Sample Answer for HRM 635 Leveraging Human Capital Included After Question
Leveraging Human Capital
An organization’s success primarily depends on the productivity and efficiency of its workforce. Leaders should also have a healthy relationship with the employees to ensure that problems hampering productivity and relationships are reported and addressed appropriately. However, the current workplace is highly dynamic, and many issues can affect employee performance. Attitude towards work, leadership support, and motivation affect performance significantly. As a result, leaders should assess performance continuously and develop strategies to promote teamwork, motivate teams, and retain employees. In this case, employees must be perceived and treated as the greatest organization’s asset. The purpose of this proposal is to discuss performance indicators, rewards and incentives, and a plan for motivating employees.
Tasks and Performance Indicators for Employee Performance
Employee performance on the job should always be optimal for employees and organizations to achieve the desired targets. Tasks and performance indicators contributing to the overall employee performance on the job vary with the organization, type and number of employees, and workplace relationships, among other elements. One of the key indicators is the task completion rate. According to Tewes (2021), productive employees are very efficient and apply current techniques to deliver tasks using the least time possible. In a health care organization, such employees embrace change, innovation, and the adoption of new technologies for better patient care. Fahed-Sreih (2020) added that timely delivery of tasks signifies a healthy relationship between an organization’s leaders and the staff, which further improves motivation and satisfaction. Such a relationship leads to customer satisfaction, high productivity, and a better organizational reputation.
Besides timely delivery of tasks, employee engagement is another reliable indicator of excellent employee performance. For employees to work and deliver as required, most organizations emphasize collaboration, commitment, and passion for the work. Such virtues should dominate the health practice considering that patient care requires sacrifice, an innate desire to help, and empathy. According to Tewes (2021), employee engagement denotes enthusiasm and how strongly employees are connected to their job. Indicators of engaged employees include caring for work, a general concern for their performance, and visible efforts to make a positive difference in their performance. For the organization to succeed in this area, leaders must support employee engagement through opportunities for growth, recognizing excellence, and soliciting feedback from employees.
Another task and performance indicator is leadership support. Generally, employees feel appreciated and wanted in the organization when leaders support them in delivering their assigned roles. Besides providing opportunities for employee growth, such as in-service training and career development, leaders can support employees through addressing workplace issues and financing wellness programs. Some workplace issues affecting employee performance include incivility, bullying, and burnout since they increase the turnover rates (Kim et al., 2019). Addressing them is critical to employee satisfaction, retention, and high productivity. Wellness programs improve employees’ health and well-being.
Identifying an Employee’s Strengths and Skills to Leverage Performance
An organization’s performance is directly proportional to the employees’ strengths and skills. As a result, strengths and skills require continuous development to leverage employees’ performance. Performance appraisal can reliably identify employees’ strengths and skills. As Madlabana et al. (2020) explained, performance appraisal involves the formal, regular review of an employee’s job performance and overall contribution to the organization. Such reviews are usually conducted annually and primarily focus on skills, achievement, and overall growth. Ranking, paired comparison, and performance tests are common methods during performance appraisal. After the process, the organization’s leaders should design an effective program for improving skills depending on the gap between the current and the desired skill level and performance.
Observing the employees’ engagement level, participation, and support to their colleagues can qualitatively determine their strengths and skills. One of the employees’ abilities that can be identified through observations is leadership. Employees with leadership skills can be identified as they lead others in solving problems, using technologies, and helping new employees to settle in the organization. The organization can help such employees to develop their leadership skills further to help them lead and guide teams effectively.
Strategies to Improve Employee Performance
Improving employee performance helps to improve the overall organization’s productivity. Delegation can be an effective strategy for performance improvement. Through delegation, leaders assign tasks and responsibilities to qualified employees to help them gain valuable skills and leadership experience (Mirhoseiny et al., 2019). Such tasks include leading health care teams, innovation, and change projects. The other effective strategy is to train and develop employees. Over time, employee skills in a particular area become redundant as technology and science dominate the present-day workplace. Training and development help employees acquire the most current skills to perform their roles efficiently and effectively. In health care settings, skills updates can help to prevent medication errors and other patient safety issues. Employee motivation is also instrumental to better performance. Rewards and incentives are highly effective in employee motivation. Employees will earn rewards and incentives if they surpass the set targets.
Integrating Rewards and Incentives
Despite their effectiveness in employee motivation, rewards and incentives can be divisive if the organization errs in their integration and distribution. As a human resource management expert, the best way to integrate rewards and incentives is to develop an organization-wide blueprint detailing the different incentives and rewards offered and how employees will earn them. The diverse nature of the motivation programs will also ensure that different employees in the organization can earn rewards and incentives. Doing so will motivate employees at all levels and play a critical role in employee retention (Fahed-Sreih, 2020). It is also important to make the blueprint public to ensure that potential employees are aware of the reward programs in the organization. Such openness will attract skilled employees to the organization and help it recruit the best talents.
A Vision for the Overall Culture
The organizational culture represents the values, dominant practices, and expectations that guide members’ behaviors and actions. I aspire to build a culture that values employees’ growth and development and invests heavily in healthy relationships between leaders and the staff. Leaders should understand their roles in promoting employees’ development and do everything possible to maintain a motivated workforce. On the other hand, the employees must be committed to achieving the desired goals, collaborating effectively, and involving leaders in setting targets to improve individual and organization performance. Collaboration, excellence, and commitment to achieving the desired outcomes should be prioritized.
Conclusion
Employees are valuable assets that play a critical role in the organization’s progressive growth. They should always be motivated and passionate about their job. Accordingly, organizations must develop robust strategies to identify and improve employees’ strengths, skills, and overall performance. This proposal has outlined different strategies for employee development that can help improve performance and retain employees. They include leadership support, motivation programs, and delegation. Rewards and incentives are also crucial but should be organization-wide to achieve the desired outcomes.
References
Fahed-Sreih, J. (Ed.). (2020). Career development and job satisfaction. BoD–Books on Demand.
Kim, Y., Lee, E., & Lee, H. (2019). Association between workplace bullying and burnout, professional quality of life, and turnover intention among clinical nurses. PloS One, 14(12), e0226506. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226506
Madlabana, C. Z., Mashamba-Thompson, T. P., & Petersen, I. (2020). Performance management methods and practices among nurses in primary health care settings: A systematic scoping review protocol. Systematic reviews, 9(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-020-01294-w
Mirhoseiny, S., Geelvink, T., Martin, S., Vollmar, H. C., Stock, S., & Redaelli, M. (2019). Does task delegation to non-physician health professionals improve quality of diabetes care? Results of a scoping review. PloS One, 14(10), e0223159. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223159
Tewes, R. (2021). Innovative staff development in healthcare. Springer.
