Jennifer Dobell of the Victorian Department of Health to speak at upcoming HR Summit Melbourne
Human resource departments are the epicentre of any large organisation.
They involve a flurry of activity dealing with directives from C-suite leaders, comprehending wide-ranging Commonwealth and State-based legislative Acts, recruiting, putting in onboarding policies and dealing with staff issues.
But rather than maintaining the status quo, how can human resources be bold with workplace strategy and tactical implementation?
“As a sector-agnostic workforce strategist, having a strategy and plan (roadmap) that speaks to your executive group and people is integral to building the future workforce, and brings your people on the journey and the inevitable changes along the way,” Jennifer Dobell, executive director, workforce strategy and wellbeing, Victorian Department of Health, said.
“I ensure I consult extensively to understand the key issues and nuances of the sector so that strategies live and breathe for everyone. To have bold human resource strategies, you need to think beyond siloed human resource solutions, to different pieces - such as digital - that can also achieve organisational and workforce outcomes.”
Dobell will be one of the speakers at HRD’s upcoming HR Summit Melbourne, in a session titled “Data-driven storytelling in workforce analytics.”
“Some bold human resources strategies I have designed included surge workforce demand and cross-skilling models to prepare workforce for pandemic response, through to innovative recruitment campaigns and employee value proposition design,” she said.
Focusing on workplace flexibility
Human resource departments face many more challenges these days than in previous years and even decades. There is constant legislative change and decisions made during the pandemic to allow employees greater flexibility in where they work, and the hours that they work, brings health and safety protocols and laws into play.
Human resource departments have the ability to change the way they structure workplaces and the way staff work.
At the Department of Health, HR is firmly focused on lifting the staff experience to align to the patient experience, Dobell said.
“We have a workforce that is extremely diverse – ranging from surgeons through to hospital cooks — and pulling together a sector wide strategy that speaks to different employers and roles is a complex ask.”
The organisation uses evidence and data, combined with extensive consultation, to triage focus areas, she said.
“We are also working across the sector on opportunities to modernise roles and models of care, and how this can augment workforce capacity and capability in a time when numerous sectors are facing critical workforce shortages.”
Many of the roles are frontline and staff have expressed that they want more flexibility in their careers and ways of working, so increasing flexibility is one of the department’s top four target areas for its state-wide Employee Value Proposition, Dobell said.
“Even for ‘direct customer-facing’ roles such as health, we are seeing changes in the way workers and customers want to give and receive services, so we are reviewing how digitally enabled models of care can be expanded to achieve the best balance for everyone.”
Retention among labour shortages
Working in any aspect of the health industry anywhere in the world has been extremely demanding and has taken its toll on the majority of staff – especially frontline workers.
Overtired, underpaid and extremely stressed are three common terms you hear from medical staff, especially those in hospitals. Keeping staff and fostering a positive culture is not an easy task.
“Labour shortages are global in every sector,” Dobell said. “The interesting thing about the health sector is that it has a good level of supply – people have a calling to health, and the alignment to values and meaningful work is very clear.”
The HR leaders said she is focused on ensuring that they keep supply up, but also focusing on retention via the Employee Value Proposition and targeting interventions around what staff said they value the most.
“It takes a long time to skill in healthcare roles, and we want to keep people to contribute and train our new people, and ensure we keep the joy and calling that was part of peoples’ decision to join in the first place.”
9-part employee value proposition
As part of a workforce strategy, the team developed a nine-element employee value proposition based on what employees told them that they wanted addressed in sector-wide consultation, Dobell said.
“Whether at a sector-wide, team or individual level, I think the key to helping people achieve their best is having a mutual understanding and respect of others’ expectations and needs and working towards this in an aligned way.”
Dobell’s session at HRD’s upcoming HR Summit Melbourne will look at how storytelling can be a powerful tool to show the connection between HR and business performance. This session will provide practical tips on how HR leaders can use storytelling tools to demonstrate real business value through HR data, including:
- Tips to determine what information is considered personal or relevant to the stakeholders
- Examples of using visual illustrations to support your findings
- Identifying and explaining the meaning and motivation behind the data for greater impact
