Introduction
Generally, remuneration denotes the way in which employees are rewarded after executing their responsibilities. The payments take diverse forms. There are two comprehensive classes of payments namely intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic payments regard self-engendering result including self-esteem and gratification stemming from performing useful work (Armstrong 2000).
Extrinsic rewards entail palpable financial and non-financial rewards. These motivate employees and contribute significantly to the level of commitment, loyalty to the organization and determination to work. The management should ensure that the nursing staff receives re-training regularly as deemed necessary.
Main Body
Staff errors due to insufficient knowledge and lack of guidelines
The healthcare industry is sensitive since the profession deals with the saving of human lives. As a result, it is essential for the management of any healthcare institution to put strategic staffing in place. The strategy helps in ensuring that the right people are employed. St Patrick’s human resource manager should be aware that having the right individuals is an asset to the institution.
Employing the wrong people is a liability to any organization (Armstrong 1996). Failure of the human resource function to explicitly employ rigorous recruitment means that chances of such individuals quitting the job or being fired due to incompetence are high.
The human resource manager requires implementing a recruitment strategy with at least four crucial steps. First, prospective employees should submit their applications through e-mail. The nursing profession requires high academic qualifications. This means that the production of authentic certificates is paramount. After certifying the authenticity of the certificates, the recruiting team should respond to the applicant.
In order to develop a positive image of the institution, applications that have been rejected should receive a letter of regret. The next step should involve the calling of the prospective employee for an interview over the phone. The applicant requires passing the telephone interview. The human resource should lay much emphasis on the fact that St Patrick will only look for employees who can empathize with their clients and who are friendly, cheerful, and equally humble.
The selection processes for the qualified employees follow the interview. Those found qualified will automatically be absorbed into St Patrick mainstream employees. Before being permanently employed for a position, the applicants must pass additional requirements and application tests during probation.
Finally, the employee-services human resource department will have to contact its new employees in case it offers a permanent position. Relevant work details will be offered to the new employees of the institution. In fact, the nursing staff will have to sign the essential documents like the official contract form for employment. These strategies will facilitate staff retention that is currently a big challenge for this healthcare institution.
Inadequate supervision
Currently, St Patrick experiences challenges of supervision. The institution is understaffed. Consequently, the supervisors are overwhelmed with the nursing staff working for long hours. It is hence imperative for the management to prioritize the recruitment of new employees in an effort to expand the institution. This will assist in avoiding the challenges of failure of the nursing staff to hand over effectively after shift.
Recruitment and selection
Effective employee guidance and re-training should also form part of these fundamentals. In order to achieve the goals of the organization and service excellence, the management ought to recognize the importance of human assets as the most essential aspect of any industry. This will assist the healthcare facility to have an outstanding quality that will be difficult for competitors to imitate.
The management should empower the nursing staff to constantly make appropriate resolutions for client service delivery. The staff will be motivated to take appropriate corrective actions for service delivery (Rogers 2006).
Performance, satisfaction and commitment depend on collaborative working
Most employers have resisted the idea on the unionization of employees for decades. The outcome of such opposition to the unionization is an impact on the services delivered by nursing facilities. In ideal situations, employees are at freedom to leave the positions they hold when they wish. However, when an organization gives its employees suitable terms of employment, the employees are inclined to develop loyalty to the organization.
This ensures that the organization retains the employees. On the other hand, the employer boosts the employment of resources in order to progress useful processes in delivering services to the clients.
St. Patrick hence ought to avoid employing and dismissing employees with substantive reasons. Regardless of the power to hire and fire, the nursing staffs in the institution are cognizant of the financial implication of being dismissed from the institution. The arbitrary firing of employees should be avoided.
Factors for consideration in planning the recruitment process
Contemporarily, diversity in workplace entails more than the traditional view of gender and race. The changing demographics of workplace are necessitating the setting up of diversity recruitment strategies. The clients that seek healthcare services at St Patrick are from diverse backgrounds and races.
It is hence necessary for the institution to employ nursing staff from different cultures to ensure that the needs of all clients in terms of language and demands are met. In some situations where clients seek healthcare services, language is usually a problem that makes the delivery of healthcare services a big challenge (Crail 2008).
Relevant legislative and policy framework
The Equality Act 2010 is one of the most effective legislation in the UK. The Act was designed to offer a modest, reliable and operative structure in the prevention of discrimination. The stated objective of the Act is the reformation and harmonization of the discrimination law. The Act seeks to reinforce the law supporting progress on equality. There are other legislations that have been in existence for decades.
The Equal Pay Act was the earliest law in workplace which became operational in 1970. The Equality Act shields same groups that were safeguarded by the prevailing laws. It combines all other laws on equality under the ‘protected characteristics’. In fact, the protected characteristics include age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion, sex, sexual alignment, marriage and pregnancy (Baron 2001).
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) came to effect in 2007. It combined the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Commission for Racial Equality and Disability rights Commission. The EHRC implements equality legislation of the protected characteristics.
It boosts compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998. The commission is responsible for advocating for social change and impartiality. It enjoys wide-ranging legitimate authority. The commission is legally mandated to take legal acts on behalf of individuals.
Approaches for selecting best individuals
The employment of the nursing staff should be based on qualifications, competences and talents of the individual employees. Effective recruitment and selection processes should be thorough to ensure that the best candidates are employed.
Approaches for developing and promoting effective team work
It is important to ensure that employees collaborate to achieve personal and organizational performance and growth. It is necessary to ensure that all employees at St Patrick are treated in the same way to avoid falling out of the effective teams.
Performance assessment for evaluation
Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is intended to enable productive communication between staffs and their seniors. It also facilitates the clarification of job performance that requires improvement. For effective management of work performance at St Patrick, it is imperative for the leadership to implement the PIP to assist the nursing staffs improve their performance.
The collaboration between supervisors and staff members in implementing the PIP is essential in addressing the current low performance levels in the institution. The plan will facilitate the communication between staff members and management. The plan should be for the individual nursing staff to address specific issues.
The design and expectation of the plan will facilitate advanced degree of lucidity between an individual nursing staff and the management regarding the expectations (Becker & Gerhart 1996).
The management should ensure that leaders assess a variety of items on the appraisal document with the staff (Barlow 2003). Explicit output that requires enhancement should be clearly stated. It is also advisable to cite examples where possible. This will facilitate the interaction between the leader and the nursing staff.
Gradually, the communication strategies among the nursing staffs will improve. When a staff is not included in making some decisions, there will be communication breakdown. The management must state clearly the job performance expectation. The nursing staff should endeavor to perform their duties on a reliable basis.
In assisting the staff to deliver quality services to the clients, the management should pinpoint and stipulate the backing and resources the institution will provide. It is equally important for the management to communicate with the staff about the management’s plan for affording feedback (Boxall & Purcell 2003). The intervals for meeting should be explicit and individuals must be involved.
Such a strategy will help the staff to be psychologically prepared and have any issues that require to be raised well thought out prior to the meeting. The document should also stipulate measures that the evaluator will put into consideration during the evaluation process to evaluate progress. Similarly, it should be clear to the employees about the probable penalties if performance criterion is not met (Heathfield 2014).
Leadership theories in health and social care workplace
Theories in this field include transactional, transformational and expressive aptitude. These theories are intertwined with the recruitment concepts and support the staff to effectively execute their roles. The development of the employee knowledge is another concept that adds to the efficient delivery of health and social care based on the transformational theory.
In the evident revert to the single best leadership approach; the current leadership researches seem to contrast “transformational leadership style” with “transactional leadership.”
However, unlike transformational leaders, transactional leaders appear to have the inborn abilities to inspire assistants besides being passionate and farsighted leaders. Heathfield (2014) in contrast states that transactional leaders often concentrate on the exchange affiliations with the organizational employees and are equally instrumental.
Managing working relationships and effective team working
The human resource function is essential in developing good working relationships among employees (Caldwell 2001). Colleagues with similar professional qualifications typically have good work relations. Despite this fact, not all relations work as intended.
The human resource function plays a central role in ensuring that the objectives of the organization are not impacted by personal differences among employees. It is important for the management of St Patrick to organize retreats for employees to interact.
Personal opinion
In my view regarding the management approaches at St. Patrick’s Nursing Home, the strategies used must be changed significantly. The leadership style requires in-depth review as the performance of the facility is diminishing. A variety of factors including high employee turnover has negative effect on the profitability and negative public opinion.
The management should implement open culture where the employees are comfortable when discussing issues with senior managers and colleagues. For St Patrick to achieve its human resource staffing plan over the next years, its human resource practices must revolve around stringent recruitment and selection processes. HR should extensively recruit and select as well as train and retrain its service delivery team.
Conclusion
The recruitment and selection of employees form a critical part of the human resource function. Sound recruitment and selection processes enable any organization to attain the strategic objectives.
The morale of the existing staff is impacted when the recruitment and selection appear to be biased. The management of St Patrick should endeavor to implement the recruitment and selection fundamentals consisting of rigorous staffing and selection processes. The morale of the nursing staff in St Patrick’s can be improved by implementing a variety of strategies.
Primarily, the method of recruitment and selection of prospective employees must be improved significantly. The methods of employee appraisal have contributed to the high employee turnover. The method ought to be changed from the current system where promotions and rewards are based on favoritism. The result is that employees who are alive to this fact often look for employment opportunities in rival nursing facilities.
Apparently, the nursing staff works for long hours. However, they do not receive compensation for the overtime worked. The management requires addressing salaries to reflect equal pay for equal work. The ranking should reflect on the qualifications of every staff and roles they play in meeting the objectives of the organization. This way, the commitment of the employees will be met.
References
Armstrong, M 1996, A handbook of personnel management practice, Kogan Page, London, UK.
Armstrong, M 2000, ‘The name has changed but has the game remained the same?’ Employee Relations, vol. 22. no. 6, pp. 576–589.
Barlow, M 2003, ‘Barriers to appraisals’, Competency & Emotional Intelligence, vol. 10. no. 4, pp. 29–30.
Baron, D 2001, ‘Private policies, corporate policies and integrated strategy’, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, vol.10. no. 7, pp. 7–45.
Becker, B & Gerhart, S 1996, ‘The impact of human resource management on organizational performance: progress and prospects’, Academy of Management Journal, vol. 39. no. 4, pp. 779–801.
Boxall, P & Purcell, J 2003, Strategy and human resource management, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Caldwell, R 2001, ‘Champions, adapters, consultants and synergists: the new change agents in HRM’, Human Resource Management Journal, vol. 11. no. 3, pp. 39–52.
Crail, M 2008, HR roles and responsibilities 2008: benchmarking the HR function, IRS Employment Review, vol. 88. no.3, pp. 1–8.
Heathfield, S 2014, Performance improvement plan, <https://www.thebalancecareers.com/performance-improvement-plan-contents-and-sample-form-1918850>
Rogers, C. 2006, The cabin crew interview made easy: everything you need to know about being successful at a flight attendant interview, CE Publishing, London, United Kingdom.