Introduction
The success of a firm’s productivity depends on the organization of the human resource management. Reflectively, labor as a factor of production, determines the gross output, performance, and goal achievement at optimal resource use.
The Stamford Hospital has organized its human resource management to accommodate the aspects of employee maintenance, equity, training, and rewards as part of its talent management strategies.
Thus, this reflective treatise attempts to explicitly analyze thematic areas that have positive influence on the hospital’s talent management strategies.
Background of the Stamford Hospital
Founded in 1896, the Stamford Hospital is one of the oldest nonprofit private health centers in Connecticut. The hospital offers heavily subsidized trauma care within its 305 bed capacity. The facility also offers other medical services to patients within the region of Connecticut and beyond.
The hospital has been successful in specialized care and currently has more than 2,400 employees. The hospital has employed 73% of female out of the total workforce and 27% are male.
Among the talent management strategies employed at the Stamford Hospital include proper remuneration, structured employee growth and development, healthy work environment and culture, attractive pension plan, and series of employee benefits such as free parking, free child care, free shuttle to the train station, and active wellness programs.
The talent management plans are discussed in the next section.
Talent Management at Stamford Hospital
Staffing at Stamford Hospital
Staffing is an essential part of firm’s value orientation. Value in a firm emanates from the employees’ satisfaction level since they develop loyalty. The satisfaction of the employees results from quality management practices, policies, and support services that enable them to satisfactorily serve customers.
At the Stamford Hospital, there is special leadership tool that emphasizes on employees’ satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and quality management practices in the staffing procedure.
Therefore, proper staffing has established the correlation between employees’ capability perception and customers’ satisfaction at the hospital (Bohlander & Snell, 2007).
The Stamford Hospital has designed a staffing appraisal procedure that is all encompassing and it reflects the actual performance by the staff members since it involves both the departmental managers and the staff members.
Also, there is comparison of the actual and expected performance and any variances are noted and actions in form of trainings, development, and disciplinary measures are taken to improve on future performance.
At the Stamford Hospital, the hierarchical order is active and has the link to coordinate professionalism between the workers and the management team.
The preferred approach to personnel selection at the Stamford Hospital includes a general written test that establishes a standard for work experience among the candidates, cognitive ability tests, and personality testing to obtain a clearer picture of the applicants.
When selecting a potential employee, the hospital offers a job opening opportunity to its current employees. Promotion from within has saved the Stamford Hospital resources, time, and money in the hiring process.
In addition, internal or external characteristics and traits that suggest qualified personnel are incorporated in the selection procedure. The interview process is carried out by several interviewers each tasked with testing a specific dimension or job performance indicator.
This strategy provides a more precise behavioral and job-related evaluation of personnel candidates in terms of cognitive, knowledge, and personality test in line with the goal of optimal employee performance in the hospital (DeCenzo & Robbins, 2007).
Employment Equity at Stamford Hospital
Employment equity deals with fairness in assigning duties, promotion, compensation, and recruitment. Employees are useful determinants of success of an organization. They need to be adequately motivated and treated fairly to ensure execution duties in the organization’s strategic plan.
The Stamford Hospital’s HR department has a policy against discrimination in terms of assigning duties based on gender, race, or class among the employees.
Since cognitive testing attracts different results that are directly dependent on race of the party involved, the hospital has introduced a pay satisfaction policy to ensure equity (Harrison & Wicks, 2013). Pay adequacy and equity are the determinants of pay satisfaction at the Stamford Hospital.
The Stamford Hospital’s equity policy requires employees to be evaluated through comparison of the ratio of their inputs and outputs with the ratio of input and output of other employees. The inputs take different forms.
For instance, what the job contributes, extra role behavior exhibited by the employee, and personal contributions. At the Stamford Hospital, the management distributes annual pay rise uniformly to all employees.
It is computed as a percentage increase of current salaries of the employees (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011). Under special cases, the management distributes the pay rise based on performance of the employees, especially in the health services department. This ensures equitable distribution of the pay rise at the hospital.
Employee Maintenance at the Stamford Hospital
The Personal management in the Stamford Hospital has been internalized in their unique organization culture that promotes inter and intra personal commitment to team work. As a result, the workforce has managed to form informal but successful teams that address their work related issues to the HRM team.
In return, the HR management team reviews these suggestions and structure them in line with the goals of the hospital and other corporate social responsibility policies.
For instance, the ‘Family Team Program’ and ‘Child Day Care’ designed in the hospital were a suggestion made by the staff to ensure that the social support is accorded the workforce and their families.
The programs have been very successful and have been expanded to capture corporate social responsibility duties such as supportive programs for the families of the employees in times of need (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011).
Thus, personnel management team at the Stamford Hospital’s HR deals more with the personal attributes of the staff such as team work, discipline, and moral ethics in undertaking their duty. Besides, the HRM team deals with aligning these attributes to labor management and social benefits of the labor force.
The organizational behavior of the staff at the Stamford Hospital is aligned within four models which are motivation to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend.
Since the system functions within accepted parameters of majority of the staff, employees have eventually developed a self consciousness to deliver quality services and defend the organization as part of a family unit.
The total reward package for employees is made up of non monetary benefits such as health and medical benefits, paid holidays, confidential advice service, and flexible pension funding (Dreher & Dougherty, 2012).
Through empowering employees to participate more in the decision making process, culture of independence in reasoning and consultative approach when handling work related duties has been internalized in the Stamford Hospital.
In fact, the employees appreciate the need for free consultation rather than doing the same as a condition imposed on them by their superiors.
In the process of carrying out consultative functionalism, their minds are tuned to appreciate the need for flexibility in decision making science which is compatible with the goals and vision of the organization (Harrison & Wicks, 2013).
In addition, the entire workforce operates under this approach and is likely to positively embrace change element that may be introduced in the organization.
Training and Career Development at the Stamford Hospital
The Stamford Hospital endeavors to have a pipeline of talent to work towards achieving long-term objectives. In support of the goals, the hospital has organized several tailored training and development schemes designed to help its people fulfill their potential.
The training and development programs are both on-the-job and off-the job. For instance, the Stamford Hospital initiated the ‘lead to succeed program’.
It is build around the core business values and is firmly aligned with the business strategy – developing skills that will support future growth of the business (Harrison & Wicks, 2013). The program is designed for senior managers. Since it was launched, over 300 senior managers have completed the program.
Training and development forms part of organizational strategy mostly because the hospital has been characterized by numerous expansions both without and within the region.
Consequently, there is a need to merge organizational skills, knowledge and culture with the new challenges and demands (Bohlander & Snell, 2007). The Stamford Hospital uses training and development largely because it is operating in a highly competitive retail sector.
The HRM team of the hospital has used the outcomes of trainings and development in decision making relating promotions and transfers within the organization, especially in the sales and marketing department.
The Stamford Hospital has undertaken several career development programs tailored towards attracting and retaining human resource base. The team provides job compensation structure that supports the organizations as well as individuals’ growth and development perspectives.
The hospital also evaluates employees and produce succession pipe-lines for vital job positions in the organization.
In view of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, management of the hospital always strive to create room for recognition, promotional opportunities and a chance for career growth (DeCenzo & Robbins, 2007).
This has boosted self actualization of employees. Besides, employees are encouraged to gain new skills that will make them stand a chance of promotion in future openings.
Performance Appraisal at the Stamford Hospital
At the end of every six months performance reviews are carried out at the Stamford Hospital for all the employees. Employees engage their line mangers in discussing their performances for six months. The employees are rated based on the proficiencies and competencies they have shown during the period ended.
Staff members are then given ratings for the skills and competencies they have shown over the past period. A comparison is then done between the ratings and the expected results as agreed upon at the beginning of the year and also with expected skills profiles for these areas.
Such appraisals are important as they help employees to establish their performance in relation to the expectations from the hospital and expected outcomes as agreed during performance planning (DeCenzo & Robbins, 2007).
Further, the appraisals reveal gaps that may be inherent when executing duties to facilitate better strategies for creating ideal work environment.
At the end of appraisal procedure, the department managers and the staff members formulate a plan for further development for the next period.
In the personal development plan, the employees set objectives based on the feedback from their performance appraisal and it is mandatory for all staff members to have such a plan at the Stamford Hospital. The whole interactive appraisal process is beneficial as it aids employees in developing a focused vocation trail.
Further, the process is realistic. The gaps noted during the review process are bridged by training and development. These trainings also help in preparing the staff members for future duties (Bohlander & Snell, 2007).
The performance review process helps management of the hospital to have a well-organized, effectual and motivated human resource base that is motivated.
The appraisal procedure is all encompassing and it reflects the actual performance by the staff members for the reason that it involves both the managers and the staff members of the Stamford Hospital.
Also there is comparison of the actual and expected performance and any variances are noted and actions inform of trainings, development, and measures are taken to improve on future performance.
The performance management at the Stamford Hospital is satisfactory because overall strategic goals are cascaded down to departments and further to the individual staff members (Harrison & Wicks, 2013).
Therefore, work done by each employee contributes to the overall strategic goal. Further, performance of the staff members is cascaded upwards and the actual performance of the Stamford Hospital can be compared with the forecasts.
Continuous Communication Effectiveness at the Stamford Hospital
Through the 360 degree feedback, commonly referred to as the multi source assessment, the Stamford Hospital has been in a position to manage its feedback channels when appraising performance to ensure that the employees fully support the appraisals.
Basically, the 360 degree feedback is critical in facilitating improvement of performance of employees. The 360 degree feedback has substantially improved staff productivity, decrease grievances, increase retention, and standardized performance measurement and evaluation (Harrison & Wicks, 2013).
The Stamford Hospital offers flexible working practices to employees such as home working, variable working, part time working, job sharing, and compressed working. In addition, help desk is set up to advice staff members on time management.
These flexible working practices enable the Stamford Hospital to attract and retain talented people. It also improves employees’ loyalty and commitment.
Conclusion
Magnitude of change is quantum as large changes involving culture, structure, and strategy of the Stamford Hospital is required. Transformational change is a relatively new count to organizational change in human resource management practice.
It is concerned with drastic change and is fundamentally about altering the way that the organization is perceived internally and externally, as well as how it functions.
From the above reflection, it is apparent that the Stamford Hospital has an all round human resource management system that recognizes the importance of training, equity, employee retention, and compensation as components of talent management.
References
Bohlander, G., & Snell, S. (2007). Managing human resources. Mason, OH: Thomson Higher Education.
DeCenzo, D., & Robbins, S. (2007). Fundamentals of human resource management (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Dreher, G. F., & Dougherty, T. W. (2012). Human resource strategy: A behavioral perspective for the general manager. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Harrison, J., & Wicks, A. (2013). New ways of measuring company performance. Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, 61(4), 653-667.
Hellriegel, D., & Slocum, J. W. (2011). Organizational behaviour (13th ed.). Mason, OH: South- Western Cengage Learning.