Human resources for health talent management contribution: A case for health systems strengthening in the public health sector
Authors: Bernard Nkala  , Charles Mudimu  , Angelbert Mbengwa Mbengwa  
Published: March 2021

Talent Management is an essential component in transforming health systems if carefully implemented for the public sector especially in low income countries. In Zimbabwe public health sector, talent retention and engagement are viewed as amongst the challenges affecting the realisation of effective performance and productivity from the existing Health workforce. Largely, modern health care systems lack robust strategies to identify and utilize employee talent essential to help attain organisational citizenship. The study reviewed the relevancy and effectiveness of talent management practices in the public health sector using a case study of Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, one of the major referral hospitals in Zimbabwe. The study aimed at closing the talent pipe-line gaps as part of the Health Systems Strengthening initiative towards bringing about talent retention and engagement amongst the health workforce in public sector settings. The study assessed the impact of the existing talent management initiatives focusing on variables; recruitment and attraction perspective, compensation and rewarding component, health workforce succession management and implemented performance management system. The study obtained cross sectional data collected through a designed tool following a purposive (non-probability) sampling technique from a sample of n=200 existing health management team to assess the perception of implemented talent management approaches. The study further used responses from n=450 randomly selected health professionals recruited in the last 3 years prior to the survey to analyse the association between the variables on talent management practices namely (recruitment and selection, compensation and rewarding, succession management and performance management system) and the age of health workforce to employee engagement. The data on recruited cadres was obtained from the existing Hospital Human Resources for Health Recruitment Database. The research revealed that talent management in public health sector currently suffers from theoretical problems since the existing Human Resources for Health literature concentrates on anecdotal information. The human resource practitioners need to come up with more involving workplace activities to demystify the theory that millennials are generally finding it difficult to engage. In addition, the public sector succession planning strategies would need to be in place for the millennials well in time to adequately replace the considerable number of those at retiring stages. The Logistic regression analysis revealed recruitment and attraction perspective, and succession management positively influence health workforce engagement while adherence to implementing performance management system negatively affected employee engagement. Compensation and rewarding practices in a public health set up proved an insignificant variable to health workforce engagement hence study concluded further analysis on the impact on wider target group. The study revealed as the age increases, the health workforce become more engaged and self-motivated to develop their personal talent, thus theory suggests such are ‘Baby Boomers’ age group that do not need much push and are prepared to perfect their work talent for the benefit of the health system. The role of performance management system must be equally elevated within health system initiatives in order to achieve ultimate health workforce engagement. The study recommended the public health sector to incorporate in its human resources policy, a strategy for managing and utilisation of talent from the different health workforce generations within the health system. In improving the performance of public health systems, talent management need to be put forward in the health systems strengthening agenda in order to build highly engaged health teams. Talent management practices become essential and if carefully implemented, are likely to help public health systems retain rare skills especially in highly specialised functions. Furthermore, the organisations need to synchronise its strategic plan with the talent management strategy. There must be continuous capacity building of human resources departments to firstly own policies that influence talent management so as to ensure ultimate health workforce engagement.