HRM 635 Week 7 Assignment Leveraging Human Capital
Section 1- Introduction
Human capital is defined as specific employee traits that can ensure success of a business. Often, human capital forms the greatest asset in any organization. Therefore, leveraging human capital is a vital requirement for a success of a company. Amply, leveraging human capital characterizes a growing trend in the contemporary society where organizations creates more emphasis on human capital, right from initiating basic measurement of the efficiency of all aspects from training initiatives to employee engagement (Aryee, Walumbwa, Seidu & Otaye, 2016). Essentially, after getting the best talents, the role of leveraging employees is to keep and inspire them to achieve great things with the ultimate goal of connecting employee’s performance to workplace outcomes. It is against this backdrop that this paper seeks to delve into leveraging human capital in the present organization, particularly for the critical care nurses including the Emergency Department (ED) nurses and the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses. To achieve this objective, the paper will explore specific areas including an evaluation of the current employee status, reward and motivation strategies, leveraging on the strengths of the employees, description of the organizational culture, and rewards and incentives to ensure employees remain competitive.
Section 2- Job Performance & Evaluation
Critical care nurses are tasked with various responsibilities of caring for critically ill patients who are at high risk of life-threatening conditions. Their roles include examining the conditions of the patients, evaluating patient’s conditions closely and planning and executing care plans for the patient, playing the role of advocate between the patient and their family, providing education to patient and their family, and collaborating with other critical care team members. Moreover, the critical care nurses also have vital responsibilities towards patients such as provision of advanced life support, helping physicians in conducting procedures, ordering diagnostic tests, responding to life-saving incidences through application of nursing standards and treatment protocols, and ensuring proper functioning of medical equipment such as monitors and ventilators. Besides, some critical care nurses act as administrators, case managers, and policy makers.
To determine the overall performance of critical care nurses, various performance indicators are used to gauge the effectiveness of the nurses in the organization. Some of the performances indicators that contribute to the overall job performance include reduction in the cases of readmission of ICU and ED patients with unplanned readmission to ICU within a period of 72 hours following discharge, elimination of avoidable days in the ICU that ranges from four hours after discharge is given, reduction in ICU mortality number, reduction in hospital mortality number, especially the patients who die after being discharged from ICU during the same hospitalization, reduction in ICU length of stay, and patient and family satisfaction rate.
Section 3- Reward & Encouragement Strategies
Essentially, critical care nurses’ work is demanding and characterized by significant emotional burden owing various factors such as making life and death decisions to patients, high number of patients, and witnessing patients facing untold pain and suffering (Laerkner, Egerod & Hansen, 2015). As such, it is imperative to reward these nurses and keep them motivated. Developing inspired critical care nurses requires that managers should each nurse an individual, empower them, and offer proper reward system. Consequently, the critical care nurses can be rewarded by both monetary and non-monetary incentives (Greene, 2018). The monetary incentives may include bonuses, shopping voucher, and a fair and equitable handout rewards to demonstrate gratitude for their exceptional job performance. On the other hand, the nurses can also be rewarded by non-monetary incentives. The incentives may include celebrating with them their successes frequently, routinely giving the appreciation notes such as “thank you” notes, hand out movie tickets, displaying their achievement on banners, and asking the staff to join in celebrating a particular person some specific achievement. Essentially, rewarding and appreciating critical care nurses for their achievement ensures they are kept motivated and help in developing a feeling of being valued and belonging to the organization.
As already established, critical care nurses face many challenges such as working without break, burnout, and compassion fatigue that often result in negative attitude, feeling hopeless, stress and anxiety, and sleep issues. Therefore, nurses can be supported during difficult times by ensuring that the hospital managers create a positive working environment, committed towards empowering them, ensure nurses have the opportunity to identify their challenges and facilitate their participation in solving such problems, and providing training programs to nurses to develop problem solving and coping techniques for the challenges.
Section 4- Levering on Employee Strengths
In an attempt to leverage on employee assets in the organization, the best strategies to use is to help the critical care nurses to identify, understand, and routinely utilize their outstanding skills to ensure they remain more inspired, engaged, and productive. These strategies can also help the nurses to stay on point during working periods that are often characterized by heavy and demanding tasks. On the other hand, the strengths of the critical care nurses can be identified by actively listening and paying attention to their job aspects and their individual lives including the things they like and enjoy and they ones they do not like or enjoy. The organization can facilitate this process by using a leadership approach of StrengthsFinder to help in gaining an in-depth understanding of the leaders and the employees (Janke et al., 2015). Essentially, good leaders acknowledge their strengths and invest in the strengths of others to establish a team of employees with impeccable strengths capable of realizing specific needs of the organization.
Essentially, focusing on these strengths is one of the ways to better the performance and skills of individual nurse. An effective leader should always look at the strengths of the employees and not flaws to make the employees make the most of their talents and skills, while ignoring the urge to help employees correct their weaknesses (Sorenson, 2014). Moreover, focusing on the positive side of employees is crucial in enhancing the confidence, hope, and productivity of the employees. In addition, staying passionate is also crucial in betterment of performance and skills of the critical care nurses by triggering them to notice the bigger picture and to be critical and creative in their work approach. Finally, leaders can also better the performance and skills of individual nurses by being flexible and visionary, sharing the visions, and putting the employees first.
Section 5- Culture Within the Organization
The vision for the overall culture I aspire to develop in the organization is to be honest, compassionate, and impactful healthcare organization that is known globally within the health care industry for provision of maximum health across the lifespan the customers we serve. The healthcare setting will be committed to become the leader in delivering value-based care to patients and to pride itself as the most trusted health care partner.
Section 6- Rewards & Incentive to Remain Competitive
Presently, there is a great concern that baby boomers will mostly retire in the next five to seven years, thus, creating workforce crisis that will bring challenging times that will force organizations to take radical steps to ensure they have best talents in the organizations. Consequently, for organizations to remain competitive, they need to robustly pursue talent to enhance productivity and profitability, while also leveraging human capital to ensure a competitive advantage. To address this challenge, therefore, the present health care organization ought to devise a clear and convincing strategy for implementation of reward or compensation system such as rewards and incentive plan attract, retain, and inspire top talents. The reward and incentives may include benefits, total compensation, work-life balance, and training for career development and individual growth opportunities.
Essentially, the rewards and incentives will ensure the organization remain competitive in the market by ensuring the top talents are identified, attracted, and motivated, thus, leading to an overall employee engagement. It is undoubted that companies that effectively engage employees tend to realize organizational goals and achieving their visions, missions, strategic goals, and values (Waqas & Saleem, 2014). The present organization will, therefore, strive to formulate a reward system that aligns with health care industry, cost considerations, and the life cycle of the organization to ensure the establishment and implementation of the right program to realize retention of the best behaviors necessary in achieving the needed business results, which eventually help in maintaining competitive advantage. Moreover, rewards and incentives can also help in appealing to employees by making them believe they are valued and appreciated.
References
Aryee, S., Walumbwa, F. O., Seidu, E. Y., & Otaye, L. E. (2016). Developing and leveraging human capital resource to promote service quality: Testing a theory of performance. Journal of management, 42(2), 480-499.
Greene, R. J. (2018). Rewarding performance: Guiding principles; custom strategies. Routledge.
Janke, K. K., Farris, K. B., Kelley, K. A., Marshall, V. D., Plake, K. S., Scott, S. A., & Yee, G. C. (2015). StrengthsFinder signature themes of talent in doctor of pharmacy students in five Midwestern pharmacy schools. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 79(4), 49.
Laerkner, E., Egerod, I., & Hansen, H. P. (2015). Nurses’ experiences of caring for critically ill, non-sedated, mechanically ventilated patients in the intensive care unit: A qualitative study. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 31(4), 196-204.
Sorenson, S. (2014). How employees’ strengths make your company stronger. Gallup Business Journal.
Waqas, Z., & Saleem, S. (2014). The effect of monetary and non-monetary rewards on employee engagement and firm performance. European Journal of Business and Management, 6(31), 73-82.
