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Strategic People Management

Strategic people management is a key function in every organization. This article seeks to discuss the three strategic people management areas in England’s National Health Service (NHS). Specifically, the paper will analyze leadership and management, talent management, and training and development in the NHS. Finally, the paper will recommend ways forward for the NHS in keeping best practice and improving areas which are more problematic.

The competitive advantage of an organization is based on several things like investing in new technologies, financial management, and effective human resource management. The style in which people are managed in an organization has a critical role in achieving the goals of an organization. Poor management of people can lead to poor performance or to the collapse of the whole organization. To avoid the demerits associated with poor people management, three areas referred to as areas of strategic people management have been devised.

The three areas are leadership and management, talent management, and training and development (Bailey, Mankin, Kelliher, & Garavan 2018). This article seeks to compile a report on England’s National Health Service (NHS) department and highlight the importance of strategic people management.

In 1948, the NHS was established to manage and regulate health services in the United Kingdom. The objectives of establishing the trust were to offer comprehensive health services, free at point delivery, and to centralize the health services. 70 years after its establishment, the trust is yet to achieve some of its objectives. It has been accused of poor health care delivery, failure to cater to the ageing population, long waiting times, over management, and insufficient staff training. The junior staff of the trust have complained of high workloads while the senior management complains of poor funding. A report by King’s fund supported the claim that the trust is poorly funded and refurbished the allegations by the critics that the trust is over-managed (Ham et al., 2011).

Strategic People Management and Leadership

Great Man Theory of leadership suggests that everyone is born with certain leadership traits (Spector 2016). This theory means that if you put together several people to work together in different leadership positions, a great result can be obtained. The NHS in England has tried to employ this theory by having many leaders in each department. Over the last two decades, the trust has increased its number of leaders significantly. In England, there has been an increase of 37% in the number of leaders in the last 19 years. However, many leaders can lead to leadership bureaucracy because no single person can be held responsible for a failure. Managerial positions are entitled to managerial remuneration, therefore, increasing the number of leaders increases the administrative costs for the trust which is already under-funded.

The NHS has been attacked by political parties and other critics of being over managed. Currently, the trust has over 6000 board member and 700 doctors practicing as directors. The critics accuse the doctors of working as directors in contrary to their calling of treating people. However, positioning doctors as directors only cater for distributed leadership. Experienced doctors should the nurses and other doctors to address the issue of poor care and in implementing clinical processes. It is also easy for doctors to hold clinical officers accountable than other professionals. Health care is a complex service and should have many leaders. The NHS should not be accused of being over-managed due to the complex nature of health care.

The Audit Commission and the national audit office have accused the trust of poor leadership styles. Collectively, the two critics have accused the trust of spectacular managerial failures which has led to poor care, hospital acquired infections, surgery deaths, and long waiting times for the patients. Due to the increase in the aging population and the situations at hand such as long waiting times, the leaders have to change their leadership styles. The leaders seem to stick to their styles regardless of the increasing challenges in the trust. The contingency leadership theory suggests that leadership style should be changed to cater for certain situations for there is no single way of leadership. It is the high time that the leaders in the trust changes their style of leadership to address the current issues of long waiting times, poor care, and caring for the ageing population.

Exchange leadership theory urges that leadership is only effective when the leader gives a motivational value or a reward, either motivation or punishment to his follower (Zhang et al., 218). This theory means that a leader should be given sufficient time to reward and motivate the juniors. Demotivating the followers will lead to poor results. However, the current managerial culture in the NHS betrays the Exchange Theory of Leadership.

Leaders are given a short tenure of two years. Two years are insufficient to reward and motivate the juniors. In addition, the short leadership terms cannot enable the leaders to handle the problems in the trust. The external pressure from critics and political parties demotivates the managers. The leaders should be given room to lead the trust and managers should have longer tenure for them to address the current issues in the trust (Jiang, Hu & Wang 2018). Blame games demotivate the employees. The trust has a culture of blaming the employees or a manager in case there is a failure. The managers and medical directors have blamed the nurses and clinical officers for the failures in the hospitals. The blame games demotivate the nurses and the clinical officers rather than motivating them.

Training and Development

Service delivery is depended on the level of training staff gets before and on the job (Larsen, 2017). Job training gives one chance to learn through experiment (Saks 2015). Experimental learning theory suggests that one can best learn through experimentation, reflective observation, and abstract conceptualization.

Organizations should, therefore, have training sessions for their staff. Training also gives a chance to incorporate new staff into the current organizational culture. The NHS staff should be trained in managing people and on business finance. So far the NHS has shown a willingness on training its staff by coming up with business finance course aimed at training all their staff regardless of their positions. Changes in technology and continuous research by health professionals call for regular training to equip the staff with the new skills being invented in the health sector all of which can be deployed using strategic people management.

To train the employees, the NHS has established several courses. The employees can access short-term courses, bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees. It gives a chance for nurses and clinical officers to subscribe to different courses and enhance their skills. This shows that the NHS is committed to improving the quality of health care it offers. The trust faces negative issues of caring for the ageing population and long waiting times. In contrast, none of the courses offered by the trust is concerned with the two issues.

Strategic People Management and Culture

It seems to be part of the NHS staff beliefs that long waiting times are normal and nothing should be done on that. A staff training should be carried out to change the attitude and beliefs on long waiting times. Theory of planned behavior purports that training changes the attitude and belief in certain behavior (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015). The NHS, therefore, should organize training aimed at changing the attitude on long waiting times.

Strategic People Management Dissertation

It is commendable that the NHS organize in-house induction with updates in statutory areas on annual basis. The NHS managers hold meetings with staff on a regular basis where training and development opportunities are discussed. The staff are also allowed to apply for funding in case of a professional development course. However, the course must fulfil a professional need and support of the manager is required.

The training offered by the NHS is only concerned with health care and not human resource management. Good health care can only be delivered under the effective leadership of people. The trust should come up with training programs aimed at equipping the staff with leadership skills. The trust participated in the South Central Leadership Program. The program was aimed at enhancing the leadership program for the senior staff. Skills development in health care is essential in health care and not a mere luxury. South Central Leadership Program should, therefore, involve all health staff regardless of the positions they hold. The NHS continues to call for applications of their courses which open to anyone who wished to work in the health care department.

Talent Management

The first step of managing talent is on recruitment (Davis, Cutt, Flynn, & Mowl 2016). The human resources department should come up with a rigorous recruitment process aimed at selecting the best staff to work for the trust. However, talent management is not a function purely on the human resources department. The top management has to manage talents once the employees have been selected.

The human resources departments should offer assessment tests before recruitment and give a probation period before an employee is confirmed. This will make sure that the best employees are employed by the trust. Once an employee secures the job, a room should be given to express self-initiative. However, the current situation at the NHS does not give room for self-initiative. The blame game from the managers and pressure on the employees due to high workloads impairs their self-initiative. The external pressure on managers by critics also scares the managers from expressing their self-initiative.

For performance appraisal, the NHS has come up with a policy to identify the poor performing employees. Employees performance will be assessed according to complains received from visitors, fellow employees, and the observation of the manager. In case of a poor performance the employee will be asked to give feedback to the manager. The managers are supposed to fill a performance form for each employee in their department.

However, the NHS does not propose differentiated workforce in its policy and only proposes penalties for the employees who perform poorly. In the differentiated workforce, the best performing employees are rewarded better than others (Collings 2017). The differentiated workforce is to recognize the best employees and to avoid losing the key and the experienced employees to other organizations.

The NHS also lacks a wide pool of talents since people from other organizations are reluctant to work for the trust due to undue pressure on its employees and high workloads compared to the people working in private hospitals and those working for NGOs. The trust also has a culture of appointing people who have worked for it before which keeps away candidates from the private sector and other government institution.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Strategic people management is very important for every organization and should never be undermined. Poor management of people results in poor performance of the whole organization. The NHC has many managers. However, due to the complex nature of the health department, it can be concluded that the trust is not over-managed. There should be clear roles for every manager to avoid leadership bureaucracy. The trust faces a lot of pressure from external bodies and within itself. The trust has a culture of blaming employees of any fault during the line of duty. The trust also has a culture of having short tenures for its managers.

The trust offers training for its staff but the training given is a drop in the ocean since it is not concerned with managing people. The training given is only concerned with increasing treatment knowledge to the staff. The trust lacks a wide pool of talents due to its recruitment policy which selects people who have worked for the trust before. The performance appraisal policy of the trust only forces the staff to perform better but it does not recognize the best performing employees through differentiated workforce. I wish to recommend the following to the NHS;

The South Central Leadership Program should involve both junior and senior staff. This will increase the chances of creating future leaders for the trust.
The public and critics should avoid giving undue pressure to the leaders of the trust and give them room to lead.
The trust should increase the tenure of its leaders. A longer tenure will give them time to fix the current problems facing the trust.
The NHS should recruit managers from the private sector and other government organizations. This will help in increasing its pool of talents.
On top of South Central Leadership Program, the trust should establish a leadership center for mentoring future leaders, offering training, and to support innovative programs.
Adopt a more robust approach in relation to strategic people management.

Bibliography

Bailey, C., Mankin, D., Kelliher, C. and Garavan, T., 2018. Strategic human resource management. Oxford University Press.

Collings, D.G., 2017. Workforce differentiation. Oxford handbook of talent management, pp.301-17.

Davis, T., Cutt, M., Flynn, N. and Mowl, P., 2016. Talent assessment: A new strategy for talent management. Routledge.

Ham, C., Baker, G.R., Docherty, J., Hockey, P., Lobley, K., Tugendhat, L. and Walshe, K., 2011. The future of leadership and management in the NHS: no more heroes. Report by The King’s Fund.

Jiang, Z., Hu, X. and Wang, Z., 2018. Career adaptability and plateaus: The moderating effects of tenure and job self-efficacy. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 104, pp.59-71.

Larsen, H.H., 2017. Key issues in training and development. In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 107-121). Routledge.

Montano, D.E. and Kasprzyk, D., 2015. Theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior, and the integrated behavioral model. Health behavior: Theory, research and practice, pp.95-124.

Saks, A., 2015. Managing Performance through Training & Development, (Canadian ed.). Nelson Education.

Spector, B.A., 2016. Carlyle, Freud, and the great man theory more fully considered. Strategic People Management, 12(2), pp.250-260.

Zhang, X., Zhang, Y., Sun, Y., Lytras, M., Ordonez de Pablos, P. and He, W., 2018. Exploring the effect of transformational leadership on individual creativity in e-learning: a perspective of social exchange theory. Studies in Higher Education, 43(11), pp.1964-1978.

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I do hope you enjoyed reading this post strategic people management and how it impacts the NHS]. There are many other titles available in the HRM Dissertation Collection that should be of interest to human resource management students and CIPD professionals. There are many dissertation titles that relate to other aspects of HRM such as employee engagement, HRM Theory, absenteeism, training and development to name a few. It took a lot of effort to write this post and I would be grateful if you could share this post via Facebook and Twitter. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section. Thank you.

Workplace Violence Legal Consequences

Workplace Violence is one of the prevalent issues that the world is facing today because of the diversity in the workforce brought about by the globalization. The term globalization may seem positive for major reasons, but in some note, it could create problems in the society, even in the work force. Since the organizations are now composed of people from different races, different backgrounds, opinions, philosophy and level of education, rift between parties are not a surprise.

Since it’s inevitable that workers in the organization may have some disagreements on the ideas or point, it is therefore important for employees, management and all members of the organization to understand the concept and definition of workplace violence in order to create a benchmark if the arguments are just plain arguments or it already falls under the category of violence. In this way, management will now be able to design the best strategy to address this certain issue.

Workplace violence is not only happening in your organization or in your friend’s organization. It can happen in everyone, anytime and anywhere. Therefore, it is just important that companies have policies with regards to the situation and appropriate consequences for the perpetrator or assistance such as counseling, training, experts’ opinion for the victim.

To better understand of what is workplace violence, the root causes of why this is happening, this research aims to address this issue and seeks to recognize the real cause of violence in the workplace. This paper also contains information that will give additional information for employees on how to overcome workplace violence or how to defend themselves when they’re faced with such kind of situation.

This paper also address company’s hurdle with regards to workplace violence and some strategies on how to monitor the behavior of employees (e.g. CCTV) and methodologies to address workplace violence in the organization (e.g. seek experts opinion, design policies, etc). At the near end of this paper, the researcher also discussed the legal issues with regards to the topic in order to supply information to the reader that there are laws that address workplace violence. Lastly, at the very end of this paper, the researcher highlighted some bigger challenges with regards to this issue. Thus, after reader reading this paper, the researcher hopes that the reader will gain new insight about workplace violence and spread the knowledge gained to help lessen the occurrence or incidence of this practice.

Introduction

Globalization has greatly affected our lives and our lives processes. Goods and services from one country are now widely available in other countries and workers from one country are now welcomed to work in other countries. This phenomenon allowed other workers of different races to work in one company, which now comprise the diverse workforce in the world. Businesses are composed of diverse people working together for the success of the company. These people working for the company comes from different background and place of origin.

It’s inevitable to have complications and rift among the attitudes of the people in the organization because of these differences, this rift may be one of the causes of Violence in the Workplace. Violence is happening in our surrounding though sometimes we are not aware of it. Violence may happen in school, organization, work place and even in our own house. In this regard, we will be discussing work place violence and relate it to strategic management of each company. In this paper, we will also be discussing on how to overcome

Understanding Workplace Violence

Work Place is defined by the United States Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as any violence that happened in the place of work against a co-worker or any staff that works for the same organization or event from other firms. It can be a form of threat, physical violence, homicide, verbal arguments or any other unspoken gestures.

This workplace violence may be the result of differences that are not settled, jealousy over co-employee or just a simple understanding because of the differences in opinion, ideas and ranks. Due to changes in company structures, people and the organization of functions, workplace violence is one of the growing concerns of companies nowadays. According to the US Department of Justice, in the year 1987 up to 1992, the number of work-related violence has increased gradually and reported that one of six violent crimes are actually happening in the workplace either co-employee being attacked, harassed or abused. The growing number of workplace violence poses threat to employees that’s why some are actually seeking for work from home jobs in order to avoid such incident may happen to them.

According to the article of Sharif, B. (2003) of the California State University at Los Angeles entitled Understanding and Managing Job Stress: A Vital Dimension of Workplace Violence Prevention, one of the prevalent causes of Workplace Violence is the Job Stress experienced by an employee. Job Stress may be the result of changes in the organization, workloads, pressing deadlines for proposal; technology used job function, sales quota and others which may add burden to the employee.

According to the article of Sharif, Job Stress is one of the Top ten causes of health problems and violence in the workplace as job stress triggers physiological, emotional, and even psychological difficulties for the employees and according to the researches of Blix, Cruise, Mitchell and Blix (1993), it caused the firm about $150 billion annual loss because of absenteeism, hospitalization and other medical benefits. In this regard, companies are continuously seeking for professional advices on how to prevent, stop or avoid workplace violence in the organization.

How to Overcome Workplace Violence and its legal issues

Workplace violence is now one of the issues or challenges that the companies are facing. No companies are spared with this violence, even small companies are actually experiencing these problems and up until now some of them are still searching for alternatives or solutions to overcome this problem. However, since the structure of each organization is unique and the culture, practices and customs are different from that of the others, laying out resolution for this type of problem or issue is very hard for each organization needs to suit the solution to their own protocol and based on the issue that arise in the company.

Therefore, there is no fix or one single strategy to resolve this kind of problem in the organization, hence, every organization should design their resolution in relation to their company policies and the type of violence they are experiencing. Thus, each organization needs to have multi disciplinary approach to the workplace related violence. Also, there’s no organization that can make single approach to different type of violence in the office for different violence may need different solution and needs to be given different level of attention by the management or the human resource department (e.g. attention to sexual harassment and bullying).

Therefore, in order for the concerned agencies to identify the best solution to the issue, they should understand first the root cause of the behavior or the instance that had happen in the workplace. In order to address this issue, companies are designing module which contains readings and things to remember by employees when they are faced with such issues.

According to the article of Rita Rizzo & Don Philpott about workplace violence, companies can actually design a model of violence-prevention protocols for the whole organization along with proper training, orientation and hand out materials to be given to the employees; companies can conduct awareness programs in the office or drill so that the employees will become familiarize with the defense mechanisms; or companies can put up counseling group that would help the victim recover from the trauma.

The US Department of Labor also suggests that companies should provide employees enough education about the issue and on how to protect themselves; securing the workplace by installing CCTV or surveillance cameras on all the corners of the workplace to monitor employee actions; and just by developing set of do’s and don’ts that all employee should follow to avoid issues or problems, thus, avoiding workplace violence. Other agencies are also proposing several ways on how to prevent or avoid workplace violence, however, the best weapon still depends on the employee or the victim themselves – knowing the proper defense mechanism or strategies when cornered in certain situation. Lastly, reporting the incident will also be a huge help for the management to give certain attention to the issue and correct the behavior of the doer or lay out appropriate punishment to the perpetrator.

In some cases, Workplace violence up to some extent already falls on the legal action. There are actually laws that protect an individual in the workplace or even the company from the situation. In Australia for example, under the occupational health and safety laws designed for their workers, employers are the one that should ensure the safety of each worker especially during work and in the constitution of Australia especially in the Work Cover New South Wales, an employer shall be punished in failure to perform the duty of protecting the employees. The penalty according to their legislation is $550,000 for the first offense and about $55,000 for other cases.

The Biggest Challenge in resolving Workplace Violence

In the US, there are 20 million workers who worked for non-governmental offices which most workers works for firms that have 20 employees or fewer. Though some researchers said that employees in small firms are getting the least paid and is composed of lowest status worker, they are not spared from workforce violence than any other type of business.

Since these companies are small, they don’t usually have budget or programs for workforce violence, less training capabilities and they offer less security for employees making the employees more at risk and they are the ones who received less prevention from workforce violence. Also, owners of small businesses tend to have less knowledge on human resources issues, legal matters and other workplace violence resources that they could use when they are faced with this kind of situation.

Since these small businesses employs large chunk in the workforce statistics, the government and even non-governmental organization are seeking a bigger challenge on how to protect the people working in this segment and up until now, it is still on the debate on who should protect the workers for small businesses.

Conclusion

I am aware that there are violence that are happening in my surrounding but honestly, I don’t have the idea on what are the causes of these violence and what triggers a person to harm a co-worker or just commit that kind of actions. As innocent as it may be, I just know that since people are just working for the company, they just basically do their job for the whole day then go in and out of the office.

The primary purpose of a person to go to the office is work on the job he/she is assigned based on the job description presented on the date of employment. However, after reading articles about workplace, I came to understand that in the workplace, people also socialize with his/her co-workers, and thus, they get to exchange ideas with each other.

I do know that globalization has greatly affected our ways of living, our culture, customs and tradition. Everything is changing from the clothes we wear and the languages we speak, this is because of globalization. Since change is inevitable in this type of world, people, the academe and even the businesses are going with the flow or adopting to this change in order to not to be stock in the past and discover possible benefits of this changes in our world.

Being able to adapt to changes also means that the personality or the company is flexible enough and are expected to last for sometime because it is able to adapt to its environment. In business, there are also gradual changes that happened in the operation, work force, customs and practices, technology and even with the management which poses threats, stress and burden to the employees and anyone who are part of the organization. Some may be able to adapt to this changes without any flaws, some are not, thus, they often result to bad habit and later on, they are committing violence which does not only hurt the themselves through their performance, they are also hurting the company customs.

After reading the articles related to workforce violence, I have learned that workplace violence isn’t contain on physical violence inflicted on other person but also involves verbal abuse, bullying, nonverbal communication and others. An employee might not notice at first that he/she is facing certain degree of workplace violence because of some unspoken violence because of non-verbal form of violence.

Because of this critical present issue, companies are on the rush on designing their own mechanisms and strategies on how to overcome this so-called workplace violence in order to protect their core employees and as well protect their company’s reputation. Based on my readings and based on the writings above, I have learned that businesses are designing policies; methods to supply more information for their employees, conduct trainings for employees, and consult legal experts about the issue and other companies even install numerous CCTV or surveillance cameras in the office in order to monitor the behavior of its employees. In such way, companies are hoping to resolve the issue as they occur and be able to keep their employees aware of how to defend themselves when they’re faced with such kind of situation.

Though the world is facing a greater challenge in the future because of the proliferation of small businesses who are less likely to implement a violence protection program for their employees, I am still confident that as of the moment, there are lots of concerned organization that will take care of that up until these small companies will be able to design their own protocols with regards to this issue. Thus, addressing this issue in casual or legal ways is still very important for employees in order for them to fell secured when they’re at their place of work.

References

Chauhan, D.S. ()Bowling Green State University. Preventing Violence in the Workplace: Threat Assessment and Prevention Strategies. Public Administration & Management: An Interactive Journal 4, 3, 1999, pp. 370-374

Isaacs, Arnold R. (2001). Workplace Violence: Issues in Response. US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Critical Incident Response Group National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia. Edited by Eugene A. Rugala, Supervisory Special Agent Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001

Philpott, Don and Rizzo, Rita. Workplace Violence: A Seven-Step Process to Address and Manage Potentially Violent Situations in the Workplace, Covering the full life-cycle of the event from Prevention – Threat Recognition – Mitigation – Response. Published by Government Training Inc. ISBN: 978-0-9844038-7-5

Sharif, Behjat A. Ph.D., CHES (2000), Associate Professor, California State University at Los Angeles . Understanding and Managing Job Stress: A Vital Dimension of Workplace Violence Prevention. Posted in the International Electronic Journal of Health Education, 2000; 3(2):107-116

U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2002). Workplace Violence: OSHA Factsheet

WorkCover. Workplace violence and legal consequences. Work Cover New South Wales and the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre ACN 062 253 874

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Did you find any useful knowledge relating to workplace violence in this post? What are the key facts that grabbed your attention? Let us know in the comments. Thank you.