Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

44 Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofi t Organizations

for experienced workers to mentor younger

employees and transfer institutional knowl-

edge. In this way, organizations continue to

gain benefi ts from soon - to - be - retiring work-

ers ’ skills and expertise. Unless an organization

has a mechanism in place to preserve worker

knowledge, its loss can have a negative effect on

the organization. Experienced workers often

possess valuable knowledge and understand

the cultural nuances of organizations. SHRM

should follow these trends and anticipate how

they may affect their agencies.

An example of poor SHRM took place in 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia,

at Grady Memorial Hospital, Georgia ’ s largest public hospital. In an

attempt to halt its declining revenue and increased expenses, it offered

early retirement to 562 employees: 422 employees took it, twice as

many as anticipated. One - third of the departing employees were nurses,

nursing assistants, clerks, and other workers in patient care. Another

13 percent came from laboratories and radiology. “ The impact of the

buyout goes beyond the number of jobs involved, ” said Curtis Lewis,

chief of Grady ’ s medical staff. “ In a cash-strapped hospital with aging

equipment and a largely indigent patient population, people learn to

make things work and maximize resources.... In addition, the senior

staff developed long - term relationships. Those are the things you lose ”

(White, 2007, p. D11).

Strategies that can be implemented to halt the retirement of productive

employees are offering part - time work with or without benefi ts (depending

on the employee ’ s need), training employees to develop new skills, transfer-

ring employees to different jobs with reduced pay and responsibilities, and

addressing any age - bias issues that may exist in the agency. Organizations

that cannot halt the retirement of productive employees need to set up a

system for transferring knowledge to younger employees.

Implementing Strategic Human Resources Management

HRM departments seeking to implement an SHRM system must

expand their scope of activities beyond their traditional tasks and functions

and enter partnerships with managers and employees. Working together pro-

vides managers and employees with a better understanding of HRM issues, and

In an effort to retain the

knowledge base of an agency

or to better serve its clients,

some organizations have

developed creative ways to

encourage retirement - eligible

employees to remain on

the job.