The appropriate management of human resources in healthcare institutions is essential to enable the delivery of effective services and achieve patient satisfaction. Human Resource Management not only involves the engagement of individuals, but also the organization in which they operate. Therefore, it includes implementing programs that nurture organizational development. In the contemporary complex and competitive healthcare environment, good people practices is a critical necessity to achieve organizational objectives and positively impact the external society and environment.
Service providers, in healthcare, are often overwhelmed by their workload and unclear about their priorities. This can produce stress, inefficiency and poor quality care. It can also arise from poor managerial support and an absence of leadership. There are clear linkages between staff experience and patient outcomes.
HR Transformation in Healthcare
Healthcare is a complex service which requires seamless synergy between people, processes and technology. The multiplicity of stakeholders, from the recipient population to the Government, investors, vendors and service providers makes the delivery of qualitative care a challenging prospect. The problem gets accentuated when the people, who have been assigned the responsibility of handling patients, themselves do not have the complete knowledge, understanding and wherewithal for instituting and driving people practices that facilitate the delivery of qualitative care. In order to impact the right HR systems in healthcare, it will be immensely beneficial to the patient, organization and society, if the HR community is able to collaborate to share knowledge and experience, so as to improve HR practices.
Leveraging HR Partnerships
HR transformation largely depends on the competencies of HR professionals. The knowledge and skills that HR professionals once needed are no longer sufficient in the new world of healthcare. This is also because that all too often HR professionals are so caught up in delivering training that they are the last to receive formal training to upgrade their own functioning. HR transformation in healthcare could begin by believing in the potency of inclusion, i.e., coming together to build a common bond
Strategic Platform > Healthcare HR Network > Transformational HRM > Patient Care
Such partnerships require an understanding of the past, without being trapped in it; embracing the present, without being constrained by it; and looking to the future, guided by new knowledge, hopes and courage to make a difference. It embraces complexity as a cause for collaboration, accepting that fates of HR practitioners are inextricable and hence the need to forge partnerships within the fraternity. It would mean that the promise of meeting organizational expectations are unlocked by unleashing the collective promise in HR professionals.