Workforce Plan

Answer

Workforce Plan

Introduction

Heartfelt Health Service is an organization committed to home-based care in the Northwestern Pennsylvania region. Some of the services Heartfelt Health Service provides are physical therapy, speech therapy, housekeeping, occupational therapies, and medication reminders. Heartfelt Health Service staffing includes Certified Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, and Caregivers. The goals of Heartfelt Health Service are accomplished by the employees through the delivery of quality patient care. Therefore, this workforce plan seeks to restructure the workforce to be competent in delivery evidenced-based care in the future. The main workforce issues are the aging workforce, evolving healthcare needs require new skills and competencies, and the prevalence of Information Technology among staff. Therefore, the organization should plan for the maintenance of the competency of its staff to deliver evidence-based care in the rapidly evolving health sector. As such, the workforce plan will contribute to the attraction, retention, and development of highly competent healthcare staff. Finally, the organization will evaluate the outcomes of the workforce plan by monitoring views of the staff on the experiences at Heartfelt Health Service, views of patients on the quality of care, number of employees resigning their positions, and applicants for various staff positions.

Development of the Workforce Plan

Stage 1: Project Establishment

Heartfelt Health Service has both a mission and goals. Its mission revolves around providing care in the comfort of the home environment while its key goal is to provide quality and excellent patient care. The organization can only achieve these dreams through the commitment of its competent staff to offering quality service. The workforce plan aims at maintaining the competency of the workforce for the future practice. The organization will need to retain, attract, and develop competent staff. The recruitment policies will be restrictive to highly qualified personnel with at least a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Nursing. The hours of work are also expected to change such that the staff will be encouraged to work overtime. Overtime hours will also be compensated in accordance with the employees' expectations. The staff will be trained through seminars and other education forums. Lastly, the remuneration scheme will be comprehensive, and the organogram presented to all employees in a website. The workforce plan will increase the quality of care and promote the public image of Heartfelt Health Service. The executive committee of the health service will implement the project on approval.

Stage 2: Context and environment

The strategic goal of Heartfelt Health Service is to provide quality care to patients and families. The staff is responsible for interacting with the patients and families on behalf of the organization. Therefore, the organization achieves its objective through the employees. The motivation of the employees is influenced by the remuneration schemes, working conditions, managerial labor relations, and training opportunities available in Heartfelt Health Service.

The urgent need to retain, attract, and develop highly competent staff is a pressing issue. The health industry is highly competitive and rapidly evolving with current evidenced-based practices (Bloom, Henson, & Peters, 2014). Consequently, there has been an ongoing demand for healthcare professionals in various fields. For instance, it is estimated that there is a shortage of nurses by about 500, 000 in the United States that will rise to a deficit of 918, 232 by 2030 (Juraschek, Zhang, Ranganathan, & Lin, 2012). The shortage of healthcare professionals has made the development of an effective talent acquisition strategy a challenge in the healthcare industry. Hiring the right staff and engaging and retaining employees result in high morale, a much stronger bottom-line and lower employee turnover (Snell, Morris, & Bohlander, 2015). Ultimately, the shortage of healthcare providers is the basis of the plan to attract, retain, and develop competent staff. 

Stage 3: Current workforce profile

The current Heartfelt Home Healthcare staff comprises mainly of Certified Home Health Aides with State of Pennsylvania training. These caregivers, a total of 378 in number, receive additional Home Care training at employment. It is useful to consider the length of service of the staff and turnover because they show our ability to retain staff as well as the competency of our staff (Li & Jones, 2013). The organization is perfect in matching the Caregivers to patients ensure that the appropriate level of care and personality match the clients. The core capabilities required include accountability, commitment to continuous learning, and social intelligence. The staff is intrinsically motivated to provide quality care. However, it is observable that remunerations highly affect their performances. The observation was derived from payrolls and the Human Resource Department. Similarly, most of the employees seek higher job ranks in other organizations after a minimum of the first six months of employment. Therefore, the need to establish a highly competent workforce through retaining, training, and attracting of qualified labor should be prioritized.

Stage 4: Future workforce profile

Given the policy of quality care, expanding community need for family-based care, and the healthcare workforce shortages aforementioned, over the next four years Heartfelt Health Service will require more nursing staff and higher levels of skills. The workforce is expected to increase by 15-20%. Additionally, specialists’ skills will be required to provide care to patients with advanced needs. Therefore, the organization will need to attract experts in these specialties. Apart from communication skills, the organization will also require cultural and digital competencies due to the increasing application of technology in healthcare (Skiba, 2015). The workers will be maintained and additionally trained. All the employees will be expected to resign jobs at least after two years of employment. Lastly, effective leadership skills will be indispensable to manage these changes.

Stage 5: Gap analysis and strategy development

The current source of the workforce to Heartfelt Health Service is chiefly the Fortis Institute in Erie. The gap analysis shows that if nothing is done, Heartfelt Health Service will experience a remarkable shortage of competent Home Care Aides to meet the objectives of the organization. The uprising demand for highly qualified healthcare professionals will not be met. Staff members are also likely to retire at early ages or resign after periods of services as short as two months. Therefore, the capacity to retain competent workers will reduce making the organization vulnerable to allegations of low-quality care delivery. This future risk of reduced performance also threatens the existence of the organization due to negative perceptions of clients (Gao, Greenwood, Agarwal, & McCullough, 2015). Therefore, the organization should implement the policies highlighted in the next paragraph to attract, retain, and train its staff.

The organization will need to work coherently with nursing education providers. Collaboration with Lancaster General College of Nursing and Health Sciences will help Heartfelt Health Service to recruit qualified registered nurses (Billings & Halstead, 2013). As such, Heartfelt Health Service will offer internship opportunities to nursing students from the college. The organization will also budget for capital required to sustain these interns. The recruitment panel will also conduct rigorous assessments before employment. A special committee should also be formed to review the learning and experiences of new employees and propose changes. Heartfelt Health Service will also need to develop new organogram that shall be availed online in the organization’s website so that both new staff and old staff clearly understand their roles. In addition, a special induction program will be formulated to support and develop new staff so that they have a complete understanding of their roles and the values of Heartfelt Health Service. The executive and other senior staff members will be compulsory members of this committee.

The challenge of updating competency skills will be alleviated by ensuring continuity in research. The research will ensure that the employees practice evidence-based practice that ensures healthcare provision based on the best evidence (Lorencatto, Stanworth, & Gould, 2014). A further training platform will be an online education for the employees. The new strategic plan should explore the possibility of introducing an online learning platform for the organization. Web-based training programs have been shown to be effective positive reinforcement to evidence-based practice (Ferri & Bo, 2013). Additional training will be provided through seminars, meetings, mentoring, and team building exercises. These practices can also create teamwork (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). A comprehensive remuneration scheme will also be indispensable in ensuring that best employees are retained and motivated to deliver quality care at minimal supervision (Thompson, 2014). An elaborate payroll system will also be a good incentive to attract best healthcare professionals working on contractual basis (Larkin, Pierce, & Gino, 2012). A recognition program for sharing good practice will also be developed. Recognition encourages employees to perform best practices and share their knowledge and experiences (Rapp, Agnihotri, Baker, & Andzulis, 2015).

A recognition program such as rewards for the employee of the month will be preferable. However, good leadership skills will be necessary to motivate the employees and manage these program changes. Most importantly, the leaders will be required to motivate the staff and act as role models (Brown & Treviño, 2014). Emphasis on leadership skills is important because intrinsic motivation is the most important determinant of the performance of employees (HYE, JIN, & SUN, S2015). Extrinsic motivators such as salaries can only supplement good leadership skills and communication systems (Sprenger, 2010).

Team based mechanisms will encourage all staff to be involved in improvement projects. Teamwork will be encouraged at all levels of the organization because it enables all employees to work with the same goal (Nielsen & Randall, 2012). Similarly, all the employees will be involved in decision-making. Teamwork promotes good interpersonal relationships among the staff and between staff and the management (Körner, Wirtz, Bengel, & Göritz, 2015). Therefore, staff members will be motivated to share information among them and perform best practices to achieve the objectives of Heartfelt Health Service.

Stage 6: Implementation, review, and evaluation

The Human Resource team and the executive, led by the president of Heartfelt Health Service will be responsible for resourcing for the strategies aforementioned. The main outcome of this workforce plan will be an increase in productivity of the Heartfelt Health Service staff in the next three years. The workforce development will take place in a stepwise manner that encourages the employees to imbibe the changes conformably.  As such, the crescendo of these changes will be in the second year of integration. The number of employees resigning their jobs in the first one year of recruitment is expected to drop to zero level. The organization will also be able to recruit more registered nurses. The retained labor will be highly competent from the training programs offered by the organization. Ultimately, patient outcome is likely to increase, and more patients will report satisfaction with the healthcare delivered by the staff. It will be critical for the planning committee to enact tools to evaluate and monitor the proposed strategies to determine the progress of the new initiative (TACHE & ISPĂŢOIU, 2013). Evaluation will also enable the management to identify new risks associated with the workforce strategies (Tache, 2012).

The methods of evaluating the effectiveness of the strategic workforce plan will include staff survey, analysis of human resource data, organization performance assessments, and customer surveys (Brathwaite, 2012). During these analyzes, the overall retention rates will be expected to have increased. The employees will report increased motivation and interest to work with Heartfelt Health Service. Patients will give remarks of satisfaction while receiving care delivered by the staff. The performance of the organization will also indicate an improvement from the records. The age profile of the workforce will change in the human resource data because younger staff will be recruited. Tools such as questionnaires will be used in the surveys to ascertain the views of the employees and the clients on the new workforce strategies. 

Conclusion

Heartfelt Health Service should address the need to attract, retain, and develop highly competent staff comprehensively. The healthcare industry is currently experiencing a marked shortage of healthcare professionals. Therefore, the organization must implement strategies that will ensure it executes its duties using highly competent staff at present and in the future. The approaches given to patient care are also evolving rapidly due to changes in the evidence used in care. Training of staff is necessary to ensure that their skills are updated on the current best practices. Patient satisfaction will improve remarkably, and Heartfelt Health Service will attract best healthcare professionals. Therefore, the integrity of the workforce for both the current and future success of the organization must be considered in the strategic plan.