the HR manager will be entrusted with the duty of implementing a performance management and evaluation system within the organization. This will help the management authority assess the performance and merit of the deserving employees, and will satisfy the healthcare workers as they would be assured of a transparent method of promotion and salary hike. The patients visiting the hospital and any of his family members will be asked to rate and review the behavior as well as performance of the healthcare expert he or she sought help from, and on the basis of these ratings, the employee performance would be evaluated (Smart et al., 2014). Besides, a performance evaluating team would be formed who would regularly supervise the performance of the employees by speaking to the head of the departments about the performance of the subordinates. Based on these evaluations, an employee would get a promotion, enjoy a salary hike or get recognized annually (Fogarty et al., 2014). Besides, the company will also annually revise the salary scale of the employees, and each permanent employee will be able to get pension, provident fund and incentive benefits. Each month, the organization should choose at least five names of healthcare workers who would be credited for their outstanding contribution at workplace, and non-financial benefits, such as a merit certificate, a title of honor to be conferred or an extra leave without pay, can be rewarded to the workers. While these solutions would be meant for the span of a year, a training program would be introduced for a span of 6 months, and would include patient care technician programs and Phlebotomy Technician Certificate Program, where each willing worker of HealthTech will be asked to participate. Lastly, for a period of 3months each month, the healthcare workers would be asked to go out for a fun trip that would encourage them to know each of the co-workers in a better way. Seminars and conferences for a span of one month would be introduced for improving the sense of unity and harmony at workplace (Hepponeimi et al., 2014).

The strategies to be implemented would be communicated to the higher management authority of HealthTech via meetings and interactive sessions with individual stakeholder, and once approved it would be communicated to the audience. The management authority will need to approve, including the CEO and the shareholders, and once approved, it will be implemented.

Reference List:

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Boev, C., Xue, Y., & Ingersoll, G. L. (2015). Nursing job satisfaction, certification and healthcare-associated infections in critical care. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 31(5), 276-284.

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