Explaining the relevance of conducting labour market analysis to organisations relating to NHS
1. Explaining the relevance of conducting labour market analysis to organisations relating to NHS
HRM is also known as the Human Capital Resources and it is one of the significant sections of organisational management that needs properly administration. As stated by De Boeck et al. (2018), HRM has the close link to the unit performances and policies, especially to the service based organisation that has a complex structure. HRM focuses mainly business profit of the organisation and less attention is given to the public service organisations. Consumables and physical capital are the two other important inputs that are complementary in human resources. The largest group in the NHS are health visiting staffs, nurses and midwives. Unlike other employment, the combination of occupational heterogeneity and substantial spatial set the health service apart. NHS employees face the challenge as the other employees in different sectors get motivation like reward structure, devising pay and satisfaction. Labour market information Labour market analysis is needed to NHS as NHS has been facing the issue of disequilibrium feature in labour market (Kamil et al. 2016). Disequilibrium can assist itself to the persistent speciality and regional factor to the nursing staffs and pay structure. The employees are lacking their interests in workplace and they do not perform their job roles well.
Doctors’ demands are always higher than the supply in NHS and vacancies have been fulfilled by the overseas doctors. The shortage of doctors in the labour market of healthcare is predominant characteristics not only in the UK but also Germany and France. There are more than 690,700 midwives and nurses are registered in the UK and 5.5% of the nurses are trained in the EU (England.nhs.uk 2018). The new entrants in the labour market of nurses are higher than previous two years 2015 and 2016. (Bonoli 2017) However, there is a huge fall of the new entrants from EEA (European Economic Area) in the nursing sector. Nurses in this profession in recent time do not get a pay rise and the jobs are now open to the women that can constitute the vast majority of new entrants. NHS provides training opportunities to the nurses and NHS has always been a dominant buyer of the qualified nurses. Now the growth of the private healthcare centres, the nurses are trying to shift to the private healthcare as the pay package is good. Now, NHS finds itself running in the competitive labour market. As stated by Burrell (2016), aspects of the job in nursing are far better than the pay package as the job gives the nurse’s job satisfaction. The labour market of nurses is characteristics of long working hours, working conditions and short-run supply of labours. The theory of compensating differentials shows that labours pay more attention to the lower wages that give attractive attributes rather than the good wages with unattractive attributes (England 2016). There is a gap between pays of doctors and nurses and the incentives are lower in nurse anaesthetists and substantial nurses. Self-employed people in the UK in the year 2017 were 15% and it is much lower in case of the nursing and it is just 2% (England.nhs.uk 2018). NMC Health is leaving the UK because of working condition, degrading personal circumstances, poor pay and benefits and disillusioned with Equality Act (Atkinson and Storey 2016). The UK government has increased £ 900 million in the present year of 2018 in order to solve the pay scale issue of health executives.
Contributing to effective planning
The process of contributing to effective planning
The HR department of healthcare needs to plan workforce planning in order to solve the nurses and health executive issues. As opined by Adisa et al. (2017), workforce planning can ensure the labours are rightly allocated to projects in order to achieve service users’ delivery schedule. Strategic workforce planning takes a long-term forecast what the organisation might need in future. The HR department can proactively scan the external environment as well as the business cycle. In addition, operational workforce planning is associated with the short-term demands and it considers the current talent supply to show the additional manpower. The HR needs to re-look the hiring process and the HR needs to screen the right people for the healthcare. After that, the HR needs to provide the right infrastructure to give the relevant skills that can help the nurses in future. Nurses in the UK who have been working in the NHS do not get enough pay and the HR can provide external motivation by giving rewards and recognition based on the working hours and accomplishment. HR department can train the nurses through the ownership of career by giving mind towards lifelong learning. Internal drivers of workforce planning are organisational strategy and operational requirements whereas external drivers are service users, stakeholders and market forces (Kuvaas et al. 2014).
Figure 1: Contributing the effective planning
(Source: Self-developed)
2. Analysing the importance of short-term and long-term planning in business decision making
Making HR plan for the betterment of employees takes time. Making business plan is important to grow and expand the business. Short-term planning strives to address goal that can be taken within a short period of time. Short-term planning generally refers to the work that can be done within a month or a few weeks (Kooji et al. 2014). Short-term planning is also associated with the expanding the base of the customers to a certain percentage. In healthcare, HR department needs to work harder to meet the service users’ need. In case of a short-term plan, the HR needs to hire the nurses and staffs and they can also train the employees. In the short-term plan, the HR managers of the health care can anticipate the workforce requirement and they must not get surprised by the change of events. In addition, HR department plans how to survive the healthcare organisation not to fall into a trap during the shifting workforce market.
Analysing the importance of short-term and long-term planning in business decision making
In case of the long-term plan of the HR is done almost for the five years. In a meeting, the employees and manager cannot decide the future as it is unrealistic. In case of the healthcare systems, the HR department adjusts the long-term plan where they decide about improving the organisation’s stakeholders as well as liabilities (Donate et al. 2016). The HR department tries to make a conjunction with the requirement and the professional experience of the organisation, skills and talent needs of the healthcare. The HR can decide the strategy of the organisation in a growth phase. The nurses of NHS have been facing the issue of pay and the management cannot commit towards resource funding. The HR needs to consider the organisational objectives and HR planning allows identifying and selecting the development needed to acquire the new talent and retain the existing talents.
Reasons behind organisations like the NHS adopt these effective HR strategies to improve its performance
NHS needs to adopt the HR strategies to retain nurses and health executives by giving them motivation. The HR department can recruit and retain top talent as maximum nurses at this time are going to private healthcare. Finding and keeping talent is necessary from the side of HR in NHS organisation. The HR departments need to master in attracting and keeping the great people who stand still to continue to shine in healthcare. In addition, HR departments can move faster to make the great hires as potential candidates move faster in streamlines hiring process. In addition, as stated by England (2016), NHS organisation needs to establish and communicate career path to the nurses so that they can improve in long-term career objectives. Lastly, in order to improve the performance of the nurses, the HR department can invest in training and motivation. Working in patient-centred homes is not an easy task for the nurses and management re-invest in training so that the decision-making of the nurses must be fulfilled.
I went for a job interview for the post of HR executive and I was asked to sit in the interview room. There were two persons inside the interview room who would take my interview. I was trying to be calm and I was focusing on the concentration of mine. Of late, NHS has been facing the issue of talent management and people resources as the most of the health executives are leaving NHS and joining the private sector. The interviewers asked about myself first and then they talked about the NHS issues and what kind of development can NHS need to make to solve the issue.
Reasons behind organisations like the NHS adopt these effective HR strategies to improve its performance
Strategic goals of NHS are associated with the safe, compassionate and effective care to the service users and attract, support and retain the finest workforce. NHS wants to have financial stability and work with the partners. These goals of NHS are tried to make up for the HR strategies of recruiting and retaining the nurses and providing motivation to the nurses. The HR departments masters in keeping and attracting the people. I believe, they can establish and communicate career path through training to the nurses. HR department can segregate the plan in long-term and short-term wise so that the management can invest in improving the health executives to make the finest workforce.
In NHS current issues are related to the nurses’ lack of a hike in pay and nurses do not observe any growth in the NHS based workplaces. The nurses are trying to shift their career in private healthcare so that they can improve their career growth. Therefore, the issues of the nurses in NHS are associated with the recruiting the current talent as the private sector are taking potential nurses. NHS does not give training to the nurses and retaining talent is an issue in healthcare. NHS is facing issue to develop an ethical culture in nursing. My strategies of HR can solve the current issue as giving external motivation can retain the existing employees. In addition, the recruiting potential nurses can reduce the re-invest in the training process. Moreover, training to the nurses can solve the issue of retaining talent and developing ethical culture. I think, communicating and establishing the career path for the health executives will solve the issue of not meeting the goals of NHS.
First two minutes of the interview was challenging for me as I was a bit nervous. After that, I started to feel comfortable. They asked me the issue of NHS that it has been facing in recent time regarding the talent management. NHS has been facing the issue of staffing as many of the nurses have been coming to the UK from the EU countries. This figure may touch 55,000 in adult social care workers. In addition, in the year 2017, this shortfall touched to almost 5% from the previous year. After the Brexit incident, numbers of nurses in the NHS have drastically fallen as the UK has not made a treaty with the EU member countries. The UK based NHS needs to recruit staffs in order to solve the staffing issue. After hearing all my analysis of the NHS’s significant issue, the interviewers gave their viewpoint regarding the accessing the treatment in the UK and abroad. I felt confident as I could answer all the questions asked by the interviewers. NHS has to follow the regulation set by the UK government and working-time directive is important and procurement and competition law should be followed.
Sometimes, my viewpoint was not supported by interviewers regarding the HR strategies. I took up the concept of the lower external motivation of the nurses. The nurses may have the intrinsic motivation that keeps them within the organisation. I took up with another concept of cross-border cooperation in the public health and the interviewers did not familiar with the concept. I have been facing the issue of asking the wrong questions. The whole interview was for the purpose of HR strategies and issues, however, nursing based questions and strategies must not be asked here. Interviewers sometimes were making the bias comments. I had to handle this by making diplomatic answers. I was facing the issue of a communication problem and lack of confident some of the times. In addition, the inconsistency of the answers was another challenge for me as I was making a different point of view what I had made earlier.
After the job interview, I have realised that I could have answered the questions in the more diplomatic way with more data. I could have listened to the questions properly and narrate my answers keeping the eyes to the interviewers. I could have highlighted my past experiences to show my knowledge in-depth way. I could have shown up my knowledge assets to give specific past examples of NHS. I had not researched properly about NHS what I should have done earlier.
One should focus on the key issues experienced during the job interview meeting rather than just outlining what happened. I was always trying to participate the interview process; however, because of my lack of confidence, I could not make eye-contact properly.
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