assign 3

CHRISTUS Health Human Resource

CHRISTUS Health’s human resource management system is based on ensuring that the human resource department operates in an efficient and effective manner, providing excellent services to its associates. The human resource management is system is divided into three key area, which include the centers of expertise, the strategic partner, and the shared services. These three key areas deal with various human resource issues including human resource planning, staffing and selecting, appraising, compensating, training and developing, which are quite important in ensuring a smooth operation of CHRISTUS Health.

Centers of Expertise

The centers of expertise area of human resource management deals with matters regarding selecting the staff, performing performance appraisal, and compensating them. These centers usually ran talent acquisition programs, through which the staff are recruited to work for CHRISTUS Health and its associates. Moreover, the centers of expertise also ensure that the employees are trained as necessary through workshops and seminars, so that they can possess the skills necessary for their line of work. Performance appraisal at CHRISTUS Health is quite important, as the employees have to meet certain targets. The centers of expertise set targets that have to be met by the employees and teams, and assess their performance after a certain period. Moreover, this HR area also follows through to ensure that the employees are compensated as required for the duties performed.

Strategic Partner

The human resource strategic partner deals with matters regarding the HR planning. This area is comprised of the HR strategy and business partner, whose main duties include overseeing any planning efforts that involve the human resource department. They plan on matters regarding the recruitment schedules, alongside the centers of expertise. In addition, this department is also in charge of planning any activities in the company that are related to the human resource department.

Shared Services

The shared services department carries out various activities in the company, among which include the developing of the human resource projects. This system area carries out general human resource administration at CHRISTUS Health. The team usually has a centralized portal, which guides them through the management processes of the department. The portal automatically allocates various tasks among the employees, such as shuffling the nurses in its clinic and allocating duties to the doctors. Moreover, this team also manages any enquiries by the individual interested in collaborating with CHRISTUS Health, working for it, or even accessing services in any of its clinics. In addition, the shared services are also compiles data concerning the firm’s human resource, and compliance reports to ensure that CHRISTUS Health runs as expected. The human resource department also prepares the payroll of the employees of the entire company before they are handed over to the accounts department for the issuing of salaries. The automatic system in this area also allows the associates to report human resource issues to the manager, and enables the clients to engage in one-on-one chats with the representatives of the human resource department.

Staffing and Selecting

The Talent Acquisition department was re-designed in February 2014 to ensure optimized usage of recruiting assets and greater efficiency with customer satisfaction. Key to the staffing process was the desire to reduce the bureaucracy and different personnel involved in the process for recruitment. A potential hire had many people to interact with throughout the process and it created a lack of trust and personal touch throughout the hiring process. CHRISTUS was able to train and empower their recruiters to be knowledgeable in a particular field. As recruiters increase in knowledge of specific jobs, the two major objectives to achieve are reducing the time to fill the vacant position, and eliminating administrative work and redundancies to ultimately increase patient care. This is important to nest their goals with the company’s primary goal of improving health care for its patients. Given the nature of its hiring practices, but more importantly, who the company is hiring (professionals, like nurses), the company’s staffing and selection process falls in line with a Prospector orientation. The company looks to recruit qualified people to fill its vacancies across the country. However, the company knows it needs to reduce the hiring process length, as several employees have noted that because the hiring process is so long, several positions remain vacant. The goals described in the Performance Appraising section falls in line with trying to reduce these issues.

Performance Appraising

Within the Human Resources department, performance is assesses on outcome-based metric. Recruiting success is based on five key areas that align with the company’s recruiting goals. These Strategic areas are New Hire Quality, Offer Acceptance Rates, New Hire Engagement, Diversity, and New Hire Turnover (Financial). There are defined scorecards with these metrics and include the Interquartile Range and the median rates for all five. This scorecard allows recruiters and their managers to assess the successfulness of their efforts and identifies training indicators. These five metrics are all assessed quarterly except for new hire quality which is assessed monthly. There are additional metrics covered including customer satisfaction, financial, and operational levels which are also assessed quarterly and annually. A recruiter who has shortcomings in any of these five metrics, will receive feedback from management in terms of analysis and trends. While analyzing the performance appraisal system for recruiters may appear more in line with a Prospector method, CHRISTUS appears to have an Analyzer approach where it relies heavily on the Prospector method, but looks to training to mitigate shortfalls while analyzing performance over several reporting periods.

Compensating

Utilizing websites to include GlassDoor.com, reviews from anonymous employees ranged across several feelings about compensation for their work. While many stated that working in a Faith-based company was very rewarding, many still complained about what they felt were inadequate wages. In addition, one person mentioned raises every year at about inflation rates (2-2.5%), which despite that, there was an overwhelming theme that few felt that they could get promoted. A common trend appears that many manager positions are hired from the outside, as opposed to promoting within. This has led to substantial employee turnover. Many felt that the paid time off (PTO) was lacking as employees have to use PTO for holidays. There appears to be a bonus systems, but several employees expressed frustrations that many of the bonuses are tied to results that they felt they could not affect. The company does have a tuition assistance program for eligible personnel and is a great benefit to the employees. The compensation model appears to align with the Prospector methodology. Overall, it appears that many (former) employees were extremely dissatisfied with the monetary compensation which they believe is directly related to the high turnover in the company.

Training

To prepare for training, the Talent Acquisition department first secures the necessary tools and systems access needed for the new hire. The department must also identify the online courses the new hire must take for the online onboarding (Health Stream) training. During the onboarding process, the Talent Acquisition department ensures that all new employees are enrolled in benefits and answers any questions that they may have. In addition to training new employees, the onboarding lead must also conduct analysis of the current onboarding process. By conducting the analysis the onboarding lead should be able to evaluate gaps in current onboarding processes, as well as redesign the process to increase time to productivity and enhance the new hire experience. The onboarding lead is also responsible for developing the onboarding process training for HR and managers. Other things the onboarding lead is responsible for is designing and deploying onboarding surveys and to develop a formal mentoring/buddy program for new hires.

Developing

In terms of developing new projects, the HR department has project governance that includes four phases and their respective principles. The first phase is initiation, which includes the external budget being approved and the strategic fit is checked within the HR organization. Next is design, which entails a project plan being created and a roll out plan including communication is established. The third phase is execution, which includes the progress of the project being tracked. Lastly is closing, which is when a post-project review and debrief is done. Before any project is started, the HR department asks the following questions - Why is this project important and what should be the project outcome (SMART objectives)? What resources are needed to execute the project? The HR department makes sure to define what they want to achieve, plan their project well ahead, always know where they stand, and to be conclusive.

Conclusion

CHRISTUS Health takes on a prospector strategy as shown by their human resource guidelines shown above. They seek out new markets and operate on the offensive side as opposed to waiting for issues to arise and then reacting to them. CHRISTUS Health tries to hire the best using its redesigned recruiting program, compensate its employees fairly, and provide the necessary training to help employees succeed. Also, by operating their business through regions and divisions, it allows CHRISTUS Health to meet each market’s needs better than if it was more centralized; the needs of the North Texas market are very different than that of Mexico, and being decentralized helps each market succeed, another trait of the prospector strategy.