Introduction
Human resource management has become one of the most vital emphases of management in most organizations. The success of every organization, to a great extent, depends on the effectiveness of human resource management. Human resources management is a composite function consisting mainly of deciding or assessing the staffing needs of an organization, decisions on how to satisfy these needs, recruiting and training the best-qualified candidates for the posts, maintaining high performance of employees, conducting performance appraisal, and ensuring that employees comply with various regulation in the course of their service. In general, human resources management is a function of management that deals with staffing and staffing needs.
The recruitment process has been a big challenge for many industries. Health care organizations have been hard hit by these challenges. Health care industries have the most critical recruitment process because they have to look for highly qualified candidates to perform specialized duties. These skilled employees are not easy to find. This essay explores the significance of human resources management in the context of the health care industry.
Other issues of concern in this essay are the factors that affect recruitment of “in demand” employees, how organizational restructuring has impacted staffing in healthcare organizations, Does decreasing the number of employees always save an organization/company money? Why or why not. And finally, we shall discuss some of the specific issues that we find in healthcare.
The Significance of Human Resources Management
Human resource management plays a big role in providing support to the management in employing the most qualified personnel that will give the organization a competitive advantage in the market. In general, HRM recruits preserve and develop highly qualified employees that serve the organization. Human resource management helps in linking the organization employees to the management. The management is able to assess the quality of the employees that they have in the organization. In case the management wishes to fill a certain position in the organization, they rely on human resource management. This includes recruiting fresh people into the organization or internal recruitment, where the management wishes to promote some employees to occupy the emerging higher positions.
Besides hiring the best employees, human resource management also plays a big role in creating loyalty among the workforce in order to ensure there is teamwork and that the employees have loyalty to the company. This acts as a key motivator to the employees as they have a sense of belonging in the organization. HRM also builds a strong commitment among the employees in the organization. This is done by updating them about the plans of the organization and the goals that they work to achieve.
Factors that affect the recruitment of “in demand” employees
Many industries face various challenges in hiring “in demand” employees. In health care, for instance, the challenges are big because there is a need for continual recruitment of more employees in order to improve the quality of service offered to the customers. According to Clarke (2000, 1), the biggest challenge, in this case, is that getting the candidate with the desired skills is a problem. This is because most of the employment opportunities in health care require specialists in different fields. Getting these specialists is not an easy task. The specialists in health care fields are few, and this makes recruitment difficult.
The other challenge is that the loyalty of employees and the companies to each other has been going down in a healthy market such that it is hard to find loyal candidates to fill the desired positions. The skilled and experienced employees are not willing to take up jobs in health care organizations; instead, they prefer practicing their professions privately (Kabene et al., 2006, 1). The already employed specialists are not loyal to the company, and they do not devote their effort completely to serving their employers. They are busy doing their own work in their privately established firms. This has greatly been contributed by the fact that health care organizations have also not been loyal to the employees.
There has also been increasing pressure exerted on the health care organizations related to salaries and benefits due to the employees. There has been pressure to increase salaries and other benefits. This has increased the cost of hiring employees because it is no longer cost-effective. The cost control related to recruitment and retaining the best employees has been a big challenge as high performers are demanding more benefits. If they do not get the benefits, they will move to other organizations or start their own businesses.
The other challenge has been that in almost all healthcare organizations, the working environment is the same, and therefore competition in getting the qualified personnel is based on the salary offered (Clarke, 2000, 1). This has affected movement of employees from one organization to another. There has been movement to organization offering the best salary because it is the only factor to consider. Some firms may not be able to increase the salary beyond a certain limit or are forced to stretch beyond their reach in hiring qualified employees.
Effects of organizational restructuring on recruitment in healthcare organizations
In health care organization, as in other organizations, the organizational structure is changed in order to improve the performance of the organization. Most of the organizational restructuring will require the human resources manager to recruit more employees to serve the company. This is because to improve the performance of the organization, new or advanced skills may be needed. This will require the HRM to look for persons with the desired qualifications.
In this case, organizational restructuring creates the need for more recruitment in the organization. In cases of merger and acquisition as forms of organizational restructuring in healthcare organizations, there may be the need to hire more employees or reduce the number of employees. This is because new posts may be created as the organization grow big or some positions be removed as they may become unnecessary in the organization.
Decreasing the number of employees and saving organization/company money
Decreasing the number of employees may to a great extent save the company a lot of money. This is because the amount of money paid to the employees in form of salaries and benefits will be reduced. The administrative costs related to the employees may also reduce as the number of employees reduces. However, there are other cases where reducing the number of employees will incur the company more costs or not change them at all. For example, reducing the number of employees without proper planning will overburden the other employees left. This is because they will need to do extra work that was meant for the removed employees. The company might end up paying overtime for work done by employees outside the normal working hours.
Some specific issues in healthcare
There are several issues related to human resources in healthcare. Firstly, there is an issue concerning the distribution of health care workforce in almost all countries (Kabene et al., 2006, 1). The healthcare workforce is scarce because the demand is growing at a high rate. The other issue is related to training of workforce through education and in-service programs. This has become very necessary for the success of any healthcare organization.
Training workforce makes them competent to handle the assigned tasks. There is also an issue of migration of workforce either to urban centers in their country or movement to other countries. This is causing imbalance in the number of workforce available in a certain region or country and the service rendered are also affected. The underpayment of healthcare professionals especially in developing countries is the main cause of this migration and it needs urgent attention.
Conclusion
Human resources management is vital in healthcare and other organizations and therefore should be well developed. In health care industry, HRM should be given enough support by the management in order to address the existing issues.
Reference List
Clarke, R. L. (2000). Investing in the human resource: Healthcare Financial Management. Web.
Kabene et al. (2006). The importance of human resources management in health care: a global context. London: BioMed Central Ltd. Web.