HGI News and Editorial

While governments grapple with the macro environment, health organisations are reviewing their own workforce issues and broader sectoral priorities. The immediate challenge is focused on securing the future through the optimisation of people management practices

In my experience, many organisations embark on workforce transformation by tackling single elements which immediately eliminates the synergies to be gained from a multi focused approach. The four elements that form part of a multi-focused approach are:

• workforce planning;
• workforce deployment;
• employee value proposition; and
• performance management.

Organisations that deliver the four elements in an integrated way will have an advantage in creating a performance based culture that will sustain appropriate levels of patient care at an acceptable cost. The real effectiveness of these elements is based in how they are developed, integrated and executed.

1. Workforce planning
Plan long-term for your talent requirements
Workforce planning ensures that the required workforce capabilities are available to deliver the health services expected by government policy and public demand. Keeping up in an increasingly mobile global market for skilled talent requires a detailed understanding of the demand and supply of labour over multi-ple planning horizons.
A successful workforce planning process provides a detailed view of both workload demand (the level, composition and skill-sets required of the workforce), and supply (current workforce capability and future capability based on demographic modelling). The planning process embeds the strategies, tools and processes to monitor the accuracy of current and future planning, including the ability to develop ‘what if' scenarios in response to different forecast operational requirements.
The workforce plan will alleviate the problems associated with long lead times for educating skilled pro-fessionals. Unplanned shortfalls in skilled workers can lead to long term consequences, including signifi-cant delays in simply ‘catching up' to meet current workforce requirements. For health organisations, a robust workforce planning process can allow the organisation to minimise the risk this poses to service delivery and patient care. Furthermore, the workforce plan can ensure more stability in budgetary fore-casts for health organisations.

 2. Workforce deployment

Getting smarter about how you use your people
Within the health sector, the tactical deployment of resourcing levels and skills composition directly im-pacts the quality of patient outcomes in terms of care, service and accessibility, and equally impacts on the work/life balance of the workforce.
Employee driven popular practice leads to shift rotations that maximize individual earnings at the expense of stress and fatigue. Similarly, inequitable allocations of shifts across various employee groups can lead to disenfranchisement and is often evidenced in high levels of attrition for newer staff. In an environment of continuing labour shortage rostering practices that drive these types of outcomes are unsustainable from a patient care, workforce or cost perspective.
The robust workforce deployment model assesses the needs of all key stakeholders - patients, employ-ees and the health service provider. The often conflicting demands are best met through understanding the trade-offs and their impact in terms of cost, service and employee satisfaction. Tactical workforce de-ployment tools and methods allow for evidence-based decisions to be made, resulting in better quality outcomes.
Simply put, better practice workforce deployment processes maximise the delivery of services in the most cost effective manner. Organisations using tools and methods that do not adequately account for the em-ployee element or employee preference will struggle in achieving these objectives - the retention of key talent is critical in a tight labour market.

3. Employment value proposition

Understanding and managing the employee experience
The Employment Value Proposition (EVP) is the sum total of what an individual perceives to be important to both attract them to a new role and to remain engaged and productive in that role. The factors that make up the EVP include career development opportunities, the alignment of the work to expectations, the rewards offered and delivered, and the quality of people, workplace and environment. Reward is typi-cally the area of greatest focus for organisations but this alone will not sustain employee attraction and retention.
Traditionally employee value propositions were developed without knowledge of the detailed preferences of both current and prospective employees. These preferences have been shown to vary by personality type, job role, and career and life stage.
Strengthening attraction and retention strategies is crucial at a time of global shortfalls in critical skills. The sector will be able to more effectively align people management practices with employee needs through understanding employee preferences. It can also enable negotiations to shift from the default of pay to the other factors that are valued by their people, including the quality of work, flexibility or strengthened career pathways. Failure to do so means that the health sector risks losing competitiveness with other sectors who are able to more effectively create a compelling EVP to attract and retain staff.

4. Performance management
An untapped opportunity
Effective performance management drives productivity, aligns capability, engages people and recognises their contribution to the organisation. Effectively managing the performance of people in the health sector is critical to the delivery of safe and quality services. It is bedded in the values of the organisation and supported by capable managers who are skilled at facilitating a performance dialogue.
The simplicity of the processes that underpin the performance management cycle, from the setting of in-dividual objectives, to monitoring and holding performance discussions can disguise the challenges in the design and execution of an effective approach.
The consistent application of sophisticated performance processes is generally not well developed in the health sector. The challenge faced by the sector to design and align performance management is deep-ened through the need to consider numerous layers of operating protocols, standards and regulations as well as organisational systems, processes and culture. Without adequate attention to quality performance management, the sector risks ineffective management of practice scope, clinical standards and broader performance in the delivery of safe and efficient health services.