Definition and drivers
Organizational resources usually contribute a lot towards the overall success and performance of an industry, and it therefore becomes important for experts participating within an industry to manage these resources with a lot of care. Resources within an industry can include money, technology and even human beings.
It therefore important to know the general output within an industry or within organizations themselves will depend on how well leadership can manipulate and manage these results to achieve overall industry and organizational success (Schuler & Jackson 1999).
Human resources are definitely the most important resources to any organization since they use their skill to control all other organizational resources with the sole aim of optimizing their use for the best outcome (Breul & Gardner 2004).
Human capital management can be simply defined as strategically planned approaches of managing people who assist the organization/industry achieve its mission and objectives by using their skills.
Human capital management will therefore constantly tackle issues which contribute to the growth and actual development of human capital within an industry. Human resource management is quite complex and therefore in the same way that organizations manage finances and other functional areas it becomes a necessity to also manage human capital (Blair 2007).
Leaders in the American health industry know that ultimately the collective level of skill, talent and abilities of individuals within various organizations and the industry serve as the fulcrum of success of that industry and thus it becomes totally necessary to careful strategies on handling them.
There are many drivers within the American health industry that lead experts into taking the process of human capital management more seriously with close to human capital 20 million individuals who are either directly or indirectly linked to the industry and consequently the absence of human capital management can be disastrous and can eventually affect the impeccable reputation that this industry has gained over time.
The need to manage human capital within the American health industry is particularly very important because of the delicate nature of the industry, which involves dealing with patients and requires that organizations constantly keep checks on human capital to ensure those serving patients are competent enough and capable of treating patients professionally (Breul & Gardner 2004).
For instance, an hospital may decide to blacklist a doctor due to malpractice and therefore consequently the national database of medical professionals will in turn be obligated to make this known to any future prospective employers.
The highly volatile medical environment is usually subjected to technological changes that make treating patients easier and efficient and therefore this often drives hospitals to organize regular seminars whereby individuals such as doctors, morticians, nurses, and technicians can get themselves at par with trends within the industry.
Thus, it has become clearer and apparent that any expenses incurred in the process of training individuals within an organization is considered as an investment, it is because employees are expected to improve on the quality of output and improve the gains that the organization/industry is to realize after training.
Organizations and the overall industry may be driven to strategically manage their human capital because of the need to match skill set of their workforce with various functional departments accurately therefore the need to mange human capital.
Different education levels and also different job descriptions therefore require human resource managers to engage in human capital management with an aim of also ensuring efficient reward systems are put in place.
The future of Human Capital management
With the overall situation in the American health industry constantly changing and the public demanding for better and higher quality medical treatment, it is becomes necessary to effectively manage human capital.
With the use of I.T (information Technology) becoming the pivot of organizational resource management, the industry is expected to merge these technologies with enterprise resource systems to optimize the use of human resources within the organization and industry.
With such systems tightly in place it will become easier for the industry to share records of human capital within the health sector with the aim of improving on the quality of medical healthcare within the United States.
Players within the industry are much aware of the pressure to perform and the expectations that the public have on them and therefore it will become completely necessary to crate regular training programs that will in turn nurture and grow the competence, ability, skill and knowledge of the workforce (Swayne, Duncan & Ginter 2006).
Thus, the players need to undertake probably involve more training, seminars, and workshops that will aim to improve how employees working this sector carry out their day to day activities while serving patients.
In summary, the future of the American health sector will be expected to be more human capital management oriented as the need to measure productivity and improve output will take centre stage.
Furthermore, the need to minimize risks associated with the nature of work and tasks within the American health industry will demand that human capital management efforts be taken a notch higher due to the need to improve the entire health sector.
Recommendations
Although there no perfect human capital management system in the world it becomes quite essential that organizations and industries through various associations strive to continuously push human capital management towards perfection.
Figure 1: Elements that are normally included Human capital management
The leadership within the American health industry should therefore centre their efforts towards improving talent acquisition processes, goal management systems, performance management systems, compensation management systems, learning and development systems, and lastly succession management systems within an organization.
By doing so, the American health system could get an almost perfect human capital management process that will ensure that the workforce is quite happy and this will be reflected to the quality of output that will be observed in the health industry (Swayne, Duncan & Ginter 2006).
Employees make up human capital of an organization and have their own needs and targets which are equally important to them. It is this need and desires that they hold which often motivate their actions and influence the kind of output within their workplaces.
It will as a result become necessary for leadership in the American health industry to take into account such factors while dealing with each and every employee.
Because the kind of services delivered by medical professionals and health officials are quite complex and critical to the development of a nation, it hence becomes important for human capital managers to come up with systems that will be able to pinpoint areas of weaknesses together with other attributes such as goals and attempt to respond to them.
The more human capital management moves from being collective in nature and becoming more individualistic then the more likely the human resource managers are to discover the queries that they may have overlooked previously because they thought they were too personal.
Somehow it can be held that individual opinions and preferences of the workforce are more likely to affect the nature of their output. Abraham Maslow, a motivation guru, made it clear that sometimes individuals are inspired by more individualistic motives such as ego and actualization.
It will therefore be important for leadership to identify such motives within the industry and take care of them to increase the quality of output from employees.
It is also necessary that leaders within this industry to use rigorous techniques that will rediscover true talent and appropriately filter therefore selecting the most appropriate individuals into the industry.
By forming various mechanisms to retain the best of human capital then the organizations will be able to smoothly afford the hustle of entering into employee replacement process and therefore save on costs and ensure smooth delivery of services enhancing the quality of health services (Baron & Armstrong 2007).
After acquiring the needed talent and retaining employee’s continuous training and development programmes that are in tune with the current medical environment should be organized to ensure that the levels of competency, skill and knowledge is at an all time high within the industry and organizations (Breul & Gardner 2004).
In addition, a more accurate compensation system that is more reflective on the nature of tasks and job description should be awarded.
Also it is necessary for the management within the health industry to treat human capital with utmost professionalism by using radical and outstanding human capital management strategies that will optimize their performance and quality of output.
References
Baron, A. & Armstrong, M. (2007). Human capital management: Achieving added value through people. London: Kogan Page Publishers.
Blair, J. D. (2007). Strategic Thinking & Entrepreneurial Action in the Health Care. Industry. Boston: Emerald Group Publishing.
Breul, J. D. & Gardner, N. W. (2004). Human Capital 2004. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schuler. R. S. & Jackson, S. (1999). Strategic human resource management. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Swayne, L., Duncan, W. & Ginter, P. (2006). Strategic management of health care organizations Edition 5. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.