Executive Summary
With the ever-growing demand for quality health care services in today’s society, NHS plays an important role in enhancing positive health care outcomes with low mortality rates in the UK. However, the competitive advantage of NHS in its operations depends on the determination and motivation of its workforce to deliver quality and efficient health care services to its patients. As a result, the current proposal aims to enhance the NHS’s sustainable competitive advantage in its pupations by ensuring efficient employee involvement and engagement strategies and techniques to promote employee voice with training consideration in its operations. Thus, the proposal aims to motivate and improve the performance of the NHS’s workforce through employee involvement and engagement theories in managing its human resources.
Introduction
In the UK’s highly competitive and dynamic labor market, developing strategies and techniques to enhance employee involvement and engagement is essential for an organization’s productivity and effectiveness in its marketplace. As globalization and technology continue to shape the labor markets in today’s business environment, having a low or no employee turnover is essential in creating the company’s sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace (Macke & Genari, 2019). In this view, the current business proposal aims to outline the development of strategies and techniques that can enhance employee involvement and engagement in the NHS’s operations especially following the public health crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic. As one of the frontline organizations in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, this business proposal will articulate employee involvement and engagement theories that are essential in developing effective strategies and techniques for the NHS’s employee engagement and involvement in day-to-day operations for positive and quality care to patients (Macke & Genari, 2019). Thus, in developing strategies and techniques for NHS’s employees’ engagement and involvement, the business proposal will consider Maslow’s Model, The Kahn Model, and The AON-Hewitt Model.
Additionally, to develop effective strategies and techniques for employee involvement and engagement at NHS, there is a need to articulate a practical communication approach to aid the organization in ‘Employee Voice’ and the workplace. In a high diversity workforce such as that of the NHS, it is essential to encourage communication in the workplace that is important in ‘Employee Voice,’ which is necessary to understand employees’ grievances and concerns to be productive (Banfield & Royles, 2018). With over 1.4 million employees, in managing the human resource effectively and enhancing the performance of this vast workforce, the organization must improve effective communication to motivate and encourage cooperation in the workplace. Thus, the paper aims to propose communication approaches that are essential in aiding ’employee Voice’ and outline the benefits these communication approaches have for both the employers and employees in an organization.
By developing strategies and techniques for employees’ engagement and involvement in an organization with enhancing ’employee voice’, the paper will finally propose training and development considerations for the NHS’s workforce to improve the quality of service offered to its patients. In this context, the proposal aims to enhance managers’ and employees’ understanding of roles and responsibilities based on relevant theories and best practices in managing human resources (Banfield & Royles, 2018). The business proposal seeks to articulate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the BREXIT vote aftermath, considering the two phenomena’ impact on the UK’s labor market. With these strategies and techniques on employee engagement and involvement, the NHS will motivate its employees to provide quality care to patients and enhance patients’ satisfaction with a low mortality rate. As a result, these strategies and communication approaches with training consideration for the NHS’s workforce will create a sustainable competitive advantage in the health care system. Thus, the current business proposal could enhance the performance and effectiveness of the NHS’s workforce to ensure quality services to its patients with positive healthcare outcomes, especially with the current Covid-19 pandemic.
NHS’s Employees”’ Involvement and Engagement Theories
In a highly dynamic and competitive sector such as the health care system, NNHS’s success and reputation depend on all its employees doing their best when handling patients for a positive health care outcome and quality care service. As a result, developing strategies and techniques that enhance employees’ engagement and involvement in the organization’s operations are necessary for the company’s sustainable competitive advantage in the sector (Heathfield, 2019). To improve employees” productivity and reduce employee turnover, it is essential to ensure that employees are part of the organization and happy to help patients for positive healthcare outcomes.
Maslow’s Mode
Maslow’s hierarchy model is a motivation theory with five tiers of human needs with a pyramid. In this view, the model posits motivation needs that the NHS should fulfil for its employee employees’. These needs include physical, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization in the workplace, which will encourage employees to get engaged and be involved in the NHS’s performance and effectiveness (Macke & Genari, 2019). These needs are fulfilled in an organization; the more employees are motivated to do their best in their workplace for a better reputation and success.
Physical Need
As the theory suggests, for employees to get involved and engaged, there is a need to have satisfied their physical requirements by providing protective gear for the NHS’s workforce for those working in high-risk areas in the healthcare system. In the same context, the physical environment for NHS employees should be conducive to ensuring proper teamwork to deliver on the organization’s objectives of providing quality care services to patients.
Safety
Safety is essential for employees to engage others in an organization. The NHS operates in a hazardous working environment that requires the employer (NHS) to provide protective clothing and gear essential in delivering quality services to patients and enhancing positive healthcare outcomes for these patients. For instance, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK, most health workers had no PPEs or the required skills in managing a pandemic that saw most of them getting infected. As a result, in the future, there is a need for the NHS to ensure their safety in the workplace, which could aid NHS employees’ involvement and engagement in the organization’s operations.
Social need
Social needs are essential for employees’ involvement and engagement in an organization (Chiwawa & Wissink, 2021). In this view, NHS should be able to safeguard the interest of its employees socially, including protecting their families. Additionally, human beings are social beings, which could mean that employees are required to have positive social relationships and ne able to communicate with others in an organization to enhance its teamwork and effectiveness.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem ensures that the organization’s employees feel good about themselves and feel appreciated, which enhances their productivity (Cross, & Kieran, 2019). For instance, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS employees were not only scared as human beings of possible infection or even death. For these employees to continue providing quality care during the Covid-19 pandemic, the organization needs to ensure that employees’ self-esteem is high by creating a reward and appraisal system essential for their performance and increased productivity.
Self-Actualization
For employees to work towards collective success and performance of NHS, it is essential to ensure that its employees have a clear path of career development and promotional schemes within an organization. In this view, the organization’s employees’ engagement and involvement is a subset of how well they are assured of growth and development; as a result, training and acquiring new skills and having a clear career path through promotional schemes (Chiwawa & Wissink, 2021). As a result, NHS employees’ engagement and involvement will be based on how well the career path is for these employees for their self-actualization.
The Kahn Model
As a psychologist, William Kahn articulated three principles that enhanced employee engagement and involvement in the workplace, including physical, cognitive, and Emotional dimensions for effective engagement. In the observation of Kahn, several psychological conditions enabled employees” engagement in an organization. These factors include; meaningfulness, safety, and availability (mental and physical harness to fulfil a task in the workplace (Chiwawa & Wissink, 2021). To effectively manage NHS’s’ employees’ engagement, the organization must ensure the safety of its workforce where an employee can express their opinions in the workplace without negative consequences. Thus, an organization where employees feel like part of the organization based on emotional and cognitive factors helps them do their best to achieve the organization’s goals as aligned with their personal goals.
The AON-Hewitt Model
The model considers a combination of essential factors in ensuring optimal performance and productivity in the workplace, including an employee’s behaviours, intentions, emotions, and rational thoughts. For the organization’s employee engagement and involvement, the model articulates six drivers, including:
Basics driver is where employees are concerned about their pay, work environment, job security, and work-life balance in a company. Second, work is a drive that employees in organizations are concerned about based on the tasks, empowerment, collaboration, accomplishments, and autonomy in the workplace. The third drive in an organization’s practices includes communication, staffing, diversity and inclusion, and enabling infrastructure in the workplace. Brand’s reputation, employee value proposition, and corporate social responsibility inform the fourth drive of work engagement and involvement in an organization. Accessible leadership and appraisal system play a critical role in enhancing employees’ participation and engagement in the organization.
Communication Approaches to Assist Greater’ Employee Voice’ At NHS
Employees’ voice in an organization involves employees’ self-expression and airing their opinions without fear of facing negative consequences in the organization (Macke & Genari, 2019). As a large organization, the NHS has to develop and establish a mechanism that is essential in ensuring that the organization allows employees to air their concerns and grievances to improve a better working environment for the productivity of these employees. The performance and effectiveness of the organization is based on how its employees to share their opinions and share the concerns in the management of the company. As a result, the continued growth of the NHS in terms of demand and its workforce, require fresh ideas and creativity in the team to adapt to new trends in the marketplace (Macke & Genari, 2019). The NHS in this view could ensure employee voice in its operation as it enhance the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Thus, employees who have greater employee voice in the environment are highly motivated and further do their best in their workplace as they feel part of the larger organization as there is space to be heard. For NHS to enhance its employee voice, it is important for the organization:
Develop Trust and Confidence among NHS’s Employees
Managing human resource in an organization entails creating systems and space where people are free to share and interact with others with the accepted code of conduct within a particular organization. For the NHS, managing human resources involves ensuring that patients receive quality and efficient health services that promotes positive healthcare outcomes and ensure safety of its works in an organization (Kumar et al., 2020). Therefore, it is important for the NHS to first develop trust and confidence among its employees that will ensure that its employees are able to independently share their views or opinions without fear of negatively profiled in the workplace. By creating trust employees often feel appreciated and their work acknowledge that will motivate the employees to work for the betterment of the organization (Macke & Genari, 2019). Thus, organization that promotes confidence and trust among its employees achieve greater ’employee voice’ which is important in ensuring that the organization creates its sustainable competitive advantage in its operations.
Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
As globalisation continue to influence the labour market, NHS should ensure that it promotes diversity and inclusion among its employees without discrimination of class, colour or even religion (García et al., 2019). In this view, NHS should develop tailored solution in its workforce to ensure that every employees in the organization feel as part of the organization and be able to appreciate every contribution of its employees in the organization. Through embracing diversity in an organization, NHS is able to effectively manage its human resources with low or no employee turnover in the marketplace.
Promote Health, safety and well-being at NHS’s workplace
A health working environment is essential for the growth and performance of an organization. In the current competitive and dynamic business environment, developing a more holistic working environment encourages employees to share and express opinion concerning the management and development of the company (Breeze & Wiepking, 2018). In this view, the organization ensure that employees are able to speak and articulate the issues they face in the operation of the organization for enhance employee voice in the organization.
Training and Development Considerations
The healthcare system in the UK was highly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. To improve the performance and effectiveness of the NHS in managing and providing health care service to the people, skills development and training is an integral part of providing quality and professional services to the people. According to eddy (2020), training involves developing skills or acquiring knowledge that is work-based in improving the services being provided by the organization. In this view, identifying the gaps that exist in service delivery of NHS’s employees is important in determining the considerations that the human resource management has to make for better performance and efficient service delivery to the patients. Therefore, some of the training theories that will applied in identifying NHS’s training and development considerations include: Technology advancement, Goals and Objectives, and Trends in the industry.
Technology Advancement
The NHS operates in a high competitive and dynamic health care sector in the UK with ever-evolving technology and further enhance the realistic approach of the needs and demands in the sector. With the new technologies, employees of organization in most cases lack the knowledge or skills to operate machines that are developed in health care sector. The process of recruiting qualified individuals can be costly or time consuming as these technologies are relatively new. As a result, the organization can consider to train its staff instead that influence the consideration of training employees over recruiting new staff. As a result, technology advancement is a key factor to consider training of employees in the organization in order to acquire skills that is important in operations and development of the organization.
Goals and Objectives
With new skills and needs in the healthcare sector, the goals and objective of NHS influences the training and consideration that they have to make in an organization. For instance, within the context employees’ care path and promotional reasons, a company may consider to train its workforce to handle tasks and duties that are with the career plan of this employees. Thus, training and development in an organization can be influenced based on the organization’s objective and goals as far as the career path and promotional reasons.
Trends in the Industry
Organization such as NHS strive to ensure service efficiency, promote quality of service that is affordable and accessible to the public. However, these aspirations can only be achieved with a pro-active workforce that is well-trained and equipped to deliver quality services to the people (Davies et al., 2019). In the same context, NHS strives to remain competitive and sustainable in the business world where it satisfy the needs of the patients based on the trends in the market. In this view, training is necessary to achieve the needs and demands of the people based on the trends in the marketplace where the organization operates in.
Conclusion
In summary, to enhance the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage, it is important for organization to encourage employee engagement and involvement in its operations. In today’s competitive healthcare environment, the organization needs to enhance its performance and effectiveness in its operations by ensuring that its workforce is motivated and doing their best for its success. Employees’ engagement and involvement strategies and techniques articulated in this proposal aim to enhance the quality of service that NHS offers to its customers. Employees’ engagement and involvement are essential as the organizations ensure their objectives and vision align with that of their workforce, which helps deliver the desired results in the market. For instance, with the NHS helping to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, these engagement and involvement strategies and techniques were essential to enhance the organization’s success in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, employees’ engagement and involvement help the organization remain competitive and sustainable in its operations based on the input its workforce contributes to its success.
Additionally, communication is a crucial tool to enhance the company’s success and performance in its marketplace. Communication in NHS means efficient coordination and teamwork, which is essential in the growth and development of the organization. The organization should ensure that the environment is safe for employees to air their opinions and grievance without the fear of facing negative consequences in the organization. Consequently, based on such communication needs in the organization, training and development help the organization achieve its goals and objectives collectively enhance its performance. Therefore, the NHS should implement strategic communication strategies aligned with employees’ engagement and involvement in society to improve its performance and effectiveness in delivering quality services to the patients.
Recommendations
- NHS should establish an appraisal and reward system that is aimed at motivating its employees to do their best at their place of Work
- The NHS should implement the Employees’ engagement and involvement strategies that are essential in creating the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
- NHS’ communication approach should be based on the needs and wants of its workforce to enhance efficiency and promote positive health care outcomes for its patients
Reference List
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