Workforce and Culture
Summary
People and performance improvement are essential to achieve excellence. HPOE provides many resources to increase staff engagement to implement performance excellence.
In 2009, the AHA's long-range policy committee studied the latest research on workforce demographics and trends. The committee found that while there are low vacancy rates at hospitals at the current time due to the effects of the economic recession, serious shortages and a tight labor market overall are looming.
The committee's report, Workforce 2015: Strategy Trumps Shortage describes how hospitals face the overlapping challenges of attracting and retaining replacements for retiring workers, while expanding its workforce to care for an aging population and coping with significant changes in health care delivery. Meeting those challenges requires new thinking about the workforce and workplace, and new strategies about managing human resources.
The key strategies to maintaining an adequate workforce by number and skill are to: 1. Redesign work processes and introduce new technologies to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and employee satisfaction, 2. Retain existing workers, including those able to retire, and 3. Attract the new generation of workers.
Workforce culture affects everything from retention to productivity rates. Hospital leaders can find a wealth of resources on the HPOE site. Additionally, the American Society of Healthcare Human Resources Administration, a personal membership group of the AHA, delves deeper into the subject with its expert reports and conferences.
Further, the AHA released a report,Health Care Workforce: New Ways of Working in Hospitals (2003), a practical guide to use hospital staff skills and time more effectively.
HPOE features links to many different resources, tools and case studies. Click on any of the topic areas in the blue box below.
