Introduction
Human resources functions have been termed critical across many sectors on both a private and a global scale. Its importance cannot be undermined as it plays a vital role in facilitating company recruitment, talent sourcing, training, and hiring of employees. Additionally, human resource departments are responsible for talent management across organisations, which is a vital process that adapts, trains, and maintains the best set of employees.
In this regard, this report’s purpose is to critically evaluate the role of the human resources function in the United Kingdom’s National Health Services (NHS). The report will critically explicate historical and statistical information on NHS, which will help to foster an understanding of the organisational background. The overview will facilitate the transition into understanding the role of the human resource function in the organisation and note some of the critical challenges faced. The report will provide solutions based on the state of the human resource department at NHS, including well-informed recommendations.
The report will begin by enunciating a brief overview of the NHS and providing crucial statistical information to help understand its background. The report will proceed to provide a detailed literature review which will involve collecting information from other sources. The literature review will evaluate the role of human resource functions in helping firms gain competitive advantage, the recruitment process, the responsibilities of employees, and procedures that give management equal opportunities. The report will provide a critical analysis of the human resource functions at NHS, evaluate the effectiveness of selection and recruitment strategies at NHS, and analyse how the company manages the best practices of its employees. Also, it will provide detailed information on the NHS’s human resources systems and policies. The report will conclude by delivering informed solutions and recommendations that would help NHS improve the role of its human resource functions.
Company Overview
In England, NHS is the publicly financed healthcare system. It was formed in 1948 and offered all people complete medical care regardless of their capacity to pay (Rivett, 2020). It is one of the world’s most extensive and comprehensive healthcare systems, with over 1.5 million staff servicing over 60 million patients (Rivett, 2020). As a result, it treats more than 1 million patients every 36 hours, with more than 23 million hospital admissions and approximately 100 million outpatient visits yearly (Hacker, 2019). The diverse workforce consists of physicians, nurses, support employees, and administrative staff. This workforce is distributed throughout several entities, including hospitals, general practitioners’ offices, and community health clinics.
A mix of general taxes and National Insurance payments supports it. The NHS budget in 2019-20 exceeded £129 billion, with the bulk of the money coming from ordinary taxes (Hacker, 2019). Its healthcare budget is among the highest in the world as a share of national expenditures. The financing is utilised to offer comprehensive medical care to everyone, regardless of their financial means. It is responsible for significant public spending in the United Kingdom. In 2019-2020, healthcare accounted for more than 15% of all public expenditures (Hacker, 2019). This is a reflection of the high costs surrounding healthcare in the UK.
The performance of the National Health Service (NHS) has been evaluated and assessed continuously. Despite its size and complexity, the NHS routinely performs well in worldwide comparisons of healthcare systems (ONS, 2018). The NHS’s reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic has been commended in recent years. The pace and efficiency of its vaccination program have gained special praise, with the UK being one of the first countries in the world to roll out widespread vaccines.
Literature Review
Human Resource Functions and HR Strategies
The human resource department of any company is significant for the success of the overall operational strategy. It can directly impact a company’s results and determine the failure or success of strategy and objectives in the short and long term. An effective human resource department should access, forecast, predict, design, and implement strategies that align with the company’s objectives (Azmi, 2019). In this fast-changing world, HRM leaders act s strategic partners for companies and employee development. The HR department is mandated with syncing business goals to create stability and balance within a business organisation. Human resource management strategies also affect companies’ goals and visions from the perspective of human capital.
Processes of Recruitment and Selection Strategies
Dessler (2020) notes that the leading roles outlined for the HR department at most companies are selection and recruitment, ensuring legal and ethical compliance of employees, and maintaining good relationships in the company. The human resource department helps managers source the people with the required talents and skills to ensure that the company grows and is competitive. Strong HR expertise allows a company to know where to source specialised talent during recruitment. According to Azmi (2019), an effective HR team provides insight into the skill required in the job market and what is necessary to get competent employees on board. The team can also review salaries to determine the best compensation for the qualifying employees while ensuring that all strategies align with the company’s goals. The department must also analyse turnover rates to understand where the problem lies. This helps in understanding the new hires that result in a turnover and thus avoids hiring from this group (Dessler, 2020). HR also investigates how other organisations in the industry are structured, thus providing valuable information that would help the company determine the positions to fill to remain competitive.
Responsibilities of the Employee and the Employer in the Context of Employee Development
A company’s HRM unit with the necessary talent performs various responsibilities and duties of managing employee relations, recruiting, administering payroll, training, and development, managing compensation and benefits packages, overseeing training programs, and ensuring ethical compliance, among others. Companies’ strategic objectives should be aligned with the HR objectives, thus ensuring coordinated management of the company’s functions and a positive employee experience. Dessler (2020) argues that the HR department can utilise the exclusive, elitist approach to identify highly qualified employees who can sustainably contribute to the company’s growth.
Azmi (2019) holds that HR functions promote a conducive environment where employees can be productive and perform tasks according to their abilities. The author also postulates that companies’ organisational culture should be committed to enhancing workforce skills through efficient development and training programs. HR is mandated with designing employee development pathways that focus on the companies’ strategies and long-term needs of organisations. Dessler (2020) supports the argument by noting that such an approach ensures that the employees get the proper training that is valuable for the company. This impacts employee retention, improves their skill sets, and ensures that the company addresses competitive issues proactively. The HR department also ensures that the employees get a conducive working environment, with reasonable working hours that enhance productivity. As such, self-actualisation and job satisfaction are achieved.
Human Resource Systems and Procedures
Managing Equal Opportunities
The HRM team ensures that the recruitment process and remunerations are fair for the employees. This ensures that the potential employees perceive a concept of equal opportunities for unemployment by the company. It provides that also better prospects apply to the company since they know the company rewards pretty (Bányai, 2019). In addition, the HRM can play a role in ensuring that the discriminatory laws, policies, and practices of employment are removed and instead promote the appropriate policies and legislation that ensure fairness in the company.
Enhancing Teamwork
Companies should embrace a community of practice consisting of hundreds of HR specialists, business analysts, and partners. Dessler (2020) notes that such communities offer encouragement and guidance to members by holding discussions regarding various issues and what should be the focus of decision-making during virtual meetings. Having such human resource systems enable HR and non-HR workers to get the opportunity to work together and share different programs and approaches to work, thus enhancing teamwork. Ultimately, this increases the number of projects pursued and completed by the HR analytics team, thus increasing efficiency while reducing time. Using such a system also changes companies’ approach to human resources management. Companies align the HR analytics functions with the business strategy, thus ensuring their success.
Training and Development
The human resource department is involved in designing effective and appropriate training programs that ensure employee retention and gives the company a competitive advantage. The executive-level human resource professionals can develop training programs and job descriptions by incorporating competitive salaries and defining salary levels to ensure they hire the best candidates (Bányai, 2019). They can also designate employees with specific training to help them grow career-wise, thus pushing the company into a competitive advantage. As competitors struggle with maintaining a motivated and experienced workforce, a company with effective HRM focuses on improving employee productivity and workforce development.
Dealing with Issues
Bányai (2019) discusses the importance of HRM departments in ensuring that potential employee issues are solved before they become problematic. He notes that the department can build programs to help track employee engagement scores and discover whether the engagement levels are reducing. By doing this, the HR team can determine the impact on morale and turnover and take prompt action.
Human resource functions and HRM strategies bind all sub-components and components of a company to form a unified system with shared common goals and objectives. They help companies to adopt values and beliefs that all employees and business associates share (Dessler, 2020). As such, HRM practices ensure that organisational culture is aligned with an organisation’s objectives, creating a conducive working environment for employees and improving employees’ skills. This leads to increased employee productivity and, ultimately, increased overall output.
Discussion and Analysis of Human Resource Practices
The Role of the Human Resource Function at NHS
The National Health Service of the United Kingdom’s human resource department was a significant department tasked with human resource management to facilitate patient care. The department was implemented in July 2002, with its primary goals to improve organisational performance, talent management, hiring, and recruitment of technical and managerial staff (ONS, 2018). The department was recommended by the top managers in 2000, and its main aim was to ensure that NHS increased the number of nurses by 20,000 by the end of 2004 (ONS, 2018). The HR department was tasked with organisational development by March 2004. There was a 24% increase in the number of hired nurses in the organisation, which has also expanded over the years (Hacker, 2019). This is what has enabled it continually serve the people.
Also, in 2002, the NHS human resource development was tasked with launching the 19-year strategic plan, which was part of the modernisation agenda for revolutionising access to public healthcare services (ONS, 2018). The plan has overseen the growth and change of the organisation, in line with the HR planning, to facilitate the recruitment of more than 30,000 nurses, physicians, health workers, and trained health practitioners within the United Kingdom (Hacker, 2019). In 2002, the government worked in line with the NHS’s HR department, facilitating its growth and expansion by increasing its spending by 6.1%, approximately an additional £53 million (Hacker, 2019). In three years, the government also increased its spending on NHS by 27.3%, allowing the HR department managers to plan effectively for the medium term to promote organisational structure growth and expansion within the United Kingdom (Hacker, 2019). This was critical support to its HR function.
In pushing for organisational growth and expansion, the HR department sought to make NHS a model employer whose main aim was to provide employees with a career model. The career model integrated the skills escalator concept, which mainly focused on ensuring that employees could grow at individual levels as the NHS expanded its roots. In addition, the HR department was responsible for improving staff morale and building management skills through a pay modernisation program (Issar, 2021). The program involved a simple payment system based on equal pay for work based on the value of work done by an employee. Other NHS staff were placed in various job groups based on their qualifications and experience and later evaluated to ensure equal pay for equal-value services offered.
Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Selection and Recruitment Strategies
Human resource managers’ primary challenge is selecting suitable applicants for jobs. Any successful selection of candidates leads to the overall success of an organisation. On the contrary, recruiting the wrong people for particular jobs leads to poor performance by the candidate, which also negatively affects the organisation’s performance. The attractiveness of an advertised position and the state of the labour market plays a significant role in an organisation’s ability to attract better employees (NHS, n.d.). The NHS has been able to hold a compelling selection and recruitment process by verifying candidates based on their work history and qualifications. The organisation also used a variety of recruitment sources to ensure it reached a vast pool of potential candidates.
Over time, it has been lauded for timeliness in filling vacancies whenever they arise, with quality hires all year round and low turnover. However, candidate satisfaction is still an issue the organisation grapples with, especially with the mismatch in supply and demand between available workers and those seeking their services (Hammond et al., 2022). To resolve this, the organisation has looked into labour importation. It is arguably the leading importer of labour in the UK as it seems to serve its population as effectively as possible.
Besides, the NHS recruitment and selection strategies and processes are also guided by law. These are the Equality Act 2010 and the Employment Rights Act 1996. For anyone concerned about prejudice because of their age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil union, pregnancy or motherhood, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation, the Equality Act of 2010 offers protections (Troadec, 2022). The Equality Act mandates that the NHS maintain fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory hiring practices for all its employees. Candidates must be given written information about the selection process and the criteria used to evaluate them, as required by the Employment Rights Act of 1996, establishing the standards for a fair and transparent selection process (Troadec, 2022). In addition, the NHS must document the selection process and explain its rationale for any final choices made. However, the Equality Act allows the NHS to take positive action to rectify the under-representation of a specific group in a given function.
Similarly, the process and strategies are founded on specific pivotal case laws. For instance, the NHS Trust v. Flowers case dealt with the problem of racial discrimination. It stated that the NHS is responsible for guaranteeing that its recruiting and selection procedures do not discriminate against any group (Croner, 2019). There is also R (on the application of Powell) v Secretary of State for Health, which was concerned with the use of a disability criterion in a selection process and established that the use of such a criterion must be appropriate and that the selection process must be structured to satisfy the requirements of the individual with a disability, rather than deliberately exclude them (Hare, 2018). With these laws and cases, the NHS recruitment and selection strategies have been refined though there is still room for improvement.
Analysis of how NHS Manages the Development of Its Employees
NHS staff management leads to satisfied patients, quality services, and lower patient mortality. Good NHS staff management also ensures financial savings for the organisation and the ability to respond to sustainability challenges during increased demands and costs. NHS staff management has created an environment for employee engagement. Engagement is significant in ensuring increased patient satisfaction, less staff absenteeism and turnover, and reduced patient mortality. This leads to a better outcome for patients and the organisation (Dimova et al., 2020). The NHS also ensures well-structured appraisals with clear objectives the employees follow. These appraisals also make the employees feel valued since they work in a conducive environment with a well-structured team.
Employee Development
The human resource department is involved in designing effective and appropriate training programs that ensure employee retention and gives the company a competitive advantage. The executive-level human resource professionals can develop training programs and job descriptions by incorporating competitive salaries and defining salary levels to ensure they hire the best candidates. The NHS utilises the egalitarian strength base approach. Using this theoretical consideration, NHS ensures liberal justice by providing all employees equal access to training and development programs (Dimova et al., 2020). Employee development is critical to ensuring an organisation’s growth, thus increasing its competitive advantage. NHS provides employee development through training programs where employees receive relevant job training. Such activity includes health and safety training; this ensures patient satisfaction and reduces staff turnover.
Additionally, training about diversity and equality ensures that there are low levels of absenteeism. Still, NHS utilises a more systematic and coordinated approach to cater to emerging employee aspirations. Here, NHS manages the talents of all employees with the belief that all employees can do better if their skills are nurtured. The approach ensures that the organisation remains relevant in the current social and economic global context. NHS has built a framework that enables nurturing future generations of leaders by systematically identifying, developing, and supporting employees with abilities to work in the seniormost levels of service (Hammond et al., 2022). NHS has collaborated with other England leadership academies to ensure that they deliver a range of leadership interventions that are important in talent management. The organisation, therefore, fosters an inclusive culture that ensures that managers and subordinates have smooth communication and establish good relationships through direct and peer reporting.
Critical Analysis of Other HR Systems at NHS
The HR systems and policies, including Sickness, Grievance, and Performance Management, play a vital part in the NHS’s business operations, practices, and procedures. Primarily for absenteeism, the organization’s excellent policy aids in absence management and ensures the delivery of high-quality patient care. This includes promoting early reporting of sickness, assisting absent workers, and providing a seamless return to work procedure (Ewabank et al., 2021). A well-implemented illness policy reduces expenses associated with unscheduled absences, boosts staff morale and productivity, and improves patient service quality. Regarding grievances, NHS seeks to ensure that staff has a clear and accessible channel for voicing issues and complaints and can address and resolve them promptly and effectively (Ewabank et al., 2021). This contributes to developing a healthy and supportive workplace culture and reduces the likelihood of legal conflicts and claims. This allows the firm to increase employee engagement and happiness, minimize staff turnover, and enhance its reputation.
Besides, NHS has a sophisticated performance management system that ensures its workers accomplish their performance targets and contribute successfully to the organization’s overall goals. These include establishing clear standards, giving frequent feedback, and providing staff support and growth opportunities. The company is lauded for increased employee productivity and work happiness, greater alignment between employee and organizational objectives, and increased corporate competitiveness (Ewabank et al., 2021). Nevertheless, it is essential to recognize that various HR systems and policies are interrelated, and NHS must integrate and align them with its entire business strategy and goals. To ensure that they continue to help the NHS provide high-quality patient care, this needs constant assessment and modification, as well as good communication and execution.
Solutions and Recommendations
The human workforce is one of the essential assets in the organisation or any other business, whether employees or customers. The Human resource management system enables the organisation to fully comprehend the nature of the human workforce and comply with the changing labour regulations and tax laws (Nyawira et al., 2022). Additionally, by deploying various human resource management systems, the systems have the power to improve productivity and the workplace environment. However, for the NHS to be more efficient and productive, the human resource department must constantly update and seek information on how to better their employees differently and include them in the human resource management system. This sets the foundation for recommendations and solutions for an excellent human resource management system.
Develop Talent from Employees Within
Intentional development of talents and skills from within the organisation can help to fill the demanding roles and positions. The employees will often feel that their talents are well utilised and, therefore, will increase their performance, increasing retention efforts amongst the employees. The potential employees should be provided career coaches, mentors, and training opportunities within and outside the organisation to develop their new skills (Nyawira et al., 2022). Additionally, the management should constantly share the organisation’s vision with the employees and communicate how various skills and talents can help develop the company and its personal goals.
Implement a Constant Review of the Benefits and Compensation
The human resource department should consistently benchmark with other industries that often are the organisation’s competitors concerning perks and salaries. Compensation is always a vital and strategic part of attracting recruits and retaining existing productive employees (Wilkinson et al., 2018). Also, through the benefits like competitive retirement packages and good health insurance, the employees are influenced to apply for or accept positions; therefore, the Human resource department should constantly review the benefits and look for creative ways to differentiate you from other companies.
Foster Communication of a Strong Culture to Employees
Employees value the culture and work environment. They will constantly be a part of every day than what is written down in their job description. When recruiting employees, the human resource should communicate the behaviours, experiences, values, and beliefs that describe the organisation (Wilkinson et al., 2018). The management should instil a sense of family atmosphere, and work-life balance, empowering employees and maintaining a dedicated and robust workforce.
Execution of Wellness Initiatives and Ensuring Compliance with Relevant Regulations
Promoting the employees’ well-being promotes the organisation’s financial health because the healthcare costs are mitigated, and the employee’s health is promoted (Nyawira et al., 2022). Promoting well-being initiatives to potential recruits shows that the employer cares about their wellness and performance. The human resource should ensure that the organisation complies with the multiple relevant regulations to ensure the employees and organisation are safe and covered. This ensures that the human resource responds to the employees’ requests on time, maintain secure and accurate employee records, follows the best procedure in keeping the employee handbook, and handles the harassment and complaints of employees correctly.
Conclusion
In summary, the report’s objective was to conduct an in-depth analysis of the part that the function of human resources plays in the National Health Service of the United Kingdom (NHS). The paper included an in-depth analysis and explanation of the historical and statistical data about NHS, which assisted in developing a better comprehension of the organisation. Additionally, the report helped understand the human resource function’s role in the organisation. Further, the report highlighted some of the most significant challenges the organisation faces in terms of staffing, recruitment, hiring talented staff, and management of employees. To address these hiring, recruitment, and talent management issues, the organisation may cultivate skills already present inside the company. Because of this, workers will more often have the impression that their skills and abilities are being used well. As a result, those employees will tend to raise their performance, enhancing attempts to retain personnel.
Additionally, continuously reviewing the benefits and compensation would help implement benefits such as competitive retirement packages and good health insurance to influence employees to accept positions that would facilitate overall organisational and structural growth. This would be beneficial in attracting employees to get posts that would allow for the organisation’s overall development. It is possible to guarantee that workers respect the culture and work environment based on their job descriptions by fostering the communication of a solid culture for employees. Implementing wellness programs would aid in boosting the workers’ financial health inside the firm, facilitating the workforce’s productivity. It is possible that ensuring that the firm complies with essential rules within the United Kingdom can assist in creating a seamless operating workforce within the organisation and fostering the role of human resource functions. Such would involve compliance with the Employment Act, which guarantees that workers are securely protected.
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