Role of an operation’s manager of a healthcare/doctor’s office

The paper will be on the two areas below focusing on the role of an operation’s manager of a healthcare/doctor’s office. Please use 6-8 references and have a reference page at the end.

• Recruitment plan (2-3 pages): This section of the report should describe the recruitment tactics to be used by the group for the targeted job. This section should cover what recruitment sources will be used (and why), and the communication message, all with supporting research evidence. Also, a recruitment advertisement should be included in the appendices section.
• Selection (3-4 pages): In this section, the group should identify at least three selection methods they wish to use, and provide background on what information the technique provides, how they are used, scored, etc. Importantly, the group should provide evidence of the validity of the selection techniques, from the research literature, for the job in question. In addition, the group should attend to issues associated with test use such as potential adverse impact, applicant reactions, cost, etc. The group should also construct a selection plan (include in the appendices section) that outlines the targeted knowledge, skills, and abilities related to the essential tasks, and determines which selection methods target each KSA. Also, the group should provide 3 job-relevant sample items (from existing measures, which must be cited, or created by the group) for each selection method in the appendices.

ANSWER

Recruitment Plan

Recruitment Plan

Hospital B is committed to attracting and retaining the best employees through its systematic recruitment and selection practices. With the Human Resource (HR) Director’s authorization, the facility will initiate a 45-day recruitment process that observes the strategies outlined hereafter. Hospital B will align its employee sourcing strategies with the recommendations provided by Tripathi and Srivastava (2017). Tripathi and Srivastava (2017) provided that a company seeking to find, attract, develop, and retain the best staff must prioritize specific recruitment sources and develop a thorough selection process. In this way, the recruitment program will not miss the ideal candidate by its failure to attract a sufficient applicant pool or screen the applicants before entering into service. Taking this into account, the present plan highlights where and how to identify the individual for the role of Healthcare Operations Management. It also provides the inducements to use or avoid for the applicant groups and the distinctions between the unqualified applicants and those with realistic chances of success at the hospital.

Recruitment Sources

Being a managerial post, Hospital B’s recruitment board will target the national labor market for potential recruits. The post will, therefore, be open to applicants from all over the country.

The recruitment sources will be external because of their proven efficacy in attracting more diverse talent pools than internal recruitment sources (Argue, 2015). For the case of Hospital B, the line managers have settled on three principal recruitment sources in line with the recommendations from Breaugh (2019). These include employee referrals, the organization’s website, and job boards.

Employee Referrals

Hospital B will resort to employee referrals because of its listing as the best and the most commonly used recruitment method. Most healthcare roles require specialized training, degrees, and character-types, and word of mouth is a good place to start the employee search process.

Research is replete with grounds of support for employee referrals as being the most effective recruitment strategy. For instance, Breaugh (2019) and Overman (2008) agree that an organization’s workforce values their reputation and would only refer an individual they perceive would make a good choice. In effect, employee referral becomes an implicit form of pre-screening. Secondly, the organization’s workforce may tip the personnel they refer with realistic information regarding the job. In this way, the prospective applicants would have made an informed decision before making their applications (Breaugh, 2019; Breaugh, 2008; Overman, 2008). Additionally, the current workers may voluntarily help the individual that they have referred to acclimatize with the new working environment and master their new roles upon hiring.

Overall, a successful referral would culminate in better job qualifications and better, long-serving employees than other recruitment channels. Importantly, Breaugh (2019) affirms that this strategy is less costly than other sourcing alternatives.

Organizational Website       

            Hospital B has a well-structured and publicly recognized website from which it intends to publicize the vacancy. As it is with employee referrals, the hospital’s website provides an inexpensive means of reaching out to the public talent pool (Breaugh, 2019). However, this approach will require additional input from the radio, television, and print media to direct the public’s attention to the website.

The underlying motivation for the use of a website to source potential applicants is the factor of credibility. The rapid advent of technology and the extensive use of web-based technologies have seen mass exploitation of the internet platform by most hospitals. Therefore, having a functional, well-established, and convenient organizational website adds credibility to the organization (Lawong et al., 2019). A prospective applicant may visit the hospitals’ official website to confirm if the recruitment is not merely hearsay. Therefore, without an organization’s website, the whole recruitment process would be perceived as incredible.

Job Boards

Reports from job-market surveys reveal that most organizations in the country heavily utilize job boards such as CareerBuilder (Breaugh, 2019). Some of the job boards provide industry-specific catalogs from which Hospital B can publicize the vacancy while at the same time eliminating those who fall short of the industry requirements (Breaugh, 2019; Lawong et al., 2019). In a similar vein, the company will opt for a job board that sets salary minimums to locate candidates for higher-level qualifications easily.

Communication

The recruitment team recognizes that the recruitment message will impact the applicant’s perception of the job. Potential applicants can either accept or decline jobs with the organization based on the quality of the message and the communication process as a whole. Taking this into account, Hospital B will consider three key pillars of effective recruitment communication as provided by (Breaugh, 2019). These include a) conveying important information, b) conveying realistic information, and c) conveying specific information.

Conveying Important Information

The recruitment advertisement must contain essential details about the hospital’s name and location, qualifications and duties of the prospective recruit, and employment benefits.

Conveying Specific Information

The hospital will strive to provide specific information to its target audience because this helps them make informed choices about taking up the role.  For instance, instead of stating that the compensation for the operations manager’s role will be competitive, the board could provide a salary range. Also, instead of assuring the applicants that Hospital B values its employees, the board could specify that none of the employees have been terminated over the last one and a half decades.

Conveying Realistic Information

Rather than providing positive information only, the communication will provide realistic expectations from the applicants. The applicants should enter into the assigned roles when they are fully aware of what is demanded of them and the associated rewards or repercussions. Providing realistic information may discourage even the best talent, but Breaugh (2019) suggests that Hospital B should not take it as a negative. It is an indication that the best talents would not have been happy with their work environment and would ultimately be less productive.  Although realistic expectations lead to lower applicant turnover, the organization will realize better performers, greater trust with the employees, and enhanced job satisfaction.

A sample advertisement for the Healthcare Operations Manager’s role is provided in Appendix 1.

Selection Plan

Assessment Techniques

The recruitment will be purely external, which necessitates the use of both KSA-based assessments and task-based assessments. The organization will focus on six KSA-based assessments and one task-based assessment.

The KSA-based assessments include cognitive ability tests, job-knowledge tests, personality tests, integrity tests, biographical data, and structured interviews. The task-based tests include the situation judgment test.

Cognitive Ability Test

The recruitment team will conduct cognitive ability tests to assay the candidates’ mental capabilities, including verbal, reading comprehension, and reasoning abilities (Schmitt, 2014). There is evidence of cognitive ability tests’ success in predicting job performance (Koczwara et al., 2012).

Job Knowledge Tests

The role of operations management requires the candidate to possess a given set of skills that can be tested using multiple-choice questions.  Also, there will be minimal training of the candidate after the selection, which is a primary reason for including job knowledge tests in the selection criteria (Koczwara et al., 2012). The questions will be centered mainly on areas that are considered critical to the operations management services.

Personality Tests

Personality tests will be considered in the selection process because a candidate’s temperament and personality are definitive of their subsequent productivity. For the role at hand, the team will examine five frequently assessed personalities in working situations, such as conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, and agreeableness (Schmitt, 2014). Conscientiousness is the key predictor of performance in operations management and will be considered an added advantage to the candidate.

Integrity Tests

The fact that the organization will be selecting an outsider implies a need to assess their integrity levels.  Among others, the three key integrity values related to the job include dependability and trustworthiness. These tests will also be administered as computerize multiple-choice questions.

Situational Judgment Test

The candidates will be tested on situations that they are likely to encounter on their duties and the appropriate options for handling the situations.  Based on Clevenger et al.’s (2001) ‘s directions, the candidates will be tasked with selecting the most effective and the least effective alternatives to handling a host of situations in the healthcare environment that align with their job demands.  The test instructions will be administered in videotaped form, and the responses will be collected via a computer. While studies indicate that this selection criterion is complicated and difficult to develop, it is very effective at assessing the situational preparedness to the unpredictability of the healthcare environment (Clevenger et al., 2001; Koczwara et al., 2012).  A section of the situational test to be used is provided in Appendix 3.

Structured Interviews

The recruitment team will conduct an interview as a selection device for the operations manager’s role. There are options for using either structured or unstructured interviews. However, the fact that unstructured interviews leave the questions open for the interviewers to decide eliminates any agreed-upon standard for evaluating the candidates’ performances makes them less likely to predict job performance (Judge et al., 2000). On this account, the organization will strictly use structured interviews.

Structured interviews provide specific sets of questions for assessing critical knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) necessary for the job. The primary reason for adopting structured interviews alongside the other selection techniques is their proven capacity for assessing soft skills (Pulakos, 2005). A healthcare operations manager interacts with multiple personnel across departments. The success of their job hinges on their mastery of soft skills such as interpersonal skills, communication skills, leadership, and adaptability. They must also demonstrate a remarkable measure of planning and organizing. These skills become readily evident during a structured interview.

Biographical Data

The organization will also exploit biographical inventories to assess the candidates on their backgrounds, personal attributes, and interests. The information from this category of assessment has been proven to be useful predictors of job performance (Pulakos, 2005). Pulakos (2005) went ahead to emphasize that the best way to predict future performance is to look back at the candidates’ past performances. Basing on Pulakos’s (2005) description and the Hospital’s practice criterion, the biographic assessment questions will be centered on how effective the candidates performed in the past areas that are closely related to the role of an operations manager.  For instance, the candidate can be asked about the number of volunteer organizations for which they have been part. In this way, the team will tell about the candidates’ readiness to take part in voluntary activities alongside his stipulated roles as an operations manager.

Pulakos (2005) further noted that biographical data could be collected in the form of accomplishment records. This is to say that Hospital B can instruct the candidates to prepare written accounts of their best accomplishments with regard to the skills of the job. For the case of an operations manager, the accomplishments could cover a bevy of alternatives, including planning, organizing, customer service, and conflict resolution. The accomplishments will then be verified by contacting the candidate’s past supervisor.

Evaluation Criteria

This section highlights the effectiveness of the assessment based on four issues associated with test use. These include a) validity- how successful is the selection criterion in predicting job performance; b) adverse impact- the degree to which the protected groups such as the minority are disadvantaged by the assessment; c) cost- the general expenses of the assessment alternative; and d) applicant reactions- the degree to which the applicants are welcoming to the assessment (Pulakos, 2005). The evaluation is summarized in the table below, as provided by Pulakos (2005).

Evaluation of the selection techniques on the four critical areas of test assessments
Assessment technique for selection	Validity score	Adverse impact score	Developing costs and administering costs	Applicant reaction
Situational Judgment	Average	Average against women and elderly employees	High and low	More welcoming
Interviews	Strong	Weak	High and high	More welcoming
Biographical data	Average	From weak to strong for different minority groups	High and low	Repulsive
Integrity test	Average	Weak	Low and Low	Repulsive
Personality test	Weak to Average	Weak	Low and Low	Repulsive
Cognitive test	Strong	Strong against minorities	Low and Low	Partly favorable
Job Knowledge	Strong	Strong against minorities	Low and Low	Very Welcoming

 

References

Argue, M. (2015). The importance of the strategic recruitment and selection process on meeting an organisations objectives (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin Business School).

Breaugh, J. A. (2008). Employee recruitment: Current knowledge and important areas for future research. Human Resource Management Review, 18(3), 103-118.

Breaugh, J. A. (2019). Recruiting and attracting talent. Society for Human Resource Management. Available at:)(Published 2009. Accessed May 17, 2019) https://www. shrm. org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Recruiting-Attracting-Talent. pdf View in Article.

Clevenger, J., Pereira, G. M., Wiechmann, D., Schmitt, N., & Harvey, V. S. (2001). Incremental validity of situational judgment tests. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 410.

Judge, T. A., Cable, D. M., & Higgins, C. A. (2000). The employment interview: A review of recent research and recommendations for future research. Human Resource Management Review, 10(4), 383-406.

Koczwara, A., Patterson, F., Zibarras, L., Kerrin, M., Irish, B., & Wilkinson, M. (2012). Evaluating cognitive ability, knowledge tests and situational judgement tests for postgraduate selection. Medical education, 46(4), 399-408.

Lawong, D., Ferris, G. R., Hochwarter, W., & Maher, L. (2019). Recruiter political skill and organization reputation effects on job applicant attraction in the recruitment process. Career Development International.

Overman, S. (2008). Use the best to find the rest. Staffing Management, 4, 2-6.

Pulakos, E. D. (2005). Selection assessment methods: A guide to implementing formal assessments to build a high-quality workforce. SHRM Foundations.

Schmitt, N. (2014). Personality and cognitive ability as predictors of effective performance at work. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 1(1), 45-65.

Tripathi, R., & Srivastava, A. (2017). Recruitment and Selection Process in Healthcare Industry in India. Amity Journal of Healthcare Management, 36-49.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendices

APPENDIX 1

Advertisement Letter

Job & Company Insights

Job Type: Full-time

Job Function: Operations Manager

Industry: Health Care

Size: 5001 to 10000 Employees

About Us

Hospital B is a nationally recognized health system comprising three teaching hospitals and an extensive network of ambulatory care centers serving the people of Hartford, Connecticut since 1980. Hospital B is the first healthcare system in Connecticut be awarded the prestigious National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) designation for its network of organized medical homes.

Hospital B provides over 2 million outpatient visits from a total of its 40 ambulatory care facilities. It also handles over than 200,000 emergency visits.

Job Profile

The Healthcare Operations Manager (HOM) is accountable for the operational, human resource, quality, and financial management of entire hospital system. The HOM collaborates with the administrative director to translate inter-departmental strategic plans and policies into suitable and smooth flowing operational needs. The HOM leads the implementation and evaluation of several hospital activities relevant to achievement of goals. As Applicable, the NPM is accountable for assuring all practice models are implemented and employees work to achieve targeted outcomes achieved on their assigned area(s)/program. The HOM provides oversight to ensure area care delivery, quality management, and staff utilization patterns are congruent with national framework for best practice.
These can be summarized as follows:

• Manage Health Services: overseeing all the daily functioning of Hospital B
• Strategic Planning: Maintaining the stability of Hospital B, the HOM must be able to forecast logistical needs.
• Technological Proficiency: The HOM must demonstrate proficiency in information technology.
• Implementing Policy: To ensure operational efficiency, a manager must enforce rules and policies.
• Data Analysis: A manager must utilize present trends in data to plan future projects while at the same time monitoring daily activities.

Minimum Qualifications
Education: Graduation from an accredited School of Nursing with a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing or related field required. Master’s degree in Nursing Management or related field is preferred. Must hold at least: Bachelors, Masters, or Doctoral degree.
Licensure/Certification: professional certification in administration is to be held at the time of appointment.
Work Experience: Five years of work experience in related clinical area of practice.
Management/Experience: Two year related management/leadership experience is required.
Special Requirements
Communication Skills: Above Average Verbal (Heavy Public Contact), Exceptional Verbal (e.g., Public Speaking), Writing /Composing (Correspondence / Reports)

Other Skills: Analytical, Design, Medical Terms, PC, Research, Statistical, Word Proc
Work Schedule: Weekends, Holidays, Flexible, Travel, On Call

Benefits and EEOC

Hospital B benefits program will provide you with more flexibility and choices in meeting your specific needs.  It will allow you to protect your income in case of illness, disability or death, while also saving for retirement.
It is Hospital B’s policy to provide equal opportunities for interested applicants irrespective of their political affiliation, race, color, national origin, age, sex, religion or disability.

Job Category

Management

 

APPENDIX 2

Selection Assessment Items

Cognitive Ability Test Items

Verbal ability

Regiment means the same as

• Jeopardize
• Standardize
• Innocuous
• Block

Reasoning ability

2, 8, 16, 3, 27, 54, 4, 64,128, 5, __

• 100
• 250
• 125
• 500

Reading ability

The US healthcare system provides a listing of different requirements of a provider that are designed to keep the cost of delivering healthcare services down. In simplified terms, this constitutes:

• Coverage Status
• Cost Containment Guidelines
• Covered Benefits
• Co-Payment

Job Knowledge Test Item

What is an event with regard to healthcare?

• Any medical service that a patient receives, including hospitalizations, physical therapy, and outpatient procedures et cetera.
• Specific services or conditions that are not limited under the insurance design
• All treatment that have been rendered in a specific time frame for a specific disease
• All the above

Personality Test Items

It makes sense to work hard on something if no one will notice.

• Definitely true
• Somewhat true
• Neither true nor false
• Somewhat false
• Definitely false

I tend to do most of the talking in conversations.

• Definitely true
• Somewhat true
• Neither true nor false
• Somewhat false
• Definitely false

I have struggled to remain calm in situations where others have become upset.

• Definitely true
• Somewhat true
• Neither true nor false
• Somewhat false
• Definitely false

Biographical Information Items

How many volunteer groups do you associate with?

• 0
• 1
• 2-5
• More than 5

Situational Judgment Test Item

You have just compiled a financial report, checked and rechecked for accuracy.

Just before a meeting, a meeting at which you must submit the financial data, you review the typed version and note many serious errors. You would…

• Show both the original and the typed copies to the person in charge of typing and request for modifications before the meeting.
• Submit the report at the meeting, mention the errors and blame the typist.
• Present the errors to the typist, ask them to make correct and explain to individuals at the meeting that the report is still being typed.
• Present the report at the meeting, don’t point out the errors in the meeting, but notify attendees of corrections afterwards.