HR Management Issues in Banksia Health Service: A Harvard Model Analysis

This essay analyses the HR management issues in Banksia Health Service using the Harvard Model. It discusses the root causes of HR disputes and provides short term and long term suggestions to resolve them.

Running head: HR
HR
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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Introduction
HRM have been a major issue in BHS. The organisation’s management took the
decision of rapid and dramatic expansion of service without depicting what Human Resource
needs would be required for the necessary expansions to take place. In this context, the
Harvard HRM model have been employed in this essay to analyse the root causes of HR
disputes. The issues like the strife between the upper management and CEO in terms of
managerial aspects have been described in detail. In the light of the discussed issues,
various short term and long term suggestions have been provided to resolve the HR issues
in BHS.
Discussion
Banksia have achieved a high development rate within a short span of about 30 years.
However, after the expansion of the BHS over vast geographical domain (mainly rural
location) the performance audit of the BHS started to return negative results. Since the BHS
is directly related to the Rural Development scheme of the Australian government, the
activities are highly funded by the government. However, in the last 10 years, the Health Care
Standards accreditation process of the Australian government have given poor score to the
BHS, in terms of providing proper treatment to the patients and on the quality of service (on
site and off site) provided by the care providers.
The major reason for the drop down of the organisational performance of the BHS as
identified in the independent process of accreditation have been the lack of control of the HR
management over the employees after the rapid expansion of the organisation. Based on the
report provided by the above mentioned investigations, some major organisational changes
were introduced. For achieving more control over the deliverable of the employees, the
organisational structure had been decentralised. As Kessler, Heron and Spilsbury (2017),

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professes it, decentralisation helps in HRM by setting small strategic objectives for managers
instead to taking major liabilities. However, it is quite evident from the outcomes discussed in
the case study, the major changes introduced after the implementation of the change plan,
there was no elevation in quality of performance attained.
For the purpose of the loopholes in the HR management of the Banksia, the Harvard
Model of HRM have been considered. Under the six basic concepts of the Harvard Model of
HRM, the various negative aspects of HRM of the company have been grouped. As per
Currie, Burgess and Hayton (2015), this model is the best suited for the discussion of the shirt
term as well as long term HR strategies and implementation objectives.
The first factor that is to be considered are the situational factors. The first adverse
situation persists in the managerial framework of the BHS. There have been a bifurcation
among organisational planning and management of the CEO and the senior managerial
committee. The CEO is directly responsible to answer the Australian government regarding
the spending of the fund received from the government. On the contrary, the upper
management is up to adopt a more constructive approach of management. There is acute
necessity of health care, nursing and health care management staff. The estimated budget
plan shows that in order to incorporate these, the company would have to invest 60% of the
funds for organisational restructuring. However, owing to the managerial intervention of the
CEO, the current staff were given a salary hike of 5 to 10% and trained to handle extra work
pressure. These unjustified amendments had its toll and the framework could not support the
dramatic increase of patients in Banksia. The Payroll officer and the admin level clerks were
not acquainted with the operational issues that the staff faced while dealing with the clients
and naturally the organisational performance was affected. Moreover the industrial relation
between the Australian government and the Banksia was also severely affected as an
outcome.

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The next centre of focus as per the Harvard Model are the stakeholder interests
(Cooke & Bartram, 2015). Increasing pressure from the upper managerial committee as well
as pressure from the government to develop infrastructure led the CEO to make some
superficial HRM implementations. Otherwise, it is evident that his position in the company
could have been at stake. However, the HRM policies that were implemented that feeble link
to the actual issues that were faced by the staff. The old age care centre required double shift
attendance. As McCann et al. (2015), puts it, spontaneous observatory care is mandatory for
the aged patients. However, in place of increasing staff, the CEO implemented rotational shift
work. The staff were asked to devote 30 minutes assistance per patient per ward. However,
the staff who were already exhausted failed to properly keep watch of the patients and owing
to this, 5 cases of casualties have occurred in the Banksia.
Most importantly, the upper management who were at confrontation with the CEO’s style of
management, did not concern themselves to conduct internal survey to understand how the
HRM implications were benefitting the employees, or whether the employee were at all
impacted by the HRM policies.
The third most important aspect as per the Harvard Model of HRM is the HRM policy
choices. In this context, Top, Akdere and Tarcan (2015), have stated that the HRM
philosophy of an organisations would be clear and stratified. For evidence if there is a need of
permanent surgeons in the BHS, and the managerial committee hires contractual doctors for
therapeutic care, there would be obvious cases of mistreatment. Evidently the doctors would
have the time to study the cases of the patients in depth. Hence, many patients have
complained the poor surgical outcomes of the treatment at the BHS. There are also certain
subtle aspects like implementation of an evaluation plan for understanding if the HRM
policies are suiting the needs of the staff or not (Gittell and Logan 2015). This company have
implemented the organisational restructure plan purely on an unscientific basis. No

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implementation plan was laid out and most of the field executives who directly dealt with the
patients were aware of what changes were coming their ways.
The next stage of the Harvard model is centre point of HR strategy implementation. It is
the stage of assessing the HR outcomes (Sadatsafavi, Walewski and Shepley 2015). Even
after the implementation of organisational restructuring, there was no separate and unique
HRM department formed. The managerial leaders of the company failed to understand the
fact that in absence of a team of HR manager and HR executives, here would be no
managerial executive to understand the deficiencies that the employees were facing. Hence
the same age old heterogeneous interpretation of the managers led to the undertaking of any
HR decision. However, this should be kept in mind by the managers it is of no use to form an
investigation committee after any patient mal-treatment or flaw in disease diagnosis have
been allegedly reported against the BHS. In this context, influenced from the views of
McDermott et al. (2015), it can be suggested that another set of organisational restructuring
should be done. The first issue that the company is facing that they have to make it evident
that they have invested the funds from the government for expanding the scope of treatment
in BHS. In this context, it is long evident that appointment of staff for a completely new HR
department is not possible. As such, the managers should break the core management
committee to form a Human Resource management committee and they can appoint staff
gradually in the department. For the purpose, the experienced candidates from various
departments can play the role of being the acting HR executives. In such a situation, as
Nightingale et al. (2018), have opined in similar contexts, the management committee can
also prepare a concrete report based on the employee feedback regarding why excess funds
allocation for a detailed organisational restricting is required and how this change (inclusion
of HR) would help to provide better patient care at the BHS. As an outcome of this change
implementation, the Banksia can also empower its heath care executives. They would come

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forward to take wholesome responsibility and accountability of their job role. As such, the
cases of ill-treatment would reduce to a certain extent in the organisation.
The next consideration according to the Harvard Model is the implementation of long term
consequences so that the loopholes of Human Resource management can be permanently
closed.
The first step in this context is the business case development. This requires the formation of
a committee which would work for a certain timeframe say abruptly 2 to 3 months with every
department of BHS, in order to understand what the basic HRM needs of the employees are.
IN most cases where poor HRM policies are implemented, Oppel, Winter and Schreyögg
(2017), states that the employees lack the motivation to perform. In case if such consequences
occur at the BHs which is a nursing care providing institution, the consequences would be
disastrous.
The next long term plan is the development of a Workplace capability plan, as Rice et al.
(2017), have discussed in similar contexts. In this case also, the previously formed HRM
committee would come to action. This committee have to properly observe how many clients
in any particular department, a single service employee can handle. For evidence, in the X ray
room if there is only one staff and he have to work 18 hours a day, The net role is of right HR
philosophies which have been discussed already. The last step is creation of an online portal
for HRM where the employees can directly report the HRM issues that they face. The issue
could be too much out of expertise work handling or lack of physical resources. It can also
be the lack of motivation and adequate and justified reasons against the same cause have to
be cited. Based on the reports or grievances, HR executives would observe and authenticate
the cause of the employee and concerned actions can be taken by the company in the long
run.

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Conclusion
This essay have discussed in depth the reasons for mismanagement in BHS among the
causes, the strife between managerial committee and the CEO is evident. Besides, owing to
the fact that funding mostly comes from the government, the management is being
pressurised to take evident decisions for the expansion of the scope of their service. However
owing to internal confrontation, the managers are no able to highlight the change
management needs to the government. In this light, the Harvard model makes a clear and in
depth analysis of the issues like excessive work pressure and lack of employee motivation.
The action plan suggested in the course of the essay would also lead towards permanent
extinguishment of the Human resource related burning issues in the company.

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