HRM 5300 Module 2 Staffing a New Hospital Unit Example

Twenty-Six Nurses by Opening Day: Planning, Recruiting and Selecting for a New Unit

Student Name

Master of Science in Management, Thomas Edison State University

HRM-5300: Human Resources Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Twenty-Six Nurses by Opening Day: Planning, Recruiting and Selecting for a New Unit

The Case

Ridgeview Medical Center, a composite 220-bed community hospital in western Pennsylvania, will open a 24-bed medical unit in nine months to relieve crowding in its emergency department. The chief nursing officer has asked HR to plan how the unit will be staffed, recruit the nurses and design a selection process that hires people who will succeed and stay. The case asks three questions: how many nurses are needed and where they will come from, how to recruit them, and how to select them.

Question 1: Workforce Planning

Noe et al. (2015) describe human resource planning as forecasting labor demand and supply, comparing them to find surpluses or shortages, and choosing actions to close the gap. Demand comes from the unit's staffing plan: six registered nurses on each 12-hour day shift, at one nurse for four patients, and five on each night shift, at one for five. That requires 11 nurse shifts of 12 hours every day, or 48,180 hours a year. With about 1,872 productive hours per full-time nurse after vacation, sick time and education, the unit needs about 25.7, or 26, full-time equivalents before turnover.

Supply has two parts. Internally, six experienced nurses from other units have asked to transfer, but each transfer opens a vacancy elsewhere, so the hospital's net need is unchanged; transfers are still valuable because they bring experience and culture to the new unit. Externally, the gap is about 20 full-time equivalents. The hospital's nursing turnover runs about 18 percent a year, so the unit will also need about five replacement hires annually once it opens.

Question 2: Recruitment

The textbook treats recruitment as the set of activities that influence the number and types of applicants, through personnel policies, sources and recruiters. Planning backward from the goal with yield ratios from the hospital's past nurse recruiting shows the scale required.

The choice of sources matters as much as the number. Zottoli and Wanous (2000), reviewing research on recruitment sources, found that employees hired through informal sources such as employee referrals and rehires tended to have lower turnover than those hired through formal sources such as advertisements, likely because they had more realistic information about the job. Breaugh and Starke (2000) similarly emphasized realistic job information and the importance of recruiters and site visits in applicants' decisions. Ridgeview should therefore emphasize a referral bonus for current nurses, partnerships with two local nursing schools for new graduates who completed clinical rotations at the hospital, and outreach to former employees, supplemented by job boards. Unit tours led by the future nurse manager would give candidates a realistic preview.

Question 3: Selection

Selection should predict who will perform well and stay. Noe et al. (2015) evaluate selection methods by reliability, validity, generalizability, utility and legality. Licensure verification is a legal minimum, not a predictor. A structured interview, with the same behavioral questions for every candidate about patient prioritization, teamwork and handling deterioration, scored on anchored rating scales by a panel including the nurse manager and a staff nurse, provides reliable and valid information. A brief clinical scenario, in which candidates talk through how they would respond to a deteriorating patient, adds a work-sample element. Reference checks should ask former managers specific questions about reliability and teamwork. All candidates should go through the same steps to ensure fairness and legal defensibility.

Recommendations and Trade-offs

HR should begin recruiting six months before opening, set referral bonuses and school partnerships in motion immediately, and hire new graduates early enough to complete a 12-week residency before the unit opens. Pairing new graduates with the six transferring nurses as preceptors would support both quality and retention. The trade-offs are cost and timing: residency programs and referral bonuses cost money, and hiring early means paying nurses before patients arrive. Hiring too late, however, would force reliance on agency nurses, which costs more and weakens unit culture.

Measuring the Hiring Plan

HR should track four measures monthly as recruiting proceeds: qualified applicants against the 159 needed, offers and acceptance rates against the historical yields, time from application to offer and the source of each hire. After the unit opens, first-year turnover by source will show whether referrals and school partnerships produce nurses who stay, which tests the research on sources in the hospital's own setting. If acceptance rates fall below 70 percent, HR should review pay offers and the realistic preview before increasing advertising. A monthly one-page summary for the chief nursing officer would keep the plan visible and allow early correction.

Conclusion

Ridgeview needs about 26 nurse full-time equivalents for its new unit, which means about 20 external hires and roughly 159 qualified applicants given its yield ratios. Emphasizing referral and new-graduate sources, offering realistic previews and using structured interviews with a clinical scenario align the hiring plan with research on recruitment and selection and with the unit's need for nurses who stay.

References

Breaugh, J. A., & Starke, M. (2000). Research on employee recruitment: So many studies, so many remaining questions. Journal of Management, 26(3), 405-434. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600303

Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2015). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Zottoli, M. A., & Wanous, J. P. (2000). Recruitment source research: Current status and future directions. Human Resource Management Review, 10(4), 353-382. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-4822(00)00032-2