This course aims to provide you with knowledge, critical understanding and skills to develop and sustain a high performing workforce. It is aimed at students who want to understand the complexity of human resource planning and management and want to develop and implement appropriate strategies to make a difference. You will explore the structures needed for managing a workforce, the human resource management skills, systems and tools required, the challenges of scaling up the workforce for specific programmes and how, using a systems perspective, the impact on other health programmes can be seen and foreseen.
Your learning will be structured around a series of three case studies based on human resource problems, supported by guided reading and group exercises.
The following subject areas will be built into case studies which are used as an important method of achieving the learning outcomes of the module, with additional knowledge and skill inputs through classroom presentations and guided study:
- The dynamics of national and international labour markets
- Strategic sector-wide human resource planning in the context of changing health services
- Managing staff supply, including deployment and retention and the use of non-formal health workers
- Managing performance, including continuous professional development
- Employee relations, the politics of human resources and managing change
- Organisational capacity for the planning, management and development of an effective health workforce.
- Tools for HR planning and management covered by the module will include: health sector workforce appraisal, staffing projections, workload analysis, performance improvement, and human resource management systems audit.