HRM Outcomes for Frank ten Oever

My name is Frank ten Oever. I’ve been a director/manager of HRM in two large hospitals, one here in Enschede, top-clinical MST, and one academic in Amsterdam, VUmc. And I am now working as a head of recruitment consultant for management, higher management in the health care sector.

Could you reflect on what is so unique about HRM in the healthcare sector? And why? Well, healthcare of course is about people, who are in a vulnerable state either or, whether it’s long time healthcare in the care sector or in the cure sector in the hospitals. So, I think, exactly that human resources input and impact in how your people, your care takers and all the people around them are equipped to take care of these people, which is your product, is ultimately important. So, I think HRM in the healthcare sector is crucial.

If you’re in large complex organizations, the numbers might rule the discussion and do not any longer see the problems that lie underneath or you do no longer talk about the problems that really lie underneath and caused numbers, cause you only discuss the numbers, whether they right and correct etcetera. So, I think it’s very demanding to use outcomes, in a right way, so I always try to use only a few and then really adress them from what causes these outcomes to be what they are and is that wrong? Or is that good? Or do we want it otherwise? And why then?

Are employees expected to contribute to those outcomes? They should be so recognizable to employees that they’re willing to contribute to it. If they’re too theoretical or too, only financial interesting, for instance, but really against what the work floor feels they need to do for their patients, they’re not the right outcomes. They’re not outcomes, they are a rationalisation or whatever. So, I think the right outcomes will appeal to most people, throughout the organization and therefore they will want to contribute to them.