One man show

One of these days, I really have to land a job in a place that is properly staffed and fiscally healthy.

Don't get me wrong. I work with some good people. Of course, there are some not-so-good ones, too, but the real problem is a lack of skilled staff in my department.

For anyone who reads this and doesn't know what I do, I will give the short version: I'm the Human Resources Director of a hospital on Long Island. (That's as short as I can make it!)

Now, a proper size for an HR Department would be one HR person for each 100 employees the hospital has. In healthcare, we usually work short--the statistics say a more common ratio is 0.7 HR people per 100 employees.

We have about 1,500 employees in the hospital, so that means I should have, even going by the lower healthcare average, about 10 or 11 HR staff members. The usual approach is to have trained, skilled HR people filling all, or at least most, of the slots.

So what do I have? I have 3.5 clerical staff members and a temp who is working to get my file room in order. A couple of the clerical employees have some brains, but they don't have HR experience. At least one shows promise for learning the business, but none of this really helps me right now.

This is an especially big problem, since I have multiple sets of union negotiations going on.

I took a vacation a week or two ago--as you can see from my early blog entries--and they kept calling me. I can't blame them, as they were in over their heads on many things. Despite these calls, the place still managed to blow up repeatedly while I was away.

The senior management now feels even more that I am indispensable to the operation. As flattering as that may sound, it sucks. Take my advice, never be indispensable! No one should be, as the role sucks.

Of course, no one really is. If I got hit by a truck, someone would be found to fill the role. Still, even transient indispensability is an albatross around one's neck.

So here I sit, having just finished my work for the day. It's pushing 10pm, and I just got done. Not a good thing! The only positive thing is that my laptop computer let me do much of the work while sitting on the couch at home. It beats sitting in the office, but having some skilled staff to do some of this work for me would be a heck of a lot better.

I'm pushing the top management at the hospital to let me hire some people. So far, I got permission to hire an assistant director, and I found one who seemed quite good. Then she went through about a week and a half with us and ran for the hills. I should have seen that coming, when she told me I was too good for the place. I guess most of us think highly of ourselves, so if she thought I was too good for the place, then it stood to reason that she was too good for it as well. To be fair, healthcare is a bitch of an industry, and I'm sure she can find an easier job for as much or more money somewhere else. I just wish she'd made that decision before starting with me. It would have been easier!

The battle for more staff goes on, but the hospital is always barely breaking even financially. Sadly, that's better than 70% of the hospitals in New York, but most of those others are not-for-profit (we're "proprietary"). The NFPs have more financial leeway than us.

Anyhow, I am going to keep pushing to hire more staff. In the meantime, I need a nap!