Unit 13 Managing Human Resources in HSC Assignment Sample

Programme	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 13 Managing Human Resources in HSC
QFC Level	Level 4

Introduction

For any organization to successfully achieve its aspired goals and objectives, a team of qualified, experienced and dedicated workforce is required and same goes with health and care organizations. Staff has to be effectively recruited, selected and managed to get best out of them in service users’ interests. This assignment is aimed at highlighting the factors, laws and policies affecting recruitment planning process in a private care home and different approaches utilized to select best suitable candidate. Further the importance and strategies of building effective teams in HSC would be depicted along with discussing approaches of Human resource management in the chosen health setting.

Task 1

Q1. Planning Recruitment Of Individuals In HSC

The process of identification, selection and hiring the best suitable individual by a health and social setting to meet its high quality care and support needs is known as recruitment.  It is an extremely significant process having direct impact on client’s health, thus must be done in a careful manner. 1^st Choice Care Homes is seeking for a staff nurse and various operational and strategic factors need to be considered in the process. Operational factors are the essential factors that ensure fulfillment of different training and growth needs of employees while strategic factors help in selecting best suitable candidate as per the post and organization’s goals (Armstrong and Laschinger, 2006).

1^st choice care homes believe in delivering high quality support services to people living in their homes and avail them with a safe, well protected, active and an independent environment. Thus, they need a Registered Nurse with sufficient experience and willingness to take good care of the people and address their individual needs. A job vacancy advertisement would be given through resources like organization’s website design, newspapers, recruitment agencies, health magazines or journals depicting the required skills, knowledge and personal attributes. Additionally, the purpose of job, expected roles and responsibilities, location, working hours, contract type and benefits would also be mentioned (Atwal & Caldwell, 2005). The another major part of recruitment is retaining these hired employees that may be done by considering their needs, providing them with growth and development opportunities, incentives and availing a motivating and healthy working environment.

Recruitment can also either be external, hiring a new person or internal where the vacant post is filled by an existing employee of the care home either through promotion or internal transfer. Both these approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. External requirement is expensive and time consuming process but may bring new talent, experiences and skills to the organization while internal recruitment is resources’ saving process but requires succession planning which is the process of training and preparing existing staff to make them work at new vacant post. Currently, external recruitment would be considered.

Q2. Different Approaches To Ensure Selection Of Best Individual

A large number of candidates apply seeing the vacancy advertisements making it really difficult and crucial to select best candidate out of these applicants. It has been suggested that a mixture of different methods like online questionnaires, interviewing, aptitude and assessment tests and personality profile may greatly help. The first major step is selecting a bunch of most suitable candidates who can be called up for further process of personal meeting, interview and assessment test (Cadman and Brewer, 2001). This cutting done can be done using a psychometric online test or through a set of competencies.

Following the short listing procedure, the most popular and widely used approach interviewing may be used. Interviewing allows the recruiter to directly communicate with the candidate, analyze his body language, personality, behavior and ask specific questions related to the vacant post. It is important to follow recommended protocols of interview and avoid unrelated questions and having a biased approach. It has also been argued in few studies that interviews can give misleading impression of candidates as they may present a very polished behavior and may not show their actual behavior and thoughts. But still, interview is considered as the best approach to select a suitable candidate.

Another approach is using tests in assessment centre. This approach may be used alone or with interview. It involves exercises like role plays, group exercises, etc that helps in predicting a person’s job attitude and capabilities. These tests may involve IQ test, behavior evaluation, etc. (Fay, et al, 2001).
Following assessment tests and interview, individual candidate is assessed and their performances are compared with each other to find the best suitable candidate as per originations’ and vacant post’s requirement.

Q3. Relevant Legislative and Policy Frameworks Influencing Selection And Recruitment Process.

Recruitment and selection process is regulated by government through several laws, legislations, regulations and recommended guidelines so as to protect the rights of people. It is really important for Human Resource department to be aware of these laws and policies and abide by them. While selecting suitable staff nurse, 1^st choice care homes must not show discrimination on gender, cultural, racial, disability or any other ground. They must ensure provision of safe working environment to the employees where their legal, ethical and moral rights are well protected (Price, 2003). The essential laws are
Equality Act, 2010: it suggests that every person has an equal right to do job in an organization and must not be discriminated on factors like their age, sex, disability, ethnicity or socio economic factors.
Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act: in order to protect vulnerable groups like elderly adults from getting harmed or abused at care homes, it must be ensured that any person having his name on the central list of offenders is not recruited and users are provided a safe and secure environment.
Equal Pay Act, 1970: employees must receive similar benefits and pays for doing equivalent work without any bias.
Data protection Act, 1998: all the information and data related to candidates and employees must be kept well secured and should not have public access to ensure protection of right to privacy.
Freedom Of Information Act, 2000: recruiters must provide all essential information to employees like the working hours, type of contract, job nature etc.

Further, the organization has to consider laws and regulations like number of working hours of an individual, Minimum Wages Act, 1988, etc and employees’ rights like receiving paternity/maternity leave, sick leave, bonuses, etc must also be protected (Cadman and Brewer, 2001).

Moreover, to ensure that users receive quality care services, recruiters must also see for nursing skills of working with care, compassion, communication, courage, commitment and competence in the candidate and they should have experience and qualifications to work as per Care Act, 2014 and Health and Social Care Act , 2008 (O’Brien-Pallas, 2001). These acts ensure that the delivered services are provided to do no harm to clients and take good care of them.

Task 3

Q4. Theories Of Individual Interaction In Teams And Approaches To Develop Effective Teamwork In HSC

In order to explain interaction of team members and their change in behavior and performance with time, Tuckman has given a model having following stages:
Forming: As per Tuckman, when team members meet for the first time they act as strangers, behave formally and establish ground rules.
Storming: in this stage, members start communicating with each other but still consider themselves as individuals and not as a part of team. Thus, they do not readily accept control of leaders and may even oppose (Atwal & Caldwell, 2005).
Norming: people start considering themselves a part of team and begin to take other team member’s viewpoints into consideration as well. They understand that their performance nd output can be improved if they will work together in collaboration.
Performing: an open atmosphere is developed in the team where members start trusting each other and work together to achieve aspired goals through a relationship oriented leadership style.
Adjourning: an assessment is conducted to identify each member’s contribution and for transitioning roles, if needed (Tuchman,1996)

                            

These stages can depict the general way in which team develops and interact. However, it is still argued by many authors that not a single theory can really explain the complex teamwork. In the same way a single approach is unable to develop an effective teamwork and following approaches is essential to be adopted:

• Having an honest approach
• Enhancing inter team understanding through effective communication
• Core objectives of the team must be understood and agreed upon by every member
• Allowing members to freely use and apply their diverse skill (Chand and Katou, 2007)
• Must be allowed to keep their opinion and communicate freely with seniors
• Utilizing each member’s strong points and compensating for each others weaknesses
• Having an open and trustful environment
• Leadership is most essential element of teamwork, thus, leadership sessions must be developed and organized (Baker, et al.2006)
• Identification of member’s needs and addressing them effectively

Q5. Applying theories of leadership to health care workplace

There are two main leadership theories that may be applied to care homes as:
Behavioral leadership theory: this theory suggests that leadership can be learned and is not inherited and by learning certain appropriate behavioral response for particular situations, anyone can become leader. Leaders need to be self confident, have strong personality and a positive ego and they can be either task oriented or people oriented (Jackson, et al. 2002). This theory can be applied to health and social workplace as several major decisions are required to be taken at the team member’s end and they need a strong leader who can help them to reach conclusions.
Situational leadership theory: this theory suggests that an effective leader is one who can modify his behavior as per the maturity and sophistication level of his subordinates. His behavior can be either directive of ordering or supportive to extend support to the members as per the situation. This theory can also be applied in health and safety workplace as various different situations keep on arising in care homes and thus, situation related behavior can really help subordinates to take decisions in the interest of their clients (Fairholm and Fairholm, 2009).

Q6: Managing Health Care Working Teams

The work and services of health care teams have direct impact on health outcomes of their clients and thus, it is really important to have effective healthcare working teams in every setting where different professional work together in collaboration for well being of service users (Sullivan & Decker, 2009). For managing these teams:

Leaders need to demonstrate their personal qualities by managing themselves, develop self awareness, act with integrity and continuously engage in professional development. They must focus on working well with their colleagues and subordinates and encourage everybody to make their contribution. Communication is an extremely significant component in managing teams, and must be open so that team members can clear their doubts and even give their valuable opinion without hesitation (Adams & Bond, 2000).

Further, the teams at care homes should be managed in a way that ensures delivery of high quality and safe services to the clients. Service users’ safety and protection of rights must be the top most priority of staff and employees and thus, they must be encouraged for continuous personal and professional development. Thus, the team members must be made aware of their roles and responsibilities and the leaders must make sure that their rights and dignity is well protected and needs are fulfilled.

Q7. Management Approaches Influencing My Development

I got an opportunity to learn and understand about several management approaches that have greatly helped me to develop both professionally and personally. First and foremost, I understood the importance of recruitment and selection process and learned its complexity and sensitivity. I became aware of several policies legislations and approaches that are essential to be followed while recruitment or you may end up hiring a wrong candidate (Truss, et al. 2012). I even understood the significance of retaining, encouraging and fulfilling development needs of employees. Further, I got to learn about two essential components of health and social care workplace, leadership and team work. I understood that these two concepts go hand in hand are deeply connected. A team with effective leader would definitely perform better and yield good results and an effective team is extremely essential for an organization to achieve its aspired goals and objectives.

I got the opportunity to learn about leadership theories and its applications in health and social care settings. Finally, it became clear that delivering health services is not possible by an individual effort rather it is a multi personnel approach requiring support and contributions from different professionals. Thus, an effective team work with a trustful and open environment is very necessary for protection of rights of service users (White, 2012).

Conclusion

Through this essay, it can be concluded that selection and recruitment of an individual for a health and social care setting is a very significant process which requires consideration of several factors. There are approaches to select best suitable candidate out of many applicants like using selection criteria, online questionnaire, etc and then using interview and assessment centre test to finalize best candidate for the vacant post. Following selection, employees should be retained and managed well. Several strategies and approaches to manage teams in HSC have suggested and a skilled, experienced, transformational leader was found most effective for managing these teams.

Recommendations

• Laws and legislations like Equality Act, Equal pay act, data protection act must be well considered in recruitment procedure.
• Interview and selection must be done in an unbiased way and collecting irrelevant information must be avoided
• Organizations must invest of leadership developing sessions
• Employees must be encouraged and given opportunities for continuous professional development

References

Adams, A., Bond, S. (2000) “Hospital nurses’ job satisfaction, individual and organizational characteristics.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 32 (3) pp: 536–543.
Armstrong K and Laschinger H, (2006)  'Structural Empowerment, Magnet Hospital Characteristics, And Patient Safety Culture' 21 Journal of Nursing Care Quality
Atwal, A., Caldwell, K. (2005) “Do all health and social care professionals interact equally: a study of interactions in multidisciplinary teams in the United Kingdom.” Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, Vol. 19 (3) pp: 268–273.
Baker, D. P., Day, R., Salas, E. (2006) “Teamwork as an Essential Component of High-Reliability Organizations.” Health Services Research, Vol.41 (4p2) pp: 1576–1598.
Cadman C and Brewer J, (2001) 'Emotional Intelligence: A Vital Prerequisite For Recruitment In Nursing '9 Journal of Nursing Management
Chand M and Katou A, (2007) 'The Impact Of HRM Practices On Organisational Performance In The Indian Hotel Industry' 29 Employee Relations
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Jackson D, Clare J and Mannix J, (2002)  'Who Would Want To Be A Nurse? Violence In The Workplace - A Factor In Recruitment And Retention' 10 Journal of Nursing Management
O’Brien-Pallas, L., Baumann, A., Donner, G., Murphy, G. T., Lochhaas-Gerlach, J., Luba, M. (2001), “Forecasting models for human resources in health care.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 33 (1) pp: 120–129
Price, A. (2003) Human Resource Management in a Business Context (2^nd edn.) , London: International Thomson Business Press.
Sullivan, E. J., Decker, P. J. (2009) Effective Leadership and Management in nursing (7^th edn.) New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Tuchman, L. I. (1996). The team and models of teaming. Partnerships in family-centered care, 119-143.
Truss, C., Mankin, D., Kelliher, C. (2012). Strategic human resource management. New York: Oxford University Press.
White J. (2012) “Reflections on strategic nurse leadership.” Journal of Nursing Management Vol. 20 (7) pp:835–837