Critiquing a Position Description in Relation to Health Promotion - Essay Example

The human resource manager, which is a position I would like to apply for, is well established to pursue the identification, assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation of health promotion programs. The human resource manager already addresses health promotions activities such as personal employee wellbeing, ensuring a stress free working environment, and promoting mental wellbeing by ensuring the employees have time for debriefing and breaks. Health promotion is recognised under the docket of management, with a project manager or health promotion director mandated to run the program (O'Connor-Fleming & Parker 2001, p.112). However, I argue that the health promotion should be under the directorship of the human resource manager who has the capacity to develop workplace structures to ensure safe workplace environments.

Agreeably, health promotion does not primarily focus on safe workplace, but incorporates aspects of this role of the human resource manager, namely personal wellbeing, safe facilities, and ensuring safety. This assumption is derived from the description of health promotion that it comprises of educational, organisational, and environmental activities designed to promote employee health and safety including that of their families (Chenoweth 2000, p.5). The activities lead to an improvement of health and wellbeing among the community members, and help in maintaining good mental, physical, economic, and social wellbeing, that facilitates the improvement of the workplace and employee productivity.

As noted in the introduction, the human resource manager develops with some of the activities attributed with health promotion. These include ensuring mental wellbeing by facilitating debriefing sessions and ensuring employees have times for breaks, promoting a stress free environment, and looking after personal wellness, including physical fitness, self-confidence, job satisfaction, emotional well-being, and motivation as part of safe workplace programs (McNamara 2009). Furthermore, efficient working environment and health promotion is enhanced when the human resource management is part of decision-making because health promotion involve the human component, which is the work of the human resource department (Erven 2008).

Despite the work already being done by the human resource manager and the potential in health promotion, some of the aspects of health promotion are dependent on the higher management, whereas they would be more effective under the human resource management. The health promotion attributes left out of the human resource manager docket include programme planning, advocacy, lobbying, networking, and implementation of activities classified as health promotion. These activities have been under higher management that mostly appoints a health educator to address the educational approaches, and ensure information transmission as well as planning and evaluation of the programmes (O'Connor-Fleming & Parker 2001, p.115). Instead, these should be part of the human resource manager, who can pursue effective methods of planning through to evaluation of the programme activities.

Agreeably, even when the aspects of health promotion are embedded with human resource manager's duties, critical integration should be addressed to ensure the manager maintains all the critical phases. The