Human resources isn’t a thing we do.
It’s the thing that runs our business.
— Steve Wynn
INTRODUCTION
At the end of the day, ocular care is a service-oriented business. This type of work places human beings as a company’s most critical investment. Their presence is felt everywhere by playing vital roles in almost all operational processes. These range from the employees that directly interact with patients to those that provide the support needed to effectively execute those tasks. As a result, they represent the most important, yet costly, resource utilized by a business. The responsibility of recruiting, training, and reviewing these human resources falls on the Department of Human Resources (HR). A few applications of HR include implementing annual reviews, mediating in conflict scenarios, handling risk management, and processing payroll.
HR can be an asset that helps a practice excel or a liability that acts like an obstacle. Therefore, the organization of this chapter is a like a game plan for a winning strategy on how to optimize it. The initial focus spotlights the search and acquisition of potential employees. Attention then shifts to training methods for this new personnel. Next, the discussion turns to reviewing and growing them. This transitions into approaches for re-educating and, if needed, terminating those that do not fit the determined standards. It concludes with a section about related but unique topics. This chapter seeks to educate the reader on how to make HR a competitive advantage for the practice as opposed to an expensive expenditure.
WHAT IS HUMAN RESOURCES?
The most important resource of a business is its human resource—the employees. Whether the goal is to create a valuable good or provide an excellent service, the success or failure of an organization ultimately turns back to the individuals in it. The difficulty is that all businesses are looking for good employees.
The difference between an average organization and a superior one is the ability to get the most out of what is available. The best ones have a commitment and structure in place to locate the right talents, hire the best applicants, provide them the proper training, position them in the most advantageous roles, review and assess their work, and inspire them to grow. This encompasses the roles of HR. The capability to strategically implement HR requires understanding the company’s vision, possessing the skill set to effectively manage individuals, and maintaining the proper knowledge about legal rules and regulations.1,2
HR also creates some of the most difficult challenges a business faces despite all of its benefits. It is inevitable that organizations will need to deal with employees that do not fit into the overall plans for the future. The reasons for this can significantly vary from structural changes in the business to unacceptable behavior from the individual. Nonetheless, the ability to efficiently transition an employee away is a critical skill. The cost of its inability can be steep with consequences such as a devaluing of the brand, damaging the company culture, and sparking legal action against the business. Forward-thinking organizations understand these repercussions. The goal is to take a proactive approach to prevent these situations rather than a reactive one after an undesirable event occurs.
HUMAN RESOURCES IN EYE CARE
The value of strategically implementing and utilizing HR in the eye care practice is demonstrated by those organization that always seem to appear bountiful in their exceptionally qualified employees and happy company environment. These elite companies have figured out how to bring in the higher-level applicants despite drawing from the same talent pool as similar competing businesses. However, they do not stop there. Coupled with great leadership, these organizations continue their commitment by creating and fostering a positive work experience that further maximizes their employee potential. They have organized processes to properly position and grow their organization’s talent. The important HR abilities to possess in an eye care practice are the following: finding the right applicants, getting the best hires, training the human resources, retaining and evaluating the talent, retraining and releasing employees, and appreciating special human resource topics.
Importance
The ability to locate the best applicants to join a company is a measure of how well a business is run. An organization must first understand what their needs are in the job posting to locate the appropriate individuals from a prospective pool. Although employees should be expected to perform their duties, the responsibility of placing employees in the correct position and supplying them the necessary resources to excel falls on the management and leadership team.
Once a company has the necessary HR structure and specifically defined their needs for a particular position, the focus shifts toward identifying the proper personnel. The top organizations align the talent needs requested by leadership with effective strategies to locate and evaluate the appropriate applicants. HR then selects the right individuals to maximize the company’s needs through a series of thoughtful interviews and due diligence about the candidates’ backgrounds.
Keywords
Human resources: (1) a department within a company that hires, trains, reviews, and terminates employees (denoted as “Human Resources” with capitalized letters or “HR”) or (2) the actual human beings that serve as employees (denoted as “human resources” with lower case letters)
Full-time equivalent (FTE): A method to denote the expected work from a hire where this information aids in the measuring of employee production and for allocation of budgets
Job description (JD): A formal description for a position in an organization that provides specifics about its responsibilities and expectations
Resume: The experience, training, and skill set of a perspective employee applying for a position
Communication skills: The ability to listen and respond to others
Open-ended question: A style of question where answers invite detailed responses
Closed-ended question: A style of question where answered require simple responses like “Yes” or “No”
Ability: An employee’s aptitude for performing a single or set of tasks
Skills: The composition of an employee’s innate and learned abilities
Competencies: The summation of an employee’s abilities and skill set
Achievements: A list of accomplished goals that are typically difficult to reach and warrant recognition
Transferable skills: A set of skills that can be used over a wide range of positions with differing job descriptions
Teamwork: The process where a group of individuals work together as a cohesive unit to achieve goals
Body language: The unspoken expressions of emotions and thoughts based on body positioning and behavior
Background check: A review of a potential employee’s history for disciplinary action
Reference check: A review of a potential employee’s references listed on a job application for accuracy and validity
Applications
The process of successful recruitment is highly dependent on the alignment with the company’s leadership team. The desired culture and vision, as described by leadership, must match the individuals that HR is hiring. This required synchrony is not limited to just these large-scale issues; it also trickles down to each individual employee. Usually each hire is referenced to the amount of work that position is expected to produce in terms of a full-time equivalent (FTE). A full-time addition is one FTE, and a part-time is one-half or one-quarter FTE depending on the amount of production expected. This identification keeps track of the employee work amount and budgeting.
The first task in effectively hiring the best candidate is for HR to post a clear job description (JD). This ensures transparency that the position the applicant is looking to fill matches the practice’s needs. Otherwise, problems will ensue as soon as the talent is hired. These troubles can extend from poor job performance all the way to legal ramifications if the new hire is required to perform duties that are not listed. An example would be an incorrect description on the amount and type of heavy lifting. There are many JD templates, but it is important to be as accurate as possible. Figure 3-1 is a sample JD for a workup technician.
The next step is localizing those applicants worthy of an interview. The typical response from interested candidates that have reviewed the JD is to submit their resume. HR filters through these resumes to check that the applicant has the appropriate skills and experience to justify an interview.1 The interview process can range from one to many rounds, including via telephone or in person. Those conducting the interviews, which can be others besides HR, attempt to connect with and understand the candidate. This process tests their communication skills to validate their ability to work with others, including in difficult situations.3
Efficient methods include a combination of open- and closed-ended questions with each serving a particular purpose. Open questions provide the candidate an opportunity to show his or her personality by freely answering since these do not have many restrictions. This would include a question such as, “George, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?” Closed questions lead the applicant to specific and focused answers meant to share factual information in a succinct manner. An example would be, “How many years have you been a Certified Ophthalmic Assistant?”
The aggregate responses provide the interviewer the applicant’s abilities and skills that help define the scope of the applicant’s competencies. The ideal candidate has transferable skills that allow cross-training to other few roles within the practice if called upon. This highlights the importance of teamwork.1 An advanced interviewer will also examine the applicant’s body language to gauge his or her comfort and ability to respond under stress.3 These reactions represent how the applicant would behave under similar circumstances in the real work environment.
Figure 3-1. Example of a job description for an ophthalmic assistant.
The last step in the process is additional due diligence from HR to conduct both a reference and background check. This crosschecks that the information given by the candidate is accurate and there are no legal concerns that need to be brought up to the practice, respectively. The best time to know these extra details is before hiring the candidate. The consequence of missing this information is a waste of company resources by hiring an individual that does not work out.
Immediate Action Items
Does each position in your practice have a JD? If so, is it updated to include all the activities current employees are performing while listing duties they should also be ideally completing? Review with HR that JDs are accurate, available, and transparent to all current and potential staff members. You never know when a new position will need to be filled in your organization. If it is a critical role, time is of the essence. However, a rushed attempt to find an applicant generally ends in a less than optimal solution. This is due in part to not having the right JD to post and use to screen applicants. The result is a new hire that may not be qualified and not given a clear understanding of what is expected. It typically leads to an even worse situation as now you are left with an employee you need to let go. Not only does that consume valuable time, but firing someone that could not deliver on an inaccurate JD can lead to legal trouble.
If you do not have JDs, then it is time to get them. Either create or modify existing templates to meet the needs of your organization. Make sure that the items listed are correct to give yourself and any employee a fair opportunity to be evaluated and critiqued. The presence of a polished JD also helps separate practices that appear to run well vs those that seem to jump from one fire to another. Prospective applicants, especially great ones, notice the difference.
Importance
The next critical step is successfully hiring the desired talent that was identified through the interview process. The major challenge encountered at this point is that these applicants can have many potential suitors in the same marketplace. Although skillful HR have the capability to spot overlooked talent that can excel, it is more commonplace to see that other businesses will have noticed the same bright stars.
The leading companies understand the competitive landscape and carefully position themselves to have the best opportunity to land these candidates. They realize that recruitment is actually a 2-way street. The most attractive talents are interviewing the organization as much as they are being evaluated themselves. The ideal recruiter-applicant interaction is one of mutual respect for each other where both understand that a synergistic relationship leads to the best results. The additional yet easily underappreciated benefit to this hiring style is that it demonstrates the true company culture to the candidates.
These types of subtle discussions, along with their tones, separate good from great HR. It makes the difference on either getting or losing those star applicants. The takeaway is that elite businesses have a clear understanding of their identity and culture. They use that information to create a recruitment approach that identifies the applicants that will match easily with it. Once the correct system is in place, it just needs to be used.
Keywords
Suitability: The fit of an employee’s ability to a particular need or task for a position in an organization
Compensation: The manner in which an employee is paid for his or her work
Offer: A process in which a prospective employee is given the option to accept the open position in question
Entry-level position: A low-level role in an organization where an employee without much experience first begins in a particular field of work
Sales position: A role in an organization where an employee is part of the sales force
Managerial position: A role in an organization where an employee supervises and manages the activities of those staff members directed to perform duties
Supervisor: An employee that directly oversees the tasks and performance of the individuals below him or her
Manager: An employee that governs the overall priorities of those working under him or her
Director: An employee with an elevated position and responsibility for the overall direction of a given arm within a business (and not the actual execution of the plan, which is left to the supervisors and managers)
Executive position: A high-level role in an organization where an employee with management experience can plan and direct actions on a grand scheme
Chief-Suite (C-Suite): The aggregate of executive-level individuals within an organization
Chief Executive Officer (CEO): The C-Suite individual and highest-ranked employee that has the final say over all matters within a company
Chief Financial Officer (CFO): The C-Suite individual that oversees all financial issues
Chief Operating Officer (COO): The C-Suite individual that governs operations
Chief Informational Officer (CIO): The C-Suite individual that manages the information technology
Chief Medical Officer (CMO): The C-Suite individual responsible for medical matters
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