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Human Resources
Recruiting and supporting those
who fulfill our mission.
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To recruit and retain those who will apply their values, talents, and energy to the fulfillment of our mission is the job of Human Resources. Our workers provide the educated minds and therapeutic skills to help those who are homeless and disabled to achieve permanent housing, or those in crisis to achieve safety and relief from distress. Even more, our workers demonstrate the values, care, and conduct that define who we are as an organization, and as a community.
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We always seek workers who can understand what needs to be done, and do it with efficiency and compassion. In turn, we provide workers with the flexibility and support needed to execute creative solutions for complex issues, to apply their talents in untested but promising ways, and to learn and develop their own capacities.
Meredith Hill (left) is Director of Human Resources.
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Today, successful healthcare and supportive service organizations must pursue their mission with ever-greater efficiency, and be able to prove to the community the value of their services. Our Human Resources staff members find people who can achieve these tasks, and help MHS create the values and culture to sustain their achievements.
"The greatest competitive advantage of the United States," wrote Peter Drucker in the article referenced below, "is that it attracts top knowledge workers from around the world -- not just because they earn more money but because they are treated as colleagues, not as subordinates. Knowledge workers don't believe they are paid to work 9 to 5; they believe they're paid to be effective. Organizations that understand this -- and strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way -- will be able to attract, hold, and motivate the best performers. That will be the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."
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Peter F. Drucker,
the American scholar of business management and leadership, writes about working in the nonprofit sector:
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"We talk today of the social responsibilities of business. I hope we will soon begin to talk about the nonprofit organization as the great social opportunity for business. It is the opportunity for business to develop managers far more effectively than any company or university can. It is one of the unique benefits that the social sector can offer -- to provide a place where the knowledge worker can actually discover who he or she is and can actually learn to manage him- or herself."
Drucker, P.F. (2000, Spring). Managing knowledge means managing oneself. Leader to Leader, 16, 8-10. To read the full article by Peter Drucker, click on this link to the Leader to Leader Institute Web site. Also, please note this addendum.
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The capacity to provide culturally-competent services is an important organizational value of MHS, and an important predictor of treatment effectiveness (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). MHS devotes considerable resources to ensure that services are sensitive and competently responsive to the diverse characteristics and cultures of those we serve.
MHS has successfully recruited and retained staff members having racial and ethnic characteristics that correspond closely to those of its clients, and has an Affirmative Action policy to guide its recruitment, hiring, and retention practices. The racial and ethnic characteristics of MHS employees are very similar to those of the residents of Cleveland, as shown in the table below.
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Percent (%) of MHS Clients, Staff Members,
and Residents of the MHS Service Area
of Selected Races, or Latino Ethnicity.
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Race or
Ethnicity
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MHS
Clients
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Residents of …
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MHS Staff Members 3
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Cleveland (Ohio) 1
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Cuyahoga County 2
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FY
2006
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FY
2005
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FY
2005
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African American
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52
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51
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29
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50
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49
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43
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Asian
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2
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1
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2
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1
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1
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1
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Latino
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1
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7
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4
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2
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2
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2
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Native American
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<1
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<1
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<1
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0
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0
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0
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White
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47
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42
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67
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46
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49
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54
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1 U.S. Census Bureau. (2007, May 7). State and County QuickFacts: Cleveland (city), Ohio.. Retrieved 26 June 2007 from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/3916000.html
2 U.S. Census Bureau. (2007, May 7). State and County QuickFacts: Cuyahoga County, Ohio.. Retrieved 26 June 2007 from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/39035.html
3 Employer Information Report EEO-1 for the 12-month periods ending 31 July 2006, 31 July 2005, & 30 June 2004, submitted by MHS to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. (Column sums may not equal 100, because of rounding.)
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Thoughtful and well-researched cultural competence standards (Center for Mental Health Services, 2001) guide MHS governance, clinical practices, and administrative activities. Training activities have included seminars on the differential effects of psychiatric interventions and psychotropic medications with individuals of racial and ethnic minorities, diagnostic issues among those of various cultures and ethnicities, and vernacular language use among those of diverse ethnicities.
Administrative and clinical policies and practices incorporate cultural competence standards (Center for Mental Health Services, 2001). These standards address the domains of governance, strategic planning, employee benefits, the management of information, quality assurance, performance improvement, client rights, and clinical services. All MHS staff members participate in at least one full day of cultural competence training each year. The agency's Human Resource Director heads a committee that meets monthly to address multicultural training and issues. Committee membership is made up of staff from all departments and levels of the agency. On-going training at the agency includes education of the effects of psychiatric interventions and psychotropic medications on ethnic minority persons, issues related to differential diagnosis of ethnic minority persons, and vernacular language patterns of ethnic minority persons. The agency's salary structure includes a salary enhancement for employees who are fluent in foreign languages used by our clients, and many of the agency's critical documents are available in Spanish. We maintain a service contract with a local language bank that provides us with interpreters to help us conduct assessment and treatment services 24 hours per day.
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References
Center for Mental Health Services. (2001). Cultural competence standards in managed care mental health services: Four underserved/underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. (DHHS Publication No. SMA 00-3457). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2001). Mental health: Culture, race, and ethnicity. A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: Author.
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* Addendum
We note with great sadness that Peter Drucker died on 11 November 2005, just a few days before reaching his 96th birthday. A special report in The Economist characterized him as "the most important management thinker of the past century." His thinking was of such scope, depth, and clarity that he had sound and useful ideas for organizations of all sizes and purposes. He also saw the unique values that nonprofit, charitable organizations offered to communities, as illustrated in the quotation above.
Among the most central of his concerns was how an organization defined and treated its workers. He insisted that sound business organizations, including those with the mission of changing lives, rather than maximizing profits, must define workers as valuable, creative resources. Organizations, he held, must foster learning and productive creativity among its workers. Workers, in turn, must take more responsibility for directing their careers, and making learning a life-long endeavor.
We regret the loss of this seminal thinker and genuine humanitarian, whose pioneering management concepts helped to create wealth and enrich lives throughout the world. At MHS, discussions of growth or reorganization include three questions that Mr. Drucker believed must be thoughtfully answered by all successful organizations: "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?"
Reference
Peter Drucker: Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit. (2005, November 19th-25th.) The Economist, Vol. 377, Number 8453, pp. 71-73. Retrieved 22 November 2005 from http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5165460 (subscription required).
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Copyright ©
Mental Health Services for Homeless Persons, Inc. (MHS)
1744 Payne Avenue; Cleveland, Ohio 44114 U.S.A.
216-623-6555 - TTY/TDD: 216-623-6540
The URL of this page is
http://www.mhs-inc.org/HumanResources.asp
It was most recently updated on 5 February 2008.
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