HRM Assignment: Case Analysis Of Parkway Residential Homes

Question

Task: You are asked to read the case study and prepeare a report on HRM assignment that answers all three questions.

Case Study: Parkway Residential Homes
Parkway Residential, located in southern Spain, was originally founded in 1972 to provide skilled and caring support to the elderly. Over the years it became very successful, gaining a number of prestigious awards, especially due its focus on beautiful premises, onsite medical services and comprehensive facilities. It expanded gradually to five residencies with space for 250 patients until 2015. At that point, the company was acquired by a venture capitalist who made a substantial investment in securing 10 further residencies with a total capacity of nearly 1,000 patients.

The focus changed significantly from highly personalized care to ensuring that the residencies were continuously filled to capacity, with profitability being the prime objective. This change has meant that many of the experienced staff have decided to retire or seek work in other places, leaving many staff gaps to be filled, mostly by young, inexperienced and sometimes untrained staff. The market for skilled care of the elderly is growing apace as baby boomers from northern Europe decide to spend their final years in the sun of the Mediterranean and there is no shortage of people seeking a place at one of the Parkway residencies.

However, the rapid expansion of the company has created a number of problems and now, as a newly-hired HR Director for the company, you are interviewing some of the 50 ‘core’ staff to assess the extent of the challenges you are facing:
1. Lilly, a 35-year old licensed nurse from Germany says: “I’ve been here for 5 years and I’ve seen management do what it can to fill positions, but I don’t always agree with who they recruit. Some of the basic skills can taught, of course, but you can’t teach someone to care. So I find myself really stressed out, looking after so many patients who often just want more attention”
2. Daniel, a Belgian carer with a BA degree in Psychology tells you: “I came here a year ago thinking that it would be fun to work in southern Spain – you know, sun, sea and sangria …But it isn’t like that at all. There are constant crises to deal with and I’m the one everyone turns to first it seems, so I’m constantly running from situation to situation dealing with outbursts, arguments and even fights! And this goes on every day, including weekends, so I hardly have any time to myself at all. I’m already applying for other jobs…”

3. Nicola, a German doctor: “Well I’ve been living in this area for over 10 years and I spend most of my time divided either at my surgery in Estepona or one of the Parkway residencies. I visit each residence once a week to check on patients and prescribe medicines and so on. If there’s a medical emergency, then I get called out to that as well. That worked fine until 2015 but now, it’s just impossible to get around all the residencies and see all the patients that need me. It’s totally ridiculous to think that only one doctor can deal with everything! We did have a second doctor, but he left almost as soon as he realized what the workload consisted of and frankly, I’m thinking of doing the same .. “
4. Angela, a 17-year-old recent hire says: “I just started three months ago straight out of school. I’d really like the job if only I had more time to spend with each person. But there are so many patients, I can only clean them up, make the bed, and tidy the room and then I have to run off to the next patient. We’re supposed to be ‘carers’ but we’re just maids on the lowest minimum pay. The conditions are pretty bad and until now, we’ve had nobody to go to – I’m so glad you’re here now. Perhaps you can increase our pay and give us more time to look after the patients properly rather than just chase around until we’re exhausted”
5. Charles, Director of Parkway Residential: “Welcome to your new role and I’m very happy you’re here! I’ve spent most of my time interviewing people for vacant jobs and I told the owner it’s about time we had a professional HR person to help me out… Yes, we have 50 full-time nurses and carers spread around the various residencies and sometimes we have to shift them from one to the other to fill gaps. We outsource things like the cleaning and the catering because the owner wants to keep the organization as lean as possible. He only comes every now and again to check on things ..he expects us to keep the company going on the minimum possible cost base and he really isn’t interested in how we do it, because there’s a waiting list of over 50 people at the moment and it gets longer and longer every month … we just don’t have the places available. Enough staff, you ask Well, frankly, there’s always people who want to come and work in this part of Europe and unemployment is high in the area, so we always have lots of applicants for any jobs that come up. Our turnover is 20% a year, which keeps us busy recruiting… and the ratio of carers is 1: 20 patients or so, which is pretty standard for the industry….”

Prepare a Report answering these questions:

1. What do you see as being the primary issues in the way that human resources are managed at Parkway Residential Homes
2. What theories, models and concepts might apply to this case Ensure you provide specific examples to justify your selection.
3. What recommendations would you make to Charles the Director as to how improve the HR strategies and processes What actions or changes would you implement as a matter of priority

Answer

Introduction
The case study on Parkway Residential Homes gives an overall impression of performance deterioration for fulfilling the quest of business profitability. Being located in Southern Spain, many workforce resources are naturally attracted to enjoy their work with a conventional belief. Established back in 1972, Parkway Residential Homes represents a strong and reliable organization offering skilled care support specially focused upon elderly population (Adom, 2018). The achievement of rewards and awards prepared the grounds for increased trust among care seekers and celebrated the staff excellence in providing trained and personalized treatment to each admitted patient. However, from 2015 the care home shifted their objective from mere care provision and high quality skilled staff to business profit security motive.

Behind the impactful consequences of gradual care quality decline is the fundamental reason of acquisition of company by the venture capitalist. This helped induce sufficient investment plan for desiring larger expansion plans to build 5 more residencies to accommodate 250 patents. With 10 more residency expansion a total capacity escalated to 1,000 patient inclusions (Vu et al., 2019). This marks the beginning of Parkway Residential Homes’ downfall as the paradigm of care shifted from ensuring patient service quality to quantitative growth with minimal cost expense, maintenance, reduced training. Resignation of senior experienced nurses, staff members further drops the organizational standards leading to fresh, inexperienced and even untrained staffs to be hired at minimum numbers to solely focus on widening the patient admission capacity with reduced monitoring on service provision quality.

Discussion
Parkway Residential Homes depicts a classic case of change in strategic decision making leading towards deterioration of overall performance efficiency. The core motive of providing uncompromised care, facility and treatment from skilled professional and experienced staffs got replaced with self-centric business profit making purpose. By allowing resignation of experienced staffs and trained nurses a strong bolt of impact upon Human Resource Management is pressurized (Akunda et al., 2018). Recruitment from fresh sources without verification of qualification and talent authentication leads to knowledge gap intensity. Running after rapid increase in business profits led unplanned capacity expansion to 1,000 patients with 10 residencies. However, the efficiency and large quantity of human resource and staffs to balance the increased efforts to be well distributed were paid least attention to. Reviews and feedbacks received from old licensed nurse, healthcare worker in psychology department working for one year and doctors collectively agree to the gap in expectation and actual services offered within Parkway Residential workplace. The excessive workload pressurised upon each staff irrespective of their experience, training and capability is commonly agreed to be the greatest concern of working staffs. Doctors, nurses and administrative officials are kept in reduced numbers too limit cost expenditure upon salary provision. No incentive, motivation, bonus for working extra hours and more efforts than stipulated work becomes aspect of accumulated intolerance and stress for workers (Kellner et al., 2019). Cleaning, making bed, monitoring patients, tidy room maintenance, all round responsibilities expected t be performed singlehandedly by a staff or nurse naturally gets frustrating. This depicts a poor condition at workplace, where staff wellbeing and employee concerns are given least attention and importance. 10 years of serving at the workplace reflects how dissatisfied and frustrated the workers are. It is ridiculous that a single doctor is all the responsibilities to manage several patients so that cost is reduced and minimum care for workers is established.

Making the workers indulge into multiple activities and disciplines beyond their work expertise not only exceeds the workload limit but also leads to lack of interest to be associated to an organization like Parkway Residential Homes. Controlling pay within same remuneration scale even after increasing intensity, workload and duration of at work is directly an unfair practice where undue advantage of employees is taken (Mani and Mishra, 2020). Even in case of hiring an HR, the inhuman work pressure to deal and manage all of 10 Residencies singlehandedly and being accountable to company owner created petrifying impact upon the new joinee to decide to leave the work. Practicing lowest minimum pay rates for giving extensive efforts contributes the workplace issues to get amplified.

Theories that relate with the case scenario of Parkway Residential Homes include as follows:
Welcoming new employees (Welcome plan, onboarding, welcome manual, training new employees)
Hiring talented, experienced, qualified and skilled staff members across necessary posts in Parkway Residential Homes is the fundamental requirement. Creating candidate drive across the specific market induces healthy competence level where the organizational performance steadiness is ensured to maximum extent (Nawangsari and Sutawidjaya, 2019). For optimising the service application with sufficient number of manpower, Parkway Residential Homes needs to involve in hiring and new employee welcoming activities. There are specific phases across which the selected workforce strength is possible to be analyzed on quality basis, on-boarding process, improving the organizational reputation and by recruiting trained, knowledgeable and qualified staffs.

Phase 1: Pre-On-boarding
Candidates being interviewed and selected are provided with offer letters. On reception of this letter the pre-on-boarding process gets initiated. It is until the first day at work that the pre-on-boarding lasts. The uncertainty, unknowingness and build up of tension and anxiety related to new joining at work encompass this phase (Kang and Lee, 2021). The organization like Parkway Residential Homes has time to test and be sure of the skills promised by candidate to be actually possessed which can be tested during an interview on the first day induction phase. It is at such a sensitive process where a slightest misunderstanding can lead to decision making gap. The decision of the organization to select the member as part of their workforce and simultaneously selection of company to associate is finalized in this phase thus making it a crucial one.

Phase 2: Welcoming new hires
This is the stage where candidate hiring is solely dedication point. The orientation program is carried out by which new hiring acclimate can be established (Lorincová et al., 2018). Parkway Residential Homes has to be careful about introducing work schedule and departments of work to the new employee hired as they are completely unaware of the organization inside. It becomes crucial and significant to provide a clear picture about the organization to the newly employed member. By restricting this phase to less than a week’s tenure it is possible to create a better grasp over caring, treatment and administrative service responsibilities.

Phase 3: Role-specific training
Under the human resource management conduct, the most significant phase of hiring and on-boarding employees into new workplace is training the candidates. There are role specific assignments of duties on which basis they are to be hired within Parkway Residential Homes. Instead of handing over multiple duties, single department and activity chart needs to be emphasized (Onwuka and Onwuchekwa, 2018). This shall not only govern mere initial phase of training on basic job processes but on in-depth role expected to be performed by the candidate as per their qualification, capacity and knowledge base.

Recommendations to Charles, the Director as to how improve the HR strategies and processes the following changes are needed to be established in Parkway Residential Home
1. Monitoring new employees
Monitoring plan
For Parkway Residential Homes to regain trust of the care seekers, patients, doctors and employees working, there is need for proper standards to be set up in the name of performance monitoring system. Under a planned intervention there is need for assessing the employee background of education and training qualification. The experienced staffs need to be asked about their roles, and reputation at previous work. Complete background check and skill assessment questionnaires with hypothetical situation of crisis faced at workplace asked during interview session can reveal about the actual skill level possessed by the candidates (Cote, 2019). On being certain about their calibre the offer letter shall be provided and final hiring selection process shall follow. This monitors the initial hiring phase. After recruitment whether the personnel performs their stipulated duties at the best of their potential and follows guidelines as directed and instructed or not is determined through daily routine monitoring system. By assigning senior management member to monitor new employees the qualitative and quantitative grade of their performance and efficiency check can be recorded.

Professional training
Training provided to each employee on their precise job role underlines the ability to exercise ultimate professional standards. For lifting up the dropping standards and reputation of the company there is need for skill based knowledge exchange from senior experienced staff involved in same department to enlighten the new joining staff about the timing, expectations of skill output and care service efficiency. The reviews collected from care seekers, senior management and monitoring heads shall become their performance evaluation result (Azizi et al., 2021). Whether they remain clean, hygienic, compassionate and empathetic towards patients and take jobs seriously to provide individual attention to each patient or not are cleared out as training parameters to be considered highly efficient for Parkway Residential Homes.

Managing the training process
Human Resource Management department is entitled to take care and be responsible for handling manpower skill set and accuracy of workforce distribution and monitoring from time to time. For the training and development of newly hired employees, the educational backgrounds have to be classifications (Kang and Lee, 2021). For nurses, doctors, HR and administrative staff members the training protocols and tenures are different. The entire training system needs to be well planned and distributed across series of activities aligned as per progress pattern observed among candidates hired. Making employees enlightened about code of conduct of Parkway Residential Homes and organizational goals to be efficient in their care quality aspects with no complain are established in training process.

Career development systems
Employees engage in reputed companies like Parkway Residential Homes in the eagerness to get exposure to dynamic career growth opportunities. The challenging work experiences, field work, dealing with patients and managing departmental responsibilities to maintain care quality service are career development plans. The incentives, promotions, working with seniors and handling power, authority and responsibilities with leadership roles are carer development chances which Parkway Residential Homes needs to induce for engaging the new and potential staffs hired.

2. Compensation and benefits
Performance appraisal
Getting reward and recognized for the efforts and intense hard work toil provided are scales of performance appraisal. The value that organization needs to give for relentless efforts and high workload taken for long hours at Parkway Residential Home needs to pay with greater remuneration upgrade and other perks like medical insurance coverage benefit, holidays, leaves, allowances and work level flexibilities.

Motivation theory for employee management improvement
3. Maslow's hierarchy of need
The need based assessment among workforce strengths engaged in organization in different hierarchical levels has to be performed by Parkway Residential Home as the fundamental step towards valuing people at work. The workplace safety, security, stability of employment and pay or remuneration structure become crux of employee interest to be associated with the organization. Parkway Residential Home needs to provide a safe working environment where workload shall be evenly distributed and no scope for mental stress shall be created. This ensures that employees will retain and be willing and involved with dedicated commitment to work for Parkway Residential Home. The quality of work output would naturally get enhanced. On being assured and satiated with adequate pay as per workload and job certainty the next level needs like achievement requirements become active among employees (Mani and Mishra, 2020). They intend to grow across career ladder to develop personal and professional performance.

4. Conflict management
Employees look for an organization that looks after their wellbeing and security. The objectives of Parkway Residential Home starkly contradict with employees as they are solely driven to maximize profits and grow their business larger. The minimum pay rate and limited staff recruitment induces stress and pressure with maximum workload distributed for each workplace member. This disrupts workplace harmony and intensifies conflicts. A neutral way of solution where company profit growth motive along with employee demands would get satisfied have to be secured. If employees are to be pressurised with excessive workload they need to be paid with greater amount of pay scale. Motivation, job satisfaction and employee retention strategy has to be exercised by Parkway Residential Home by investing significant amount of profit to recruitment well trained andexperienced employees who can take up multiple responsibilities and manage departments and also monitor the newly hired unskilled labour. Looking after employee wellbeing by incorporating work shifts, job rotations, detailed job training and development plan shall help in overcoming the conflicts raised between divergent interest points of workforces and company owners.

5. Labor relations
Providing clear directives to labors during hiring process about company protocols helps employees to be transparently treated. With open communication and value for workforce, the labor relations are possible to be on positive side. Code of conduct with work distribution and assignment of roles as per employee qualifications allow maximization of productivity and high quality of service

Outcomes
6. Occupational health and safety
Workplace health and safety standards occupy a large aspect of employee retention at any organization. When the selection process shall strictly govern under principles of skill level knowledge based qualification check about job role, the safety of employment is assured. Excessive work pressure, lack of work distribution and compelling one member to handle complex interplay of multiple job roles threatens the health conditions of employees (Adom, 2018). Occupational safety matters when the mental stress level becomes extremely taxing and intolerable for employees to handle on regular basis. Asking limited staff to take charge of 10 homes across 1,000 patients automatically raises threat level. Therefore, it is suggested that use of employee healthcare program by providing them medical insurance coverage, distributed workload and motivation with incentives and work based pay structure for more effort and longer hours of service shall ensure employee health standards.

7. Managing a cross-cultural organization (Hofstede cultural comparison)
Everyorganization speaks about definite set of cultural components embedded with sub cultures. Rather than thinking about long term engagements and associations, Parkway Residential Home is more interested in short term gains. The hiring practice of fresh new employees at the cost of unskilled, inexperienced staffs lacking qualification is embedded. The cultural diversity is natural as multiple employees show interest to associate with a reputed and award winning organization as Parkway Residential Home (Mani and Mishra, 2020). However, the cross cultural opinion merges uniformly when the expectations do not match reality. The workload excess needs to be uniformly distributed with pay level based on efforts and longevity of work done rather than culture and nationality based payment rates. The long term cultural component needs to rather emphasize when it comes to Parkway Residential Home workplace practices and code of conduct. Employee retention practices have to abide so that the overall health, environment, quality of work provided and interest or willingness to show dedicated effort towards the organization remains undisrupted.

Conclusion
Challenges related to knowledge gap and workplace dissatisfaction are evidenced from Parkway Residential Home case study. Need for improvements in hiring process are delineated through on-boarding mechanism phases. Health and safety of employees threatened currently due to excessive profit making objective needs to be replaced with sufficient workforce strength hiring and even distribution of workload as per qualification of staff. pay depending upon effort and hours of service rather than minimum wage shall ensure employee retention with long-term sustaining workplace culture than short-term practices.

References
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Azizi, M.R., Atlasi, R., Ziapour, A., Abbas, J. and Naemi, R., 2021. Innovative human resource management strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic narrative review approach. Heliyon, 7(6), p.e07233. Cote, R., 2019. Motivating Multigenerational Employees: Is There a Difference. Journal of Leadership, Accountability & Ethics, 16(2). Kang, E. and Lee, H., 2021. Employee compensation strategy as sustainable competitive advantage for HR education practitioners. Sustainability, 13(3), p.1049.

Kellner, A., Cafferkey, K. and Townsend, K., 2019. Ability, Motivation and Opportunity theory: a formula for employee performance.In Elgar introduction to theories of human resources and employment relations.Edward Elgar Publishing. Lorincová, S., Hitka, M., Štarcho, P. and Stachová, K., 2018.Strategic instrument for sustainability of human resource management in small and medium-sized enterprises using management data. HRM assignmentSustainability, 10(10), p.3687. Mani, S. and Mishra, M., 2020.Non-monetary levers to enhance employee engagement in organizations–“GREAT” model of motivation during the Covid-19 crisis. Strategic HR Review.

Nawangsari, L.C. and Sutawidjaya, A.H., 2019, May. How the green human resources management (GHRM) process can be adopted for the organization business. In 1st International Conference on Economics, Business, Entrepreneurship, and Finance (ICEBEF 2018) (pp. 463-465).Atlantis Press.

Onwuka, E. and Onwuchekwa, F., 2018.Compensation management and organizational performance a study of selected pharmaceutical companies in Awka, Anambra State. IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), 20(9), pp.36-47. Vu, T.A., Plimmer, G., Berman, E. and Sabharwal, M., 2019. Managing employee performance in transition economies: A study of Vietnamese public organizations. Public Administration and Development, 39(2), pp.89-103.