HR Pulse - Summer 2008 - (Page 39)

ployees with greater independence, authority, and control over their jobs. The objective is to make employees less dependent on their manager to make decisions or take action on their own. However, too many employees don’t possess the necessary skills, maturity, work and service ethic, intrinsic motivation, or emotional intelligence to be self-managed. With increased employee freedom must come personal accountability: the willingness to “do the right thing when no one is looking.” Freedom without individual responsibility leads to a lowering of standards, chaos, and despair. Highmaintenance employees, in particular, require a more “hands on” leadership style to ensure that the work gets done, policies and procedures are adhered to, and people are working in a collaborative manner. On the other hand, performance quality improves when an effective manager is around to directly supervise staff activities. Employee relations research clearly indicates that quality time with a respected manager is a key determinant of job success and satisfaction. And a distracted manager, one who is not focused on the needs and expectations of employees, is a major source of dissatisfaction. Your hospital may be going through some hard times and, in response to economic realities, must make difﬁcult and unpopular decisions. But most reasonable employees will understand and adapt to these circumstances, providing they have an accessible and approachable manager who is able to explain the situation. In fact, the ﬁrst-line supervisor is in the best strategic position to answer employee questions and market upper-level management decisions. Are your supervisors provided the resources of time and information to serve as effective liaisons between employees and administration? Leadership training and development are not enough to effectively address the growing communication gap between employees and management. Your hospital must ﬁrst identify and clearly communicate its vision of the management role that includes effective customer/employee relations and performance-management responsibilities. Next, it must develop standards, recognize and hold all managers accountable for the following activities: • Spending quality time with employees and customers • Maintaining a positive work environment that facilitates employee success/satisfaction • Recognizing and rewarding employees • Providing constructive criticism/documenting performance deﬁciencies Show me how managers spend their time, what they are recognized or held accountable for, and I can tell you what the hospital really values. • Including employees in decision-making processes whenever appropriate • Sharing relevant information with employees • Building teams within and between shifts, work units, and job classiﬁcations • Creating a “retribution free” communication environment where employees can play the role of loyal devil’s advocate without fear of retaliation • Developing a learning culture where continuous quality improvement is on display within the work unit. Show me how managers spend their time, what they are recognized or held accountable for, and I can tell you what the hospital really values. Most hospitals have expended a great deal of energy developing their mission, vision, and value statements. They are all well written and well meaning. But sometimes there exists a huge disconnect between what the hospital preaches and what managers face on a day-to-day basis. Burn out is not a function of working hard and long hours for a sustained period of time. It comes from working hard on activities that are of little value to a person. Most managers want to spend more quality time within their work units and are feeling guilty for not being there for employees. They are frustrated by time-consuming organizational mandates, when they desire to be engaged with their staff and customers. Many managers come to work early, leave late and take work home with them. They are straining their relationships with signiﬁcant others because of the workload inherent in the job. They feel that they are on a treadmill, running very fast only to remain in the same place. They are suffering from an acute form of cognitive dissonance that comes from having to act in ways that are inconsistent with their values. This condition can result in acute stress and conﬂict. The only way managers can alleviate this problem is to change their behavior to make it more consistent 39 HR Pulse Summer 2008 >>

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Pulse - Summer 2008

HR Pulse - Summer 2008 Contents Pulse Points Executive Director's Letter President's Message HR Leader Profile: Carol Bank, SPHR Special Report: Building a Thriving Workforce Creating A Best Place to Work Employee Morale Don't Set Up Your Managers to Fail From Tedious Task to Strategic Process Employer-Assisted Housing Changing the Paradigm of Nurse Recruitment Workforce Recognition: Simple Gestures Go a Long way Advertisers' Index

HR Pulse - Summer 2008

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