CASE 14: Hiring a Competent Health Promoter: Can Competency Statements Help?

Saraz Frasier has been the manager of Special Programs and Healthy Communities at her health unit for the past five years. She is a true trailblazer within her organization. Saraz has helped transform her team into an innovative, progressive, and health equity-driven team. This team is responsible for promoting health, planning, conducting, and implementing health initiatives and health programs, working with community partners, developing policy, and reducing disparities within the community. Saraz has recently been tasked with hiring a new health promoter for her Healthy Communities team. This new hire will help lead Saraz’s team in health promotion and help plan special health programs. She is determined to find a candidate who will understand and contribute to her team’s current dynamic, work ethic, and equity-related priorities, and to the organization’s vision and desired culture change. The top three candidates were already interviewed this past week. Saraz now needs to decide who the best person is for this position. As she is thinking about finding a reliable way to evaluate and compare the three excellent candidates, Saraz opens her email only to find a webinar on the Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies. It’s a sign! She will use the Competencies to evaluate and compare her three candidates in order to hire the best person for the job. The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies outline the skills, knowledge, and abilities that health promoters should possess to fulfill their mandate efficiently and adequately (Health Promotion Canada, 2015). These Competencies serve as a framework upon which health promoters, and others who work within health promotion, can base their work and practice their skills in targeting health, health equity, and the social determinants of health (Health Promotion Canada, 2015). Saraz can strategically use these competency statements to create a profile of the perfect candidate for the position, based on the skills, abilities, and knowledge that she requires, and then compare the three qualified candidates to this profile. The candidate who best reflects the Health Promoter Competencies and Saraz’s ideal candidate profile must be chosen soon, as these skills are required to undertake the type of work conducted by the exemplar Healthy Communities team at Saraz’s health unit. All three of Saraz’s candidates are competent, skilled, and knowledgeable. Saraz is looking for an innovative leader who possesses the required education and experience, and understands and values the complexities involved in public health. Saraz has to take one last look at her candidates, using the ideal candidate profile she has developed based on the Competencies, to determine who is most likely to best fulfill her expectations of a competent health promoter