The NHS is Britain′s largest employer, and largest employer of personnel specialists, yet texts concerned with the NHS are strangely rare. Burchill and Casey′s contribution is welcome, therefore, providing a useful introduction to the subject of HRM generally, and its practice in the NHS in particular, and presenting case material which helps to contextualise personnel activity in this sector. The book would serve as a helpful starting point for someone new to HRM or to the health service. A reader with some familiarity with the subject matter and the context might find the book a little too limited in scope and delivery to meet their requirements fully.
These limitations are to some extent related to the approach that the authors take. A book carrying this title could take a number of interesting angles: for example a review or critical appraisal of HRM practice in the NHS, or a collection of case studies from different NHS employers which illustrate the diversity of practice. Some readers might be a touch disappointed, as I was, to find that this book attempts neither of these things. Instead, as the authors make clear, their aim is, to “provide an introduction to those topics generally associated with the term “human resource management”′ (p. xi). To achieve this the book follows a consistent pattern, each of the core chapters commencing with an introduction to a particular HR topic (for example, recruitment and selection, equal opportunities) and ending with a report on practice within a particular NHS trust (enigmatically referred to throughout as “our trust″). What we have, therefore, is an HRM textbook with an NHS focus. Whilst this may not be the most interesting approach to take, it is certainly a legitimate and potentially valuable one, and the book must be assessed on the basis of what it sets out to achieve. I think that there are two relevant criteria in this case:
- 1
the extent to which the book provides a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to HRM; and
- 2
the extent to which the case material illuminates the issues raised.
Readers may not find it entirely convincing on either count.
Given the scope and size of the book, each chapter only has room for a basic, if sound, introduction to the subject matter, before proceeding to the case study material. This varies in quality from chapter to chapter. The two sections on industrial relations provide an excellent introduction to the subject and a particularly clear entree to the complexities of this issue in the NHS. The chapters on development and, particularly, recruitment and selection, are weaker, drawing on a limited and rather dated literature. Given the need to allow room for the NHS case material, these chapters, when viewed as a whole, provide a necessarily more brief and less comprehensive coverage than one might find in a more general HRM text. This places an onus on the case material to make up the deficit, but it is in its use of this material that the book is at its least convincing.
The examples from the NHS trust serve as a good illustration of the HR topics introduced in each chapter but it is unfortunate that the authors have not found room to do a little more than this. The case material does not, for the most part, offer very much more than a description of practice in “our trust”. This has two consequences. First, these sections are a little dry, failing to capture the richness of HR practice in the health service. One does not get a “feel” for what it is like to be an HR manager in the health service or a line manager grappling with a range of HR issues as part of a wider role of managing resources to deliver a service. Indeed there is no detailed consideration of the nature, status and organisation of the HR function in the NHS. This might have helped to illuminate the context in which HR decisions are made as well as drawn out the issues around power and professional groups which pervade the health service. Second, there is little critical evaluation of practice or discussion of alternative approaches that might have been adopted. Greater use of comparative material from other trusts might have provided some interesting context and points for discussion. As it is, the reader is left to do rather a lot for her/himself. I suppose that there is a case to be made that this is no bad thing! I would exempt the final chapter from this criticism. Whilst necessarily only providing the briefest review of the issue of pay and flexibility it uses the case of the NHS in an altogether more analytical and critical way.
Whilst the chapters dealing with the functional areas of HRM provide a clear and accessible theme, the overall structure of the book is less coherent and convincing. The authors make a good case for opening with a chapter on HR planning on the grounds that this subject provides a conceptual link between the areas of personnel activity which are dealt with later and the business of providing health services. Unfortunately the impact of making this connection is lost as the next chapter retreats into a review of the debates around HRM, which might itself have made a better starting point. One important consequence of weakening the link with HR planning is that the reader may not grasp that HRM could be anything more than a series of loosely connected activities. The final chapter, on pay and flexibility, has few clear links to the remainder of the book. It is strangely positioned, offering as it does an important new subject rather than a summary or reflection on the content of the book as a whole (which incidentally would have been helpful). Indeed, the sequence of chapters is a little unconventional, commencing as it does with industrial relations, whereas recruitment and selection does not appear until chapter eight. This contrasts with the “life‐cycle” approach of many other texts, and I am not sure that readers would necessarily find it to be an improvement. The ordering of chapters, as with their quality, may reflect the authors′ interests rather more than the needs of the reader.
The authors also offer, in chapter ten, case study exercises for teaching and learning purposes. These are interesting and practical, and there are helpful suggestions as to how these might be used. There are only two of these and both have an employee relations focus. The book might have benefited from an exercise of this kind at the end of each chapter, and it is pity that the structure and scope of the book did not allow for this. As it is, a reader seeking to use the book as a teaching text is treated to a tantalising glimpse of what might have been.
This brings me back, by way of conclusion, to a question that concerned me throughout. Which readership would find this book most appropriate for their needs? A reader with a specialist interest in HRM in the health service might find the case material too limited in scope and unimaginatively used to be fully satisfied. On the other hand a reader seeking a general introduction to HRM would probably benefit from a text whose depth of coverage is not compromised by a need to provide extensive case material. However, there is enough good material here to meet the needs of, for example, health service line managers taking on devolved responsibility for human resources, or HR practitioners embarking on their first role in the NHS. I would certainly have benefited from reading this book at that stage of my career, and on that basis I would recommend it to those readers.
