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 Stephen
O'Connor, SPHR, is senior director of Professional Search Services
for the MHA Service Corporation, Lansing, and can be e-mailed at
soconnor@mha.org |
Staff
Matters Newsletter
May/June 2000 |
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One of my favorite stories is about a bartender who was so sure he was the strongest man around that he offered a standing $1,000 bet that he could squeeze all the juice out of a lemon. Anyone who could squeeze out one more drop would win the money. One day a little man came into the bar and said in a tiny voice, “I’d like to try.” After the laughter died down, the bartender grabbed a lemon, squeezed away and handed the wrinkled rind to the little man. To everyone’s amazement, the man clenched the lemon and six drops of juice fell out. As the bartender handed over the $1,000, he asked, “What do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack?” The man replied, “I work for the IRS.” That story illustrates what it must feel like for a health care organization trying to wring out a few more dollars from an already squeezed budget, especially the human resources department. This issue of Michigan Health and Hospitals magazine is titled “The Cents of Caring” and emphasizes the importance of adequate funding to provide the care our patients require. Nowhere in our organizations is this reality more apparent than in the human resources function. The recruitment, retention and training of staff are the core responsibility of the human resources (HR) staff. The budgetary pressures produced by the Balanced Budget Act and rising costs of operation have squeezed both the HR operating budget and the organization’s ability to remain competitive is a tight labor pool. What should HR expenditures be? National benchmarks can help answer these questions. The Bureau of National Affairs in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the Society for Human Resource Management, conducts an annual survey of employers titled Human Resource Activities, Budgets and Staffs. The most recent survey results, released on July 1, 1999, provide some answers to those HR budgeting conundrums. The median budgeted HR expenditure per employee for 1999 was $739 compared to a recent high of $994 in 1997. 1999 HR department expenses were 0.8 percent of total budgeted operating expenses, compared with 0.9 in 1998 and 1.1 in each of the previous years (1994-96). The median ratio of HR staffs to total organizational headcount in 1999 is 0.9 HR employee to every 100 workers. For the health care industry that ratio is a mere 0.6! For a copy of the survey contact the Bureau of National Affairs Inc., 1231 25th Street NW, Washington, DC 20037. It is some very interesting reading. The facts speak for themselves. HR staff ratios and dollar outlays are decreasing in the face of increasing pressures to recruit and retain caring talent. The health care industry average is lower than all industries combined in HR staffing levels. So the next time you see somebody from HR, give them a big kiss of appreciation. They won’t need to pucker-up. They’ve been squeezing lemons all day.
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