Whether you are a senior executive, middle manager or frontline staff member, healthcare seems to get more stressful and complicated every day. Endless regulations, increasing financial challenges, pressures to improve quality and safety. And now, recovery from the pandemic has created a  healthcare staffing crisis in many organizations. Because of this, how to increase employee engagement is at the top of most healthcare organizations’ priority list. But as the issues become increasingly complex, the communication frontline healthcare professionals need most from managers arguably becomes more straightforward, focused and – perhaps counter intuitively – basic as times get more complicated. Think about frontline  employees’ most fundamental concerns: Do you appreciate my work, especially in light of the stress I’m often under? Have you helped me understand important issues and

When we’re conducting an Experience Snapshot to help healthcare organizations better understand ways to improve staff engagement, one of our focus group questions to frontline staff is especially revealing. What happens to lower performers on your team? Answers range from “someone talks to them to help them do better,” to “nothing.” More revealing than their spoken answers are their non-verbals. You can guess which answer is accompanied by eye rolling and a resigned tone. Frontline healthcare leaders wanting to reduce turnover by finding ways to improve staff engagement may be reluctant to have frank conversations with lower performers. “I can’t afford to lose anyone right now,” is an understandable concern. But lack of fairness in the workplace is one of the six root causes of

Among challenging workforce issues, how to retain nursing staff and reduce traveler/agency costs is at the top of most provider organizations’ agendas. Recent news may appear to signal welcome relief. While everyone talks about traveler pay, research is revealing there can be major downsides for nurses who chose this path, too. A recent survey conducted by nurse.org found the following key trends: 70% of travel nurses feel unappreciated 73% of travel nurses feel unsafe at work Travel nurses have felt more uncomfortable making decisions outside of their comfort zone/moral code in the past year than other nurses Agency/travel nurses were least likely to say “Nursing is a great career” In addition to these issues, the demand for travelers is falling. In Kaiser Health News, writer

Why do we work? That may seem like a simple question. But for healthcare organizations trying to figure out why nurses are leaving their jobs, it may be the question to contemplate. What attracts and retains employees: cash, career or calling? Research conducted by Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, organizational behavior professor at Yale University’s School of Management, explains that employees think about work as: A job focused on pay to support family, hobbies and life outside of work (“cash”) A path to success and prestige (“career”), or An integral part of their lives and individual identity (“calling”). Dr. Wrzesniewski found that employees in most workplaces are evenly divided among these three categories. She also discovered that individuals who have a strong “calling” orientation report higher satisfaction

Great leaders recognize early that leadership development in healthcare is not a straight nor smooth path. Like any effective organizational improvement strategy, personal improvement is a lifelong journey. The best leaders are always looking for ways to get better, especially with the organizational recovery challenges that the pandemic has thrown at them. The journey of introspection in healthcare leadership development can be advanced in many ways, but we’ve found that one question is often a great place to start and continually assess progress: Who’s the best person I’ve ever worked for, and what did s/he do differently that I want to emulate? Reading books or attending workshops on healthcare leadership development can be helpful in understanding best practices. But there’s nothing quite like seeing a

Several weeks ago during an NBC Nightly News story on the effects of nurse burnout, I heard a tired, dedicated nurse from Little Rock voice in frustration, “… and please don’t order us any more pizza.” In a face-to-face conversation with a health care worker a few weeks ago, I heard a similar sentiment: “If one more person tries to hand me a piece of candy, I’m going to throw it back in their face.” Even before today’s concerns about the effect of nurse burnout, how to best recognize staff has been an issue that I’ve seen leaders grappling with since the beginning of my career. I’ve seen it all, from complicated points-and-prizes systems to “thank you” candy bars with the hospital’s logo. In the