Question

Identify three policies and practices that would help in the recruitment and retention of older workers by a healthcare organization. Describe how and why these policies and practices would be beneficial. Then, describe how the same policies might benefit employees from at least one other group. For example, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, and so on

Answer 1

Recruitment and retention of older workers

Recruitment is the process or the art of finding a candidate for a post in an organisation whereas retention refers to the act of retaining an employee in an organisation. Healthcare workforce and the recruitment an d retention process are uniquely competitive as the field is highly specialised.There are various practices and policies that employed by healthcare organizations to recruit and retain older workers in the firm. Some of the Policies and practices are following :

1. Avoid' over qualified' reason for rejecting an application

2. Omit the term' maximum years ' of experience from the job advertisement

3. Broaden the recruitment process beyond employee referral programmes and campus interview

Description

1. Avoid ' over qualified' reason for rejecting an application.

Most of the older workers might have more qualification and high job experience. But if they are willing to take up a lower position or same post that they were used to be, then don't reject them telling they are over qualified. Older workers are tend to continue in job than the younger workers.

2. Broaden the recruitment process beyond employee referral programmes and campus interview.

Campus interviews are only focusing fresh and young candidates. Even in theemployee referral programmes employees recruit whom they know and most cases there own age people. So healthcare organization should broaden their recruitment process beyond employee referral programmes and campus interview. Instead of that job ads with special emphasise to senior workers might help.

3. Omit the term ' maximum years of experience' from the job ads.

Some job advertisements show the ' maximum years of experience' along with the 'minimum number years of experience'. This gives a negative effect on senior workers. Job description and the salary range should be given properly in the ad so the interested candidates can decide on it even they are old.

There should be a good working environment in the healthcare organizations to properly retain the older workers. Caring attitude, respect and performance recognition also helps in retaining the older employees in the work force. Healthcare organization's online recruiting site and process should be designed to be simple and mature so older workers also can apply.

Above said policies and practices are not only help the recruitment and retention process of older workers but also help in gender diversity and ethnicity also. Employee referral programmes focuses only the persons whom the employees know and they may refer only their friends , on same age or gender or race. In this case job advertisements helps more to get workforce diversity in the area of gender and especially race. Omiting term of ' maximum years of experience' from job advertisements and telling the reason ' over qualified' also might help in the recruitment process of diverse workforce in healthcare setting.