Health organization/Hospital Workforce Plan

Health Organization(Any one) Workforce Plan (Please select any one health organization/ hospital in NSW)

Note; All the points below should be covered in this assignment.

Graph, data and table should be attached.

Length: 2000 words. (NOTE: Executive Summary, References and Appendices are not included in the word count)

Rationale

The purpose of the assignment is to prepare a workforce plan for one health organization. The Health Organization Workforce Plan will have to include all of the relevant sections of a Workforce Plan as outlined in the readings links. The Workforce Plan needs to include recommendations on strategies to address key workforce issues.

Task

The assignment will be scaffolded so that readings will support the development of the Health Organization Workforce Plan. This includes key topics relevant to the development of the workforce plan such as preparing an Environmental Scan, analyzing the organizations workforce data set, identifying critical issues and developing strategies to address the issues identified.

You will need to gain the permission of the Chief Executive Officer (or other relevant person such as Workforce Planning or Human Resources Manager) to carry out the project, including requesting a data set. This action is essential for you to gain access to the people and information that you require to successfully complete the project.

The process will include the following steps:

• Prepare a Table of Contents for the Health Organisation Workforce Plan using report format.
• Executive summary.
• Draft the Introduction for the Workforce Plan.
• Prepare the external Environmental Scan for the plan using relevant NSW, other States and Territories and national health workforce references including policy and planning documents. Determine if there is a relevant Workforce Plan for public sector health services developed by the Local Health District (NSW), Hospital and Health Services (Queensland) and relevant networks in other States and Territories. If you work in the private sector, this type of documentation will still be helpful.
• Prepare the internal Environmental Scan by:
  1. Gathering information on the organizations organizational structure,
  2. Describing the structures and processes of the organisation’s approach to workforce planning and management, including whether the organization has a current Workforce Plan, or Strategic, Business or Operational Plans which refer to workforce planning initiatives and strategies.
  3. Identifying the extent to which the organization currently analyses its own current and future workforce supply and requirements, including preparation of a workforce profile.
• Provide a profile of the organisation’s workforce if data are available. Undertake the data analysis required to support the workforce plan if data are available in order to develop a workforce profile using tables and graphs and supporting explanatory text. See the section below on the proposed data set. If data are not available, describe the workforce profile and use interviews and external sources to identify workforce characteristics, trends, levels of shortage and workforce issues.
• Based on data analysis and/or interviews with key staff and relevant information from the Environmental Scan, determine whether supply is currently adequate to meet the service demand by workforce category.
• Based on the previous steps and relevant literature, identify critical issues to be addressed in the workforce plan.Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation’s present and future workforce planning strategies.
• Recommend key strategies to address the critical issues in each of the areas of workforce planning and development, including:
• Recruitment and retention;
• Organizational performance management strategies related to the workforce;
• Utilization of capability frameworks for identifying and developing skills levels of the workforce;
• Applying skills-mix and workforce redesign strategies to the health workforce;
• Education and training strategies addressing workforce development; and
• Strategies for developing workforce efficiency and productivity.

10)  Conclusion

Data Sources, Data Items and Data Analysis for Workforce Profile

Any request for data should make it very clear that the University will undertake to strictly preserve the confidentiality of the data and that the University only provides access to the assignments by the Unit Co-ordinator and Subject Lecturer.

In addition, the data is not to be released for any other purpose or used by any other party including research, publications and third parties. Therefore students will also be required to abide by a confidentiality agreement, and small cell sizes under 5 will not be reported in the assignment.

Data Source and Data Items

It is recommended that the organisation be requested to provide a data set. The most useful extract is from a payroll data set, and you will need to request an Excel file with a pivot table of the extracted data. The data can be extracted for one payroll period, and November 2015 would be a good time to source the data as it is usually representative of the data over a calendar year.

Please request the following data items:

The two main workforce counts to be included in the data set are:

FTE (Full Time Equivalent) includes productive, non-productive and overtime hours. FTE is calculated based on an award working week and hours contributing to allocated days off are considered when taken. Most awards are 38 hours per week including junior medical officers and nurses. Senior Medical Officers such as Staff Specialists are 40 hours per week.

Headcount (based on a count of the records in the extract spreadsheet and using Employee ID as the unique count.

The Data Items to be included in the data set are:

There are differing data components including:

Demographic data:

This includes age and gender data items

Workforce characteristics and classification:

This includes length of service, award group and award

Services descriptors or service areas.

This includes cost centres and grouped cost centres or “service areas”.

The excel file provided to students who are analysing the NSW Ministry of Health data set can be provided to staff at the organisation (Information Officer or Payroll Officer) to show how the data has been grouped. The ID number needs to be de-identified and is just for the purposes of showing the number of records.

The following table is a list of the data items and their groupings which need to be requested.

Source: NSW Ministry of Health Human Resources Information System, 2015

The original data file was created by the Workforce Planning and Performance Unit of the Workforce Planning and Development Branch of the NSW Ministry of Health, and if required I can provide a copy of the data file provided by the Ministry.

Create a further data item from the original data set called “Service Area” which adds together “like” service and organisational clusters. The Excel data file shows these groupings for an acute hospital.

The best way to do this is to understand the organisational structure of the facility and do the groupings on that basis. However to develop data sets using clinical streams you may need to move away from organisational lines of responsibility.

Data analysis and presentation

Follow the format of the extracted data in the Excel file to extract your own data.

The following sections provide some material on how to develop graphs and manipulate the data provided. This will be covered in the Webinars as well.

Creating graphs.

• In the excel file in the relevant worksheet, create the cross tabulations that you want to graph. Highlight the data to be graphed. Create a graph. Double click within the graph. Choose the Design you want to graph and the Quick Layout function to create labels for your graph.
• Double click on the legend and choose the option for Bottom.The graph should be completed.
• Now create a Word file, click on the graph, right click and chose Copy and paste into the Word file. Then enter Graph 1 as a heading above the graph and give the graph a title.
• Repeat the process with each table and graph you use in the workforce plan.

Managing small cell sizes

When data is cross-tabulated it often results in small cell sizes. No data should be reported in a table or graph with a value of less than five. Therefore data needs to be added to the nearest data range or data ranges changed to add data together.

The grouping of data uses the Autosumfunction. A link is as follows:

http://www.ehow.com/video_4978987_use-subtotals-totals-excel-spreadsheet.html

http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/excelfunctions/qt/autosum.html

Copy and paste the total table so that you have another version to work with. However, you need to create empty cells to sum into so:

• Highlight the cells where you want the sum to appear.
• Click on Insert in the home menu and insert cells. Then use Autosum to add the numbers.
• Then copy and paste the totals you have created.
• Then delete the original data and create a new label.

Criteria

You will be assessed according to the following criteria, which are expanded in the Unit Learning Guide under the Rubric section for Assessment 2.

• Academic writing skills, use of report format and APA.
• Ability to introduce the topic and findings in a well summarised Executive Summary.
• Understanding of the process of the development of a health workforce plan.
• Preparation of an Environmental Scan,
• Capacity to analyse workforce profile data including the use of charts and tables to support the analysis and presentation.
• Critical analysis and synthesis of the relevant literature to support issues identification and strategies development.

Resources

Provide your answers based on the recommended readings in Modules 3 to 5 and other references that you find (see the Rubric for details on additional readings).Review the video on the use of excel.

http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/excel101/a/Excel_beg_guide.htm

Write up most of the tables and graphs as an attachment to the report and then in the report use all headings linked to your data analysis and provide key findings.