Strategic human resource management in healthcare: uncovering the barriers and challenges

This paper reports on a large scale survey into people management practices in the Victorian public healthcare\ud sector. We find that although Chief Executive Officers and Human Resource Directors are aware of strategic human\ud management and believe that they are practicing SHRM, functional managers are less optimistic. Overall respondents\ud reported the same barriers to the practice of SHRM including lack of funding and resources, and government support and\ud lack of specialist HRM knowledge and skills.\ud People First - Serving Our Stakeholders\ud 8-11 December 2004, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand\u