Reflection on the Main Aspects of Human Resources Management

Since I have been working as a manager for many years, I have gained much experience in motivating and encouraging the nurse staff. More importantly, I have realized the importance of looking at the center development through an innovative prism of development. Being cognizant of current opportunities for professional progress and technological advancement is as important as understanding the role that communication and interpersonal skills play in building a favorable working environment. A nurse leader should be a bright example for their followers so that it could inspire and motivate them to work better. Nurses should feel that they are recognized and that their responsibilities are not confined solely to performing daily operations. Most importantly, nurse leaders should invent ways for nurses to sophisticate and polish up their skills, as well as widen and share their experience with each other. Overall, being a nurse leader means being a counselor and advisor for nurse professionals. Nurses should be sure they have a person to fully rely on.

While working as a nurse administrator, I also encountered challenging situations. I had to deal with different kind of conflicts and learn more about legal and regulatory issues to be able to provide support and protection to my employees. However, there were cases when I had to fire nurses because of their failure to realize the main purposes and responsibilities that each nurse should take at our hospital. Judging from my experience, I have realized that, in order to creative an effective retention policy, the art of conflict resolution should be conceived. Understanding specific cultural, social, and psychological dimension is paramount for managing an intrinsic working environment.

While learning different aspects of human resource management, I have gained a wider picture on such aspects as performance management, retention culture, conflict management, and employee developments. All these spheres should be conceived to create a healthy environment within an organization and gain a competitive edge among other health care communities. While studying the basics of performance management, I paid closer attention to the importance of encouraging employees to develop new skills and knowledge. Hence, satisfactory employee performance can be achieved through introducing efficient strategies for evaluating employees’ results, which also provide greater control of the working environment and contributes to revealing employment-related problems (Manion, 2004). Frontline leaders should be aware of the factors and reasons that create either negative or positive employed environment. In addition, specific concern with employee motivation is also necessary (Rousel & Swansburg, 2006). However, it is important for a leader to select constructive approach to motivating their workers, such coaching and delegation. These techniques can be highly efficient in encouraging others on a long-term basis. Though different people have various incentives, a nurse leader should be able to recognize which ones will be the most appropriate for each individual.

Working in a team is the core condition for sustaining good relationship among the members of the staff. As a manager, I realized the importance of collaboration and cooperation for meeting commonly shared goals of our organization. In this respect, development of effective team building skills is possible through understanding the social, psychological, and cultural peculiarities of each team member. Reaching a consensus and compromise in each question, therefore, is necessary for avoiding conflict situations. While evaluating different theoretical frameworks, I have highlighted the benefits of using automated techniques for staffing and scheduling. This strategy has significantly optimized the management process and has contributed to the image of a technologically advanced center. In addition to this, I have understood the importance of considering the problem of workforce diversity that directly influences to the success of building a team. Hence, greater sensitivity of social and cultural behaviors, as well as understanding the key requirement to creating a morally and culturally positive environment, is important for successful human resources management.

Handling personnel is a challenging assignment because it is requires a manager to learn a set of skills and abilities. More importantly, a manager should also know a clear distinction between managing and leading people (Manion, 2011). Hence, a leader should be concerned with the developing an effective network and introducing reforms aimed at advancing and innovating quality of health care delivery and patient treatment. In this respect, applying to a mixture of skills, my mission as a frontline leader lies in achieving positive outcomes both for the patients and for the staff. Judging from these considerations, management is more concerned with procedures, structures, and approaches that should be presented for controlling daily operations. In contrast, leadership is more connected to controlling how effectively those operations have been performed. Hence, a leader should search for novel opportunities to make certain activities more productive. In whole, leadership should create new paths and patterns for controlling procedures within an organization. In addition, leadership should meet the people’s concerns and needs in professional terms. Deliberating on the assumptions made by Manion (2011), it is purposeful to note that leadership is also about using influence to control people’s thoughts and actions, whereas management offers rational evaluation of the situation and regular accomplishment of existing purposes (Zaleznik, 2003).

Aside from considering procedures and structure, leadership and management are also differentiated by the character of a decision-making process. In particular, specifically leaders should act as invisible power that triggers their subordinates make important decisions. Therefore, this process is more typical to leaders rather than to managers whose main task is to accomplish the established goals rather than facing undefined problems. In addition, leaders rarely rely on the written polices while making-decisions because it would weaken their authority and importance. According to Manion (2011), there should constant judgment and reevaluation of existing strategies to introducing advanced approaches to solving difficult problems. In this respect, importance of possessing interpersonal and communication skills is imperative for leaders; this is the major aspect that differentiates them from managers.

Overall assessment of the knowledge acquired during the course opens a number of possibilities for further learning and development. First, I have realized that managing and leading people is not confined solely to giving orders and meeting the firmly established goals. It is also about searching for new paths to innovate, advance and improve skills and approaches to handling the staff. Readiness to challenges and changes is the main condition for development and, therefore, nurse managers should focus on increasing nurse’s resistance to critical situations. While considering the main aspects of leadership and management, I have found explicit distinction between those, which help me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and experience of managing the staff. At this point, much concern is connected to the interpersonal and communication skills that form the basis for successful accomplishment of goals of human resource management.

References

Manion, J. (2011). From Management to Leadership: Strategies for Transforming Health. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Manion, J. (2004). Nurture a culture of retention. Nursing Management, 35(4), 29-39.

Rousel, L, & Swansburg, R. C. (2006). Management and Leadership for Nurse Administrators. US: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Zaleznik A. (2003). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 18(3), 171–177.