Recruitment Company Problems Term Paper
Executive Summary
The healthcare recruitment industry faces different opportunities and problems, forcing healthcare staffing organizations to use strategic expansion approaches in their operations and engagements with clients and applicants. However, employment in this digital age poses new difficulties, such as the acute shortage of talent. A report by the Association of American Medical Colleges claimed that the United States will face a deficit of around 105,000 physicians by 2030 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). Therefore, the main issue is obtaining qualified providers in the market – especially with the low unemployment rates and increased demand in healthcare staffing. As joblessness remains low in the United States, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company faces a reduced candidate pool to perform healthcare jobs in an already cutthroat marketplace. The firm prides itself in providing qualified medical personnel to health facilities, such as hospitals and nursing home facilities within Boston, Massachusetts. However, this paper will analyze three functional areas (leadership, marketing, and information technology) to understand their role in creating the identified challenge.
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Problem Statement
a. What are the challenges affecting the staffing company?
b. How can Midmorning Summers Staffing Company handle these issues?
c. What are the advantages of following the recommendations provided for functional areas?
The implementation process should take at least one and a half years and must involve all departmental managers ranging from human resources to IT. The effective collaboration of these divisions will eliminate worker shortages at Midmorning Summers Staffing Company in the future. Besides, the institution will avoid lawsuits and reparation claims from disgruntled clients following incidents with unqualified MedPro staff. The last section in the paper, financial impact, will discuss the potential long-term financial returns on investment that the company can expect upon implementing the given recommendations.
Introduction
There are many opportunities and problems within the healthcare recruitment industry that force healthcare recruitment agencies to use strategic expansion approaches. In the 21st century, new concerns including an acute shortage of talent continue to trouble the healthcare industry. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018) used a study by the Association of American Medical Colleges to report that the United States will experience a deficit of around 105,000 physicians by 2030. Obtaining qualified providers in the market – especially with the low unemployment rates and increased demand in healthcare staffing will become difficult. Further challenges in the report include retaining existing employees, streamlining labor-intensive and ineffective credentialing processes, developing healthcare infrastructure, and successfully conducting market segmentation. These setbacks create major hurdles for recruitment procedures in the healthcare industry. Despite their existence, there are several ways for Midmorning Summers Staffing Company to solve its staffing impediments.
Client Organization
Midmorning Summers Staffing Company is a healthcare staffing firm known for supplying health care professionals including therapists, physicians, and nurses to medical organizations like nursing home facilities and hospitals. The organization was founded in 1995 by a group of medical professionals aiming to deliver quality services through experiences specialists nationwide. Currently, the company boasts of having a network of almost 200,000+ professionals and 50+ regional branch locations countrywide. Midmorning Summers Staffing Company has established robust relationships with different leading healthcare facilities and hospitals, and puts highly experienced clinicians in both local contracts and per diem assignments. It also operates in the competitive staffing industry with renowned recruitment organizations, such as Medical Staffing Network, Allied Resources Medical Staffing, Tact Medical Staffing, Accountable Healthcare Staffing and Encore Medical Staffing. Each of these organizations has a huge network of clients and staffers in the US. As of 2010, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company started recruiting individuals from other countries. Migration brought into the US qualified healthcare personnel different parts of the world, hence prompting the establishment to use the opportunity to expand its network. Nevertheless, the central culture of the corporation is the strong support of employee motivation and improved customer service. Employees are allowed to provide better services and make crucial decisions as long as they benefit the business as a whole.
Business Challenge
Midmorning Summers Staffing Company detected its staffing problems during the FY2015 when the executive indicated that most nurses and doctors had left the company. Although some remained loyal to the firm, a majority had left for better paying jobs. Around 23,000 healthcare professionals left the company and joined rival staffing organizations citing poor pay and long working hours. Based on their resignation letter, majority of the former employees claimed that working with the existing HR managers proved difficult because their issues were not handled. They blamed the HR department for failing to listening to their problems for almost three years. With the ongoing employee retention problems, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company must tackle the cited complications in the HR department and hire new staff to meet the growing demand for healthcare professionals.
Functional Areas
For smooth operations, various parts of organizations assume and control different functions. Dividing business processes into functional units allows each to run within its dexterity, therefore building effectiveness and proficiency across the entire enterprise. The core functional areas that impact healthcare staffing include human resources, information technology (IT), and leadership.
a. Human Resources
Business success depends on many aspects, one of them being strategic human resource planning. The role of the human resource department is to oversee managerial functions, employee relations, recruitment, and payroll (Scott, 2017). It also monitors interactions between trade unions and employees. Because the HRM department manages multiple responsibilities, the lack of planning could lead to an inefficient and unproductive workforce. Poor HR planning can cause adverse effects on workplace throughput. Unproductive employees are unenthusiastic and disengaged from their tasks. In most scenarios, alterations in company structure, decreased motivation, and poor management diminish productivity (Scott, 2017). An additional role of the HR unit is to ensure that managers possess the required training and skills to address staff grievances. Having an ineffective HR department hinders the realization of organizational goals and objectives.
The HR department is usually responsible for all hiring practices in an organization. The branch collaborates with managers and supervisors to evaluate staffing needs, interview, and review the abilities of job applicants (Scott, 2017). Disorderly and poorly scheduled hiring activities may result in the employment of incompetent and unqualified personnel. Any HR department without effective and practical recruiting approaches negatively affects the integrity of the workforce (Dutta, 2017). For example, failure to observe proper staff screening guidelines could welcome a candidate with a criminal history, expose customer data, or reveal company secrets to competitors. Hence, the HR department must plan the recruitment exercise beforehand and implement it in an orderly manner to avoid hitches in the future.
Abysmal HR planning could increase employee turnover. Sometimes employees leave a company for personal or business reasons. In such instances, those exiting should voluntarily participate in an exit interview with a HR staff member (Scott, 2017). The interrogation is aimed at giving the firm an indication of the employee’s impetus to quit. A disorganized exit interview hardly supplies the corporation with crucial information concerning workplace attitudes, staff morale, or other knowledge indispensable to retaining an industrious and contented workforce. According to Dutta (2017), an employee could decide to resign due to low motivation by managers or the HR department or negative perceptions of the organization. In such situations, performing an exit interview enables administrators to detect the causes of workers’ departure and to learn how to tackle them. In the healthcare industry, losing an employee to a competitor means using additional finances to locate and hire new staff (Scott, 2017). A high employee turnover undermines the entire running of a hospital since the money spent on recruitment could instead be used to improve other functions within the establishment.
Noncompliance by the HR department jeopardizes the recruitment of qualified personnel within a hospital setting. One of the legal mandates of HR is to ensure that a business respects labor and employment rules. Examples of such regulations in the United States include the Family and Medical Leave Act, COBRA (Consolidation Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), and Equal Employment Opportunity laws (Scott, 2017). A HR division that dismally organizes the legal facets of the workplace can s damage the good reputation and status of a company. For example, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company may face a lawsuit if its HR department lacks a properly defined and enforced anti-harassment policy. The employer may experience devastating consequences, both financially and business-wise (Scott, 2017). Thus, companies should introduce guidelines to protect their employees from harassment or other mistreatment during office hours to evade legal risks.
b. Information Technology (IT)
The extensive adoption of IT has numerous potential benefits to healthcare. Websites, such as Monster.com, Careerbuilder, and LinkedIn, have altered how employees and employers connect (Lund, Manyika, & Robinson, 2016). Digital marketplaces, such as Upwork, Toptal, and Freelancer.com, permit people to source contractors’ services globally (Lund et al., 2016). These platforms have enhanced transparency in the job market. Conversely, IT glitches can upset the provision of care and augment the possibility of new, unseen errors that decrease the quality and safety of medical care and cause harm to patients (Kim, Coiera, & Magrabi, 2017). The presence of IT defects reduces the effectiveness and adeptness of healthcare professionals.
One of these shortcomings is an incomprehensive database. Ramos (2015) argues that the quality and size of the database influence the capability of IT systems to undertake searches and analyses of résumés. In return, companies are unable to obtain the right candidates for their vacant positions or, alternatively, unqualified individuals acquire undeserved opportunities. The lack of trained personnel exposes clients to substandard services and products as well. Having sufficient information about an applicant eases the selection and hiring process.
Another fundamental IT complication in staffing is applicant dishonesty. Employers expect applicants to uphold 100% honesty while applying for employment positions. As HireRight’s 2018 Employment Screening Benchmark Report discovered, 85% of employers found that their employees had lied in their résumés, up from only 66% five years ago (O’Donnell, 2017). Technology has even helped some companies to operate as former employers of job applicants. Despite its many advantages, IT exposes recruitment and staffing agencies to the aforementioned intricacies daily.
c. Leadership
Effective leadership serves as a central element of healthcare systems and plays a significant part in cultivating corporate productivity and success. Ghiasipour, Mosadeghrad, Ara, and Jaafaripooyan (2017) describe leadership as an enduring process of swaying people toward achieving certain goals or missions of an organization or faction. A leader sets strategies and objectives, urges compliance with norms and dedication to organizational productivity and targets, and encourages teamwork and dynamicity in companies. Leadership also denotes a long-term routine of organizing and streamlining working conditions as well as shaping the opinions of organizational members (Ghiasipour et al., 2017). Consequently, great leadership is necessary for companies attain their aims and vision.
Weak leadership causes conflicts in management and communication. It can be frustrating to supervise a large group of individuals because each of them views the world differently. In a hospital environment, an accountant’s perception of circumstances may vary from that of physicians or nurses. Managers’ inadequate power to hire, reposition, promote, and discharge personnel, including their restricted authority to use welfare and motivational programs, reduces their influence and output (Ghiasipour et al., 2017). Incapable leadership in any organization hampers employees from performing their jobs diligently. Work distribution becomes problematic because managers lack the expertise to allocate responsibilities properly. In the healthcare context, hiring qualified personnel would be nearly impossible because of managers with poor leadership skills or styles. They may either hire inexperienced employees or predispose the hospital to serious legal ramifications. Resultantly, the prosperity of any firm depends on the management’s leadership capabilities.
Organizational Obstacles
Midmorning Summers Staffing Company prides itself in providing the best medical staffing services in Boston. However, two obstacles threaten to derail that goal as the hospital strives to operate in the 21st century. The first hindrance is management blockers, where high-performing managers gridlock new projects. Some managers within the hospital prefer traditional management methods and abhor the idea of using technology to upgrade services. They overlook the merits associated with technological devices and, instead, argue that technology exposes the hospice to many technical snags. The second drawback facing Midmorning Summers Staffing Company is the lack of employee motivation, which has resulted in the loss of many workers to competitors. Losing personnel to other hospitals in the area has caused high employee turnover in the last five years. Although the firm endeavors to deliver excellent medical services, any failure to overcome the highlighted predicaments could delay or stall healthcare delivery.
Recommendations
The three functional areas, namely, human resources, IT, and leadership constitute the business challenges affecting Midmorning Summers Staffing Company. Disorganized HR and IT departments and shaky leadership prevent the institution from fulfilling its dream. However, the management can resolve these problems as discussed below.
a. Human Resources
Defective HR planning exposes companies to unnecessary glitches that could have been avoided in the first place. As HR professionals initiate appropriate tactics to promote organizational purposes, they must reason beyond routine strategies and determine the high-level focal points that will inspire success. One means of guarantee outstanding HR planning is by crafting a strategic vision. Valuable HR approaches seldom exist in a vacuum. They are effective when aligned with the strategic vision of the respective enterprise. The vision indicates the direction of the firm and the resources (human, financial, physical, and intellectual) needed to achieve it. Therefore, HR leaders must assess the corporation’s existing vision to identify how HR activities can reinforce it. Focusing on the vision keeps the organization on track and in tune with its priorities.
Cultivating talent to support the firm’s vision is another solution to mediocre HR planning. Employees possess innate gifts and expertise, but they require encouragement to develop them. Nurturing employees’ abilities through training equips them with the know-how to run a business and to grow professionally and personally. It takes an organization in the proposed direction. Employee training boosts staff performance as it gives them a better understanding of their duties. Besides, competent employees help companies hold leading positions and become robust competitors in their industries. Furthermore, talent development raises staff optimism and satisfaction. Investing in employee training shows workers that the firm values them and builds a supportive working environment as well. Thus, talent building through employee training reduces poor HR planning.
Another approach to efficacious HR planning is ameliorating the hiring process. Recruitment can be expensive and time-consuming, hence the need for careful HR planning to ensure that money and time are well-spent. For this reason, staff recruitment should follow the right procedures and foster collaboration between departments to understand the required labor pool. It is beneficial to talk to present employees regarding the hiring exercise and give them a chance to voice their concerns. It is important to hold exit interviews to establish the impact of hiring actions within the company. Recruiters should be honest when locating and recruiting new employees to avoid choosing applicants with criminal records and unqualified candidates (O’Donnell, 2017). Hence, refining hiring activities assists firms to fill their vacant positions with the most suitable individuals.
b. Information Technology (IT)
Information technology provides employers with a larger pool of candidates to choose from during staff recruitment. Concurrently, IT presents several inconveniences, such as an incomplete database and applicant dishonesty. A poorly developed database can be rectified by introducing an IT department tasked with gathering and verifying crucial information. That data should be stored in secured places with safety measures, such as firewalls or passwords, to curb unauthorized access. Having sufficient and protected information increases companies’ leverage in the marketplace as they use the data before releasing any product or service.
In an imperfect world, people act dishonestly to move farther in life. However, companies can use a number of methods to discern dishonest applicants when interviewing for a job position. The first technique is behavioral interviewing, where the interviewer asks detailed questions regarding the candidate’s work experience (O’Donnell, 2017). The depth of the applicant’s response reveals whether he or she is lying. For example, a candidate claiming to have 12 years of experience must provide in-depth information about his or her professional life. The quality of his or her response will notify the recruiter whether the contender is truthful or not. Secondly, the employer can conduct background reference checks to catch a cunning applicant. Some employers research and clandestinely contact the former colleagues of a job contestant to enquire about their performance. They prefer speaking to individuals other than those recommended by the applicant. During such investigations, coworkers unknowingly offer the recruiter with information to validate or nullify the candidate’s claims. Using thorough questions and insights from third parties, employers can distinguish crafty from honest aspiring employees and make informed and wise staffing decisions.
c. Leadership
Substandard leadership induces management and communication conflicts in an organization. Therefore, leaders should effectively apply their leadership competencies to guide and impart their expertise in people. Experienced executives are committed to the welfare of their followers and direct their firms towards the vision. Such leaders boast of a wide range of interpersonal skills, such as motivating other people, managing conflicts, providing supportive communication, and exercising influences (Igbaekemen & Odivwri, 2015). They have the emotional intelligence and compassion to deal with people from different backgrounds. Given the diversity of the modern workplace, leaders often encounter challenging and unpleasant scenarios. As a result, they need to be emotionally intelligent to approach these incidents objectively and fruitfully by considering the real underlying causes. Similarly, emphatic leaders sense how other people feel and become better team builders and effective communicators (Igbaekemen & Odivwri, 2015). Interestingly, this trait remains critical in the healthcare sector during the development of the doctor-patient relationship.
Managers can eliminate administrative and communication conflicts by listening. Communication is crucial to the attainment of organizational and interpersonal objectives (Igbaekemen & Odivwri, 2015). However, it is a two-way process that necessitates leaders to listen to their junior employees and vice-versa. Ineffective listening emasculates people’s confidence and resourcefulness. Contrarily, active listening empowers leaders to understand their employees without undermining their suggestions.
Implementation
The implementation process will take a period of six months as the management of Midmorning Summers Staffing Company seeks to correct the deficit of healthcare staff within the facility.
Table 1: Implementation Table, Including Resources, Functional Areas, Additional Details, and Costs
Financial Impact
Every company should assess the return on investment (ROI) of any operation before implementing it. Duermyer (2018) argues that ROI gauges the likelihood of making profit on a business or project. Its formula is as follows:
ROI = (Return-Expenses x 100/ Expenses)
ROI is multiplied by 100 to represent the value as a percentage. In this case, the total expenses include $6,000+5,000+5,500+300,000+9,000+40,000+1,260,000+29,000+5,000 =1,659,500. The hospital expects to make $2 million annually. Therefore, its ROI is
ROI = [(2,000,000-1,659,500) x 100]/2,000,000 = 17.025%
Relating net income to investment gives a better indication of departmental profitability. All managers understand that top executives judge their performance based on how they utilize assets to make profit. That evaluation motivates them to make optimal use of resources. ROI also ensures that managers acquire assets only when they are guaranteed to offer returns according to company policy (Argarwal, n. d.). In this case, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company expects its investment to yield returns during the first year of operation. A cost-benefit analysis will help the institution forecast the rate of return from diverse investment proposals as well. Thus, ROI aids companies in evaluating their investments in terms of the expected profits or losses.
Using ROI will enable Midmorning Summers Staffing Company to achieve goal congruence. Any growth in departmental ROI promises improvement in the overall organization (Argarwal, n. d.). For example, if the IT department receives a high ROI, other units will witness an increment as well. Consequently, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company should invest more in all departments to boost the profitability of the whole establishment.
Organizational Impact
Adopting the recommendations given above will benefit Midmorning Summers Staffing Company in multiple ways. The first outcome is greater employee morale or overall attitude, confidence, and satisfaction at work (Heathfield, 2018). Positive or high employee enthusiasm drives workers to meet their vocational and career aspirations. Nevertheless, the staffing corporation cannot always guarantee that their staff members remain motivated but can modify its work environment. Workplace elements controlled by employers, and which have an effect on staff morale, entail the efficacy of managers, daily interactions between workers, and the quality of supervisor’s relationship with subordinates. Indeed, companies are responsible for creating a culture or atmosphere that values these organizational and relational factors.
As discussed in the recommendation section, strategic planning is vital in every business. Having a strategic vision will make Midmorning Summers Staffing Company proactive rather than reactive. It will foresee its future and adjust accordingly. The recruitment company will also envision certain unfriendly circumstances before their occurrence and take essential and protective steps to escape them. Additionally, being proactive will ensure that the establishment keeps up with the inconsistent changes in the market. The strategic vision will improve operational efficiency within the hospital. The facility’s management will have a blueprint with which to synchronize its functional activities to accomplish set goals. Lastly, Midmorning Summers Staffing Company runs in a cutthroat market with other employment agencies. Hence, having a customized strategic plan will present valuable insights on how to supply innovative product and service offerings, reach more customer segments, and adapt to market trends. It will also grow its market share and profitability as strategic planning seeks to derive maximum gain from marketing efforts and sales.
Proper communication fosters teamwork. In her article “How to Build a Teamwork Culture in Your Organization,” Heathfield (2018) affirms the significance of collaboration and stresses the notion that thinking, preparation, activities, and decisions are enhanced when handled and completed cooperatively. The author faults organizations for focusing on winning rather than exemplifying teamwork. She also argues that companies value diverse individuals, experiences, backgrounds, and ideas but disregard teams and collaboration. Hence, embracing teamwork will ease communication of directives from top to low-level managers at Midmorning Summers. Comparably, the introduction of any modifications will be easier as employees have the freedom to voice their suggestions and complaints. As indicated, open communication will offer several beneficial outcomes to the hospital.
Lastly, competent leadership facilitates employee retention. Organizational effectiveness hinges on maintaining and inspiring workers to stay in a company for a long period (Kossivi et al., 2016). Despite the growing advancement in technology, companies require human resources to operate technological devices. Besides, competition is on the rise due to globalization, which means that employees continually seek greener pastures both locally and overseas. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to retain their employees as more promising opportunities arise every day. For Midmorning Summers Staffing Company, employee retention is instrumental to saving resources that could have been used to hire new employees.
Conclusion
Overall, managers hope to run their business effectively and meet organizational and personal goals in the process. However, such ambitions fail when they overlook their employees and sabotage any existing relationship with them. Such managers fail to acknowledge the role of employees in achieving company goals. The case of Midmorning Summers Staffing Company portrays how failure to handle administrative issues affects the daily operations of an organization. Besides, excellent management practices allow companies to achieve their goals. They ensure that company operations align with anticipated goals and that everyone is working towards the achievement of those goals. In most cases, the issue of employee retention arises especially when managers lack effective management skills. Such instances reduce employees’ sense of belonging and value in the overall running of the company. Simultaneously, different functional areas, such as human resource, IT, and leadership, cooperate in ensuring that organizations reap the most gains from operating in their respective industries. Any attempt to run a successful business is susceptible to many barriers, but sound strategic planning helps resolve them promptly. Moreover, management should maintain harmonious relationships with employees to nurture teamwork. Work environments that are conducive to workers improve staff morale and retention. They raise individual levels of creativity, especially when employees feel valued by the establishment. Understanding the financial status of a firm is necessary to estimate its profitability. Regardless of the industry, organizations should embrace thorough strategic planning to avert human resource management and other operational pitfalls.
References
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