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Fresh, usable ideas to help your team think differently about patient and team engagement
employee well-being

Employee well-being: substance or slogan?

As stress, depression and anxiety have surged in the workplace in recent years, especially among Millennials and Gen Zers, “employee well-being” has become a popular organizational catchphrase. But despite this increased awareness and focus, employee well-being numbers continue to trend in the wrong direction. According to a Gallup study, poor mental health costs the US economy almost $48 billion annually in lost productivity. So, what is going wrong? Are organizations making investments into well-being that simply are not working, or as the phrase goes, is there just a lot of noise and not enough music? The answer is somewhere in the middle. The Role of Middle Managers in Boosting Employee Well-Being Many organizations have increased efforts to fostering employee well-being — and their employees have

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Organizational purpose - nurse comforting a patient in her home

How leaning into “why” helps staff better embrace and support team goals

This article is the third in a series unpacking the S.M.A.R.T. goals model, in which we adapt the acronym to focus on achieving better outcomes, not just writing better goals. This article dives into redefining the ‘M’ from “measurable” to “meaningful”, emphasizing the “why” and higher organizational purpose behind our goals. “Please help me connect the dots!” In our work with frontline health care staff, this plea is one of the most common ones we hear. With new protocols, payer requirements, and regulations shifting constantly, staff understandably struggle to make sense of all of these changes. That’s why setting goals is just step one. Linking them to organizational purpose and exploring them in ways that are meaningful to your team is essential to have a

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making remote work for employees and employers

Balancing flexibility and inclusion: 5 ways to make WFH work better for everyone

Is working from home (WFH) a wonderful thing for workers and companies, or a necessary accommodation during the pandemic that needs to go away? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle as we better understand the limitations of working from home and its long-term impact on the workforce. In our work with frontline leaders and staff, we’re seeing three major realities emerge: Managers with remote employees have to work differently – and often harder – to keep them meaningfully connected to the company and their colleagues. Organizations should be asking themselves whether they are giving these leaders the training, support, and resources (including time) that they need to retain staff and successfully meet operational, quality, and service goals. Remote work is tougher for new

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Healthcare Employee Engagement

Are goals providing a clear, specific path to achieving success for your team?

In our last blog, we outlined a smarter way for managers to approach S.M.A.R.T. goals. Focused on how to achieve results rather than just improving goal-writing, our model emphasizes how leaders can better use goals to focus their team’s efforts, gain buy-in, and deliver superior outcomes. In doing so, we changed the M, A, and T in the original model: While there are a few variations on the original S.M.A.R.T. goals model, the “S” almost always stands for “specific.” Writing a SMART goal that is specific means that all aspects of the goal are clearly defined and that it answers the standard 5 Ws (who, what, when, where and why). But even when a well-written goal is specific, it still usually focuses on what you

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setting and communicating effective goals

How to set and communicate team goals to achieve better results

If you’ve worked in any large organization, you’ve probably been encouraged to write S.M.A.R.T. goals. This easy-to-remember acronym was originally introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review by authors George Doran, Arthur Miller, and James Cunningham. If one of their goals was to develop a memorable model that would stick in management practice, then they’ve been extremely successful. In fact, when I speak to groups and ask, “Has anyone heard of ‘SMART’ goals?”, almost every hand in the room goes up. However, despite its memorability and simplicity, the SMART goal approach by design has limitations. As suggested in the authors’ original article title – “There’s a SMART Way to Write Management Goals and Objectives” – the focus of the model is on the structure

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leader new year's resolutions

4 New Year’s Resolutions Leaders Should Make (and Keep) in 2024

‘Tis the season of New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, improve finances, and stop a myriad of bad habits. But if leaders want to improve their work life as much as their personal life, they also should be contemplating the resolutions it will take to make real progress in improving staff engagement and retention this year and beyond. Not surprisingly, every senior leadership team I’ve talked with over the past several months has listed “improving staff engagement” and “reducing turnover” among their top organizational goals. High turnover is not only extremely expensive; frontline managers and staff tell us it is exhausting. Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and onboarding require focused physical, intellectual, and emotional effort for the entire team. And when someone resigns, it starts all over

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3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Diving Into Workplace Conflict

Conflict. Just the word can make even the most confident and assured of us at least a little uncomfortable. So the idea of embracing – sometimes even encouraging – workplace conflict as a strategic leadership practice is one many managers, especially new ones, struggle with. One school of thought professes that workplace conflict is always good, emphasizing that different points of view help a team make better decisions and constructively challenge one another. A recent Harvard Business Review article, “Why We Should Be Disagreeing More at Work,” points out that disagreements are an inevitable, normal, and healthy part of relating to other people. Indeed, there is no conflict-free workplace. But even those who believe that more is better when it comes to conflict will admit

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Are your team’s goals driving better results? Maybe we need a SMARTer approach.

If you’ve worked in any large organization during the past 30 years, there is a very high probability that someone recommended that you try setting SMART goals. This easy-to-remember acronym was originally introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review by authors George Doran, Arthur Miller and James Cunningham. If one of their goals was to develop a memorable model that would stick in management practice, then they’ve been extremely successful. When I speak to large groups and ask, “Has anyone heard of “SMART” goals?”, almost every hand in the room goes up. Despite its memorability and simplicity, setting SMART goals has limitations. As suggested in the authors’ original article title – “There’s a SMART Way to Write Management Goals and Objectives” – the focus

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3 Tips for Dealing With Politics (or Other Touchy Subjects)

Sometimes, inspiration for my blog post comes from unexpected places – like a quiet, late-evening dinner on the road. After a successful day with a client, I arrived back at my hotel for a later-than-usual dinner. There were only a few people left in the restaurant, and I was seated near a table of three gentlemen. While I wasn’t interested in eavesdropping, it was impossible to not hear their conversation in the quiet room. From their discussion it was clear that they all worked for the same company and were traveling together on business. Two middle-aged men were obviously more senior managers, and they were accompanied by a junior colleague who appeared to be in his 20s. What surprised me was how their discussion turned

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Why managing remote employees is a major equity and inclusion challenge

No human resources strategy has gotten more attention over the past several years than diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) – and, more recently, belonging. In addition to being the right thing to do, smart companies know that making their workplace more welcoming and equitable to employees of all backgrounds increases the total talent pool they can attract and then retain. This is the third installment in our series Stuck in the Middle, which takes a fresh look at the challenges facing frontline leaders in today’s labor market. In a word, DEI is about differences – valuing them, embracing them, and supporting them. And post-pandemic, one of the most significant emerging differences across workforces is where employees work. Whether you believe remote work is the best way

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