2019 Annual Conference

Human Resource Development and Training

Concurrent Session (45 minutes)

This study provides new empirical insight into HRDs challenges in sustainability in the healthcare in the United States (US).  Based on interviews with healthcare experts and executives the findings suggest the models of sustainability and HRD do not provide HRD executives with adequate tools to address workforce vulnerabilities in healthcare.

The target audience for this presentation are HRD practitioners working to support the learning, development and wellbeing of health care workers and scholars and practitioners who seek to explore and support the role of HRD in building sustainable organizations.

Learners will have a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of sustainability and the dynamics involved in achieving it within the context of complex organizations. Understand the need for HRD to work toward models of sustainability that more effectively address workforce vulnerabilities in healthcare. Lastly, understanding how HRD has increasing been integrated with HR as a consequence of the emerging economic model of healthcare.

Healthcare has become a major issue in the US related to the delivery of care, cost of care and quality of care.  However, there is a noticeable lack of explicit concern for the effects of healthcare delivery on the 19 million employees who work in the sector in the US (Center for Health Workforce "Health care employment projections: An analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Projections 2010-2020," 2012). 

This session will discuss a study about HRD’s role and responsibility for sustainability in healthcare. In interviews with HRD executives we found that they are struggling with competing values and seemingly irreconcilable interests (health and wellbeing of the workforce, continuation of the care model and values, economic survival, etc.).  Competing values between sustainability within the healthcare ecosystem are too complex for any one individual to make sense of in the context of their daily practice resulting in a disconnect between HRD models and practice.

The implication is for HRD to reflexively examine its theories, engaging in action-oriented and experiential research agenda wherein researchers and practitioners work together to test the adequacy and consequences of their theories and models within the micro-interactions that constitute organizations and practices.

The format will be to discuss the participants experience and interest in the role of HRD in organizational sustainability, followed by a discussion of the results of this study and the implications for HRD and adult education research and practice.