HRM Essay: Key Challenges in Attracting and Retaining Workforce in Australian Health Sector

Question

Task: There are two choices (will be announced) for Essay 3 – for example, the ‘X’ sector, or the ‘Y’ sector. You will write an essay on the key challenges in attracting and retaining a workforce in your selected sector. Your essay will draw on at least five themes from Week 1 to Week 11 of this unit, being those most relevant to your selected industry sector.

Your essay will draw on the academic literature (including the articles from ‘Reviewing the Literature’ you developed for Assessment 2), and develop an argument applying that literature to your selected sector.
You must cite at least ten (10) relevant peer reviewed journal articles, and 3 chapters from the Nankervis et al. (2019) textbook. You can cite other academic references such as books, conference papers, and book chapters but these will NOT be counted as part of the 10 journal articles.

Answer

Introduction
The healthcare sector is considered to be one of the most important sectors in every country. The healthcare sector in Australia is emerging day by day. This is the sector which is inclusive of a set of facilities related to the health services that are offered by the general hospitals and other healthcare organisations. With the passing time, the government of Australia has focused on the betterment of the services which are existing along with providing some additional resources to it. There are many people health professionals to whom the responsibilities are assignedto carry out the different work responsibilities within the sector. With the growing the population of Australia, it has been important to expand the private health insurance coverage which will enable several people to opt for the health facilities. It is now expected of the present structure of the healthcare service that it will be more demanding in the next few years and this needs a strong infrastructure for working so that a proper work culture could be offered. Along with this, the matter of expenditure needed to be scrutinised as well.

These are the reasons for which it is needed to review the existing work structure and the other factors and aspects of the healthcare system which will help in understanding the areas which need improvements along with the strengths of the organisations. To run any organisation it is important to manage its human resources effectively and efficiently. The healthcare sector of Australia also needs good management within the sector which will help them in providing a better quality of service.

Week 2: The context of strategic human resource management
Human resource management is considered to be one of the most important factors in any organisation. The employees are considered to be the pillars of any organisations. To manage the human resource strategically it is needed to understand the other external and internal factors which can impact the organisations future and their work procedure (Nankervis et al., 2019). By strategic Resource Management is needed for the organisations to understand the present Global social and economic context and how this will be implemented in the management of the human resource (Oppel et al., 2019). It is also necessary to understand the national implications of this context for strategic human resource management as well.

This is the reason it is needed for human resource management to understand the challenges which are related with the external environment of the organisation and to mitigate these how it is needed to adopt an agile strategic and flexible perspective. The economy of the country or the Global economic environment plays an important role in the strategic management of the human resource. The context of socio-politics also has to hold on the operations of business organisations in which strategic human resource management is needed. As the changes in any system are constant it is needed to understand that with the new changes new problems can occur which can also intensify the challenges within the organisations (Kessler et al., 2017). Due to rapid economic shift, the infrastructure of the human resources has gone through several changes affecting the organisational system. Understanding all these factors it is needed to adopt several strategies to manage the workforce within an organisation. With the different implementation of economic planning which might even call for a need for revising the strategies according to the new implementations are needed to be done efficiently. To do it efficiently it is also needed to understand how it could help make the situation better. According to the post, the job responsibilities differ which also works as a motivator for the employees to work efficiently in their job roles. Due to the segregation, the professionals want to stick to their job responsibilities which help them in being more focused on their job responsibility and providing a better outcome to the organisation (Galetto, 2017). The needs of strategic management come in the picture as the development in the different sectors bring changes to the system of working which is needed to be taken care of to implement these changes for the best interest of the organisations and the people they are providing the service too.

Week 4: Human resource planning in a changing environment
Planning is considered to be the most important part of managing a change within an organisation. In a changing environment, things could be challenging and this is why it is needed to understand the nature of the change and the impacts that will come along with it. Strategic planning is needed to understand and implement new ideas to fit in with the changing environment within an organisation (Ramadevi et al., 2016). Changes are brought to any organisation for the betterment of the existing system. This is the primary reason that human resource planning which includes a series of actions or steps which are needed to be taken to identify and analyse the needs of the employees which are the human resources of that organisation to meet and fulfil the ultimate goals of the organisation (Nankervis et al., 2019). The analysis is the most important part of this planning which needed to be done priory to understand how to plan the changes. Once a proper analysis is done the next thing which needed is proper planning of the changes which could in regards to staff planning or making necessary changes in the way of working or anything that benefits the companies in being efficient in providing their service and being sustainable in the business market by holding on their stability.

In a healthcare setup, it is needed to facilitate the way of improvement as this is a sector which needs a continuous upgrade so that they could serve in a better way. Implementing new ideas or understanding the fluctuation in economy new strategies indeed to be implemented which will help to weather with the changes. Resource planning is needed to consider the influence of external and internal factors (Williams et al., 2010). This factors generally include business changes growth of competition and decline which also so have a proper impact on the labour market competition and technology along with the development of employees. In the Healthcare system of Australia due to their national economic fluctuation strategic planning is needed to cope up with this change in the environment of working. Business growth is the focus area of any organisation and this is the reason a proper planning system is needed to enhance and facilitate the ultimate goal of the organisation.

Week 5: Work design challenges in a global environment
In any organisation, it is important to plan proper work designs with help in understanding the ways of work within an organisation. Work design is referred to the process of work which is followed within an organisation by all the employees. The work design is done by the management according to the attitude and skills of the employees responsible to carry out the jobs. This is focused on removing the dissatisfaction of employees and enhancing satisfaction within the workplace (Delery & Roumpi, 2017). This is done to increase productivity in work and also make the employees feel a sense of achievement. In any organisation, it is needed that the work design should be flexible so that it could be modified whenever it is needed. Within an organisation, both the external and internal factors have a proper hold on the process of working. These factors impact massively on the process of working in the organisation. These are the factors which have control over the work procedure so that consistency along with cost efficiency could be maintained within the organisation which is needed to implement flexibility in innovating and performing creative operations.

Designing the work is very much important as this helps in segregating the work responsibilities and tagging them to the people who are responsible to carry out this work. The global environment is where several work responsibilities needed to be carried out at the same time. This can become hectic as so many things need to be analysed under the light of importance at the same time making the work environment complex (Lu et al., 2016). This is the reason it is needed for the management to plan and design a proper work environment. However, the challenges which come in the way of proper work design in a global environment are: Committing: Management should always commit towards the health and safety measures within the organisation so that the important things could be emphasised on. The employees should be involved in the meeting and it is the responsibility of the management to protect the human resources. However, if this is not done properly it could be very challenging for the organisation to continue with a proper work process. Controlling hazards: Without proper control of hazards, the work environment could be threatened. It is important to identify the hazards and control it at an early stage so that it could not affect the continuity of work within an organisation (Matsumoto et al., 2017). For this, it is needed to inspect the reports to get previous information on the status of work within the organisation. Upon identifying the hazards it is needed to take corrective measures on priority to make things better. Employee training: It is the responsibility of any management system to train their employees regularly to face any crisis for the hazardous situation within the workplace. In Healthcare setup it is considered to be the most important part is they are responsible to carry out more responsible works and this needs perfect training to face any such situation. To do so training needs torule out within the organisation and the employees need to be trained properly before they can take up their job responsibilities (Marjani & Safaee, 2016). During their working period as well they need to be updated with the changes in the system which might also incorporate for the training for employees.

Week 6: Talent attraction and selection
Selecting the right workforce is a major responsibility that the management of an organisation has to carry out very efficiently (Nankervis et al., 2019). First of all, it is needed to understand the organisational needs for which new employees are getting recruited. Understanding the needs of the organisation strategy needs to be formed which will help in understanding the strategic nature of the requirements that the employees need to fulfil within the organisation. In this process, it is also important that a good focus is also provided on the employee benefits as this will help in attracting and selecting the most fitted employees (Gerrish, 2016). It is the responsibility of the people who are responsible for ruling out the selection process to understand the strategic nature of this process by which the employees are attracted and selected. Also, it is important to relate the mission vision and strategic planning of the organisation properly to create an environment that will be workable for the employees as well as beneficial for the organisation to meet their ultimate goals.

Human Resource Management should consist of skills and talent by which they will be able to attract and retain the employees. The process of doing so is also known as talent management which is considered to be one of the most challenging parts of HRM. People with qualification and experience need to be recruited within the organisation according to their needs (Lu et al., 2016). It is the core responsibility of HRM to understand how and what talent would fit in which department. For this, the organisations need to be more creative and innovative in attracting this talent and placing them within the organisation with the right work responsibilities.

In any Healthcare organisations, HRM seems to be quite challenging as the job responsibilities are huge and placing the right people in the right department seems to be quite challenging as well. It is needed for the HRM to have efficient and competent employees who are creative enough in attracting new talent and placing them in the right department for the best benefits of the organisation (Matsumoto et al., 2017). They are also at the responsibility to both train and assess the candidates which will help them in understanding how competent the employees are in taking up new training. In this process, they are also liable to use selected tools to strategically carry out the training properly. Due to the versatility of talents within the employees the HR in next to be very strategic and innovative in understanding the employee needs so that they could strategically plan the placement of the employees in the right departments which will not only enhance the productivity but also impact the quality of work positively. HRM also needed to understand the differences between the different aspects that are present within the employees. This could include gender, work-life balance, generation, culture, age group, common interests and others.

Week 8: Management of performance
Managing the performance is again considered to be one of the most important steps that should be taken to provide feedback to the existing working process. This helps in understanding the area of improvement by scrutinizing the performance of the employees. Healthcare is an industry which is growing fast globally. With this, a large pool of employees is getting recruited and trained to provide their dedicated professional medical services to the patients (Delery & Roumpi, 2017). The full system of healthcare industry includes doctors, nurses, interns, medical residents and others have built up the Healthcare sector along with the non-medical staff who takes care of the transactional operations for the back in of the organisations. Hence this could be said that it is needed for the HRM of the organisations operating in this industry to be highly workforce intensive so that they could provide the best employees to the organisations.

Focusing on the betterment of the organisation and industry in whole it is important to understand the importance of performance management and the challenges which are associated with it. Performances cannot be assessed individually of any employee and this could be a challenge in the work environment (Williams et al., 2010). In the Healthcare sector, the performance is measured by the outcomes of the services provided by the employees. This includes readmissions, mortality, patience, experience safety of care timeliness of care effectiveness of care data transparency and others which helps in understanding how a professional is performing.This helps in understanding the gaps in the performance which needed to be filled so that a similar service could be provided. Identifying underperformance and addressing them is needed so that it could be enhanced and the employees good focus on the area of improvement which will help in performing well and enhance the quality of service delivered by the organisation.

Conclusion
In the end, this could be said that the health care organisations are the once who you should be focusing on delivering a similar service to the people opting for it. It is the responsibility of the HRM to understand the need of providing an improved service along with managing the workforce efficiently. As the employees are the pillars of any organisation the human resource management team could be considered as the building rocks that attract and recruit new talents according to the needs of the organisation aiming at fulfilling the needs which will create a better and improved work environment in the healthcare sector.

Reference List
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Gerrish, E. (2016). The impact of performance management on performance in public organizations: A meta-analysis. Public Administration Review, 76(1), 48-66.
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