Kevin Haeberle, senior vice president and senior advisor at Integrated Healthcare Strategies, identifies five characteristics of an engaged hospital workforce.
1. Mutual respect. Under the old paternalistic management style, there was a kind of thinking along the lines of "I expect you to respect me." However, workers are more likely to be engaged in their work in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Managers who respect employees' opinions recognize there can be a variety of ways to accomplish a task. "When I respect who you are, I try to understand why you think the way you do," Mr. Haeberle says.
2. Mutual trust. Another way to engage staff is to get out of the way and let them do their work. "When you go ahead and trust people, you have created a culture [of trust]," Mr. Haeberle says. "When I ask you to do something, I'm going to assume it's going to get done." If the employee doesn't do what he said he'd do, the pact is broken. "I start losing the mutual trust," he says.
3. Open and honest communication. Traditionally, management preferred to be secretive with employees. For example, "if you were going to lay off people you would announce it just before it happened," Mr. Haeberle says. The reasoning was people would stop working hard if they knew they might be laid off. In fact, most people will continue to do their jobs well as long as their bosses deal with them honestly. Mr. Haeberle advises executives to broach the prospect of layoffs early on.
4. Maintaining a well of credibility. Creating a bond with employees should be viewed as an investment. Whenever you are engaging in mutual trust, "you are putting water in the well," Mr. Haeberle says. "The depth of the water in that well will matter when you have to take some out." You have to take water out, for example, when you can't afford annual pay increases or have to cut down on benefits, as occurred in the recession. "When you hit hard times and the well is shallow, you will experience a major negative reaction from employees," he says.
5. Better employee performance. You can measure employee engagement and see it improve, but if it is not linked to higher performance it does not have any meaning. As hospitals cut back budgets in the recession, employee engagement programs were among the first to be cut. "They were viewed as an add-on, a nice extra for employees," Mr. Haeberle says. "But true engagement should be improving your bottom line."
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