Personnel Administration: A Practical Application
Several years ago I was loaned by my employer, Sears and Roebuck, to a neighboring urban hospital to assist in the complete revamping of the administration of one working unit of the hospital. This consulting arrangement arose from my membership in the local Chamber of Commerce. At a Chamber social event conversation took place between me and the administrator of the Radiology Department of the hospital during which we discussed the universal application of good management principles. He indicated difficulties in the transcribing area of his department, and I suggested some creative solutions gleaned from my years of work in personnel at Sears and Roebuck. Even though most of my work experience had been in retail, he decided to hire me for a few weeks to study that work section and make recommendations for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to describe that experience, the findings, and the results in terms of effective personnel administration principles.
The transcribing area of the Radiology Department handled all the computerized inputting of a dozen radiologists' dictated reports of various radiographic procedures. Two shifts of workers covered transcription work days, evenings, and weekends, and the entire group was supervised by one individual who had worked in transcribing her entire working career. The main difficulties in this area noted by the department head were low morale, frequent turnover, absenteeism, bickering among the employees, and isolation from the rest of the department and hospital as a whole. My purpose was to explore the underlying reasons for the existing problems and suggest reasonable, workable, inexpensive solutions.
The importance of human resource planning cannot be underestimated. Long range planning, middle range forecasting, and short range projected staffing requirements are essential for a smooth-running unit. Managers ne...