This case pertains to Metropolitan hospital, a small 2 year old hospital that has a relatively tiny workforce of 235 people. It is a 60 bedded hospital and is very efficient. The hospital board has decided to increase its capacity from 60 to 190 beds within one year; they also plan to recruit the workforce that would be required to handle such an expansion. Clara Hawkins, the hospital administrator, is against this decision as she feels that this proposed expansion would reduce the efficiency of the hospital. She feels that it would be difficult to find such a talented, dedicated and hardworking team and it would reduce the quality of patient care. However, the Chairman of the board disagrees with her and believes that Clara must develop a plan of action that would enable here to select the right candidates for the required job. Clara then decides to develop a plan of action by first meeting her administrative group and discussing the best ways to screen the incoming candidates along with the necessary induction program.
Summary Recommendations for the Situation
Following recommendations must be applied in order to retain the efficiency of the hospital in spite of its expansion plans:
- Develop a robust plan of action of recruiting the desired workforce that will fit in the current hospital culture.
- Decide on what positions to fill by forecasting and personnel planning.
- Generate a pool of right candidates for these jobs and vacancies.
- Have candidates complete application forms and undergo initial screening interviews.
- Use selection tools like reference checks, aptitude tests, physical fitness tests and personal interviews to identify the right and deserving candidates.
- Decide on whom to make final offer and allow other department heads to take the final interview for those candidates.
- Refer the existing training and development program of the hospital or develop a new one as per the requirement.
- Impart necessary training to the selected employees and ensure that they fit in the organisation culture and values.
- Once the required workforce is recruited, try and evaluate their efficiency with respect to the hospital benchmark.
The case deals with the basic question of acquiring the right workforce in order to achieve the strategic goal of the organisation. In this case, it is the Metropolitan hospital that is considering expansion in terms of its patient capacity and workforce. The hospital’s core value is to provide best care and service to its patients. Being small in size added to its advantage but the question was: whether it could remain efficient after growing three times its current size? The administration fears that it would be difficult to find right candidates who would be as caring and hardworking as the current employees. The biggest challenge for the hospital is to expand and at the same time remain true to its values. This can only be achieved by adopting a well planned recruitment and screening program, which ensures the selection of right candidates with all the desired capabilities and talent. The selected candidates, then need to be trained on the current hospital norms, rules and values so that they are well aware of what is expected out of them.
Alternatives Identified
Some of the practical alternatives that can be considered in this case are:
- Drop the expansion plan of beds and employees, concentrate on delivering value and excellent services to patients and increase profitability by using current resources and competitive advantage.
- Increase the capacity only by half for one year, i.e. from 60 to 120. Analyse the results, if the results are positive, then increase the capacity to 190 by next year.
Recommendations in detail
- The first and the most important step is to prepare a plan of action, this would include aspects such as recruitment costs and recruitment schedule. Once this is fixed, hospital administration can then focus on planning the recruitment programme.
- The recruitment programme must begin with forecasting the requirement of candidates in particular departments such as OPD, trauma centre, ICU, Gynaecology, Cancer Centre and others. Specific positions that need to be filled must be recognised by this time and this must not take more than 3 months from the date of inception of plan of action. Forecasting can be done through methods such as trend analysis, ratio analysis and through past records and computers. The cost involved in this not very high.
- The identified vacancies must be advertised in newspapers, hospital website, medical journals, seminars and local events. One of the best ways to ensure quality talent pool would be by asking the existing employees to refer the name of their relatives, siblings and friends. In this way, a pool of right candidates must be generated and this process must be completed within 6 months of the inception of the plan of action. Cost of giving advertisements in newspapers and journals have to be considered, and they should be carefully tracked and monitored.
- Screening process must begin by organising interviews in the hospital premises or any other fixed place on specific dates. The basic screening interview should test the domain knowledge of the employee as well as his/her aptitude. Keeping the interview in the hospital’s premise or room would save cost of organising the interview somewhere else.
- The candidates selected in the first round must be then tested with group discussions and behavioural skills. Those selected in round 2 must be then interviewed by the respective department heads which would be round 3. The candidates selected in round three must be given offered the job. This entire process must be completed by 9 months since the program’s inception.
- Finally, the selected employees should go through a well designed induction program that would cover technical, managerial and behavioural aspects of their roles. This would be a big investment in terms of costs for the hospital as it would train its new employees on relevant techniques, machines and other HR aspects.
In this way, Metropolitan Hospital can ensure that it would remain extremely efficient and patient- friendly even after its expansion in one year.
References
Dessler, G. & Varkkey, B. (2010) Human Resource Management. Pearson, 11, 170-179.
