Personnel Strategies in the Deinstitutionalization Process: How Do the Managers Work With Employees?

ABSTRACT

As residential social services of the traditional institutional type are transformed into person-centered services provided within the community, the organizations providing these services experience a radical value shift and the resulting quality of service is a function of the staff’s personal and professional qualities. The present qualitative analysis therefore focuses on personnel strategies used by the managers of the transforming service providers in working with staff during the change process. The results show that the choice of personnel strategies depends on whether or not the management sees the staff as capable of abandoning the existing routines and changing their approach to service users. Based on the field of personnel measures (staff replacement, staff development) and staff-welfare measures (setting new working conditions: changes in the number of contract hours, work schedule, workplace design and equipment), the authors identified two polarized ideal types of personnel strategies: a requirements-centered strategy, which is strongly future-oriented and subordinates all other concerns to the implementation of the transformation vision and a caring strategy, which focuses more on the here and now and emphasizes also the fulfillment of staff needs. These strategies were often implemented intuitively, without a thorough consideration of the impact personnel strategy may have on attaining the goals of the change process. The analysis shows how the fulfillment of transformation goals may be affected by the organization’s approach to employees and the relative significance it ascribes to their needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Deinstitutionalization
• human resource policies
• organizational change
• personnel strategies
• social services

Funding

This publication was supported by the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports— Institutional Support for the Long-term Development of Research Organizations—Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, PRVOUK 19 (MŠMT—2016).

Additional information

Funding

This publication was supported by the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports— Institutional Support for the Long-term Development of Research Organizations—Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, PRVOUK 19 (MŠMT—2016).