Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
What is a motivated health worker?
Human resources are vital to an effective health care system [1]. From an economics viewpoint, health workers salaries make up a great share of health budgets in most countries [1]. The health worker is the gatekeeper of the health system. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
In the workplace, motivation can be defined as an “individual's degree of willingness to exert and maintain an effort towards organizational goals”[2]. Motivation is closely linked to job satisfaction, which retains workers at their jobs over time [3]. Health worker retention reduces costs to the health system of having to recruit, hire, and orient new workers and also reduces the likelihood of vacant posts [4]. As many countries currently experience a shortage of qualified health workers [5], the loss of any health worker—especially doctors and nurses—has serious ramifications for the health of people in that country [6]. Keeping health workers satisfied and motivated helps the entire health system work smoothly [2].
What motivates health workers?
Motivation is influenced by a complex set of social, professional and economic factors [10]. There are many reasons health workers remain motivated and decide to stay at their jobs. Generally, a health worker will be motivated and express job satisfaction if they feel that they are effective at their jobs and performing well. Factors contributing to motivation and job satisfaction also include strong career development, an adequate compensation, and adequate working and living conditions [10]. Having strong human resources mechanisms in place within a health system can help to ensure that the right motivational factors are in place at adequate levels to keep health workers satisfied. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
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Maintaining a positive relationship with coworkers can increase motivation. In a study in Ethiopia, nurses experienced more job satisfaction if they felt they had greater autonomy to make their own decisions regards to patient needs [9].
However, inversely, problems with career development, salary and working/living conditions are also reasons health workers become unmotivated. Any of these issues—or a combination of them—can lead to health worker dissatisfaction.
Career development is generally defined as the possibility to specialize in a specific field or be promoted through the ranks of health workers [12]. Doctors and health workers laboring in rural settings commonly cite limited career development opportunities as a demotivating factor [13]. A study of South African doctors working in rural areas found that many complained about being unable to connect to online training courses to learn a specialty [13]. A lack of promotion opportunities is another problem. Nurses in Tanzania reported working for as many as ten years without a promotion [14]. This has led to bad feelings, where the researchers point out that simple communication—such as staff appraisals and transparent promotion procedures—could lead to better morale [14].
Having limited continuing professional development opportunities—or proper training during preserver education or on the job—is another major theme among discontented health workers [12]. In understaffed clinics and hospitals in Tanzania, health workers are often asked to perform tasks beyond their scope of practice, but without adequate training. This can lead to frustration and de motivation [14]. This also creates concerns about the quality of health services provided.
Inadequate and outdated medical resources and supplies at clinics and hospitals can also contribute to health workers frustration on the job, and eventual attrition. Health workers argue that a dearth of adequate resources prohibits them from doing their jobs [12]. Doctors in South Africa reported they left their employment at rural clinics due to a lack of appropriate facilities, materials, and medical equipment [13].
Another issue is maintaining a positive relationship with management [12]. In some cases, vacant positions are left unfilled for long periods of time, increasing workloads for remaining health workers [13]. Health workers, often in rural areas, complain of a lack of supervision (or irregular supervision) from their managers or supervisors [14]. Staff feedback is especially problematic. Health workers complained to Manongi et al. [14] that the only feedback they received from supervisors was negative in nature. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Complaints about salaries is another issue. Health workers in Uganda complained to researchers that they do not earn enough salary compared to other civil servants of equitable professions [15]. In Bangladesh, health workers complained that they aren’t paid on time by the government, which is sometimes six months behind in salary dispersal [15].
How to strengthen health worker motivation?
Motivation strategies should approach these complex problems holistically: provide opportunities for career development, make efforts to ensure adequate compensations, and promote positive work environments, including supportive supervision [3],[16].
Knowing that there is room within a health worker’s career for further development is a critical factor in motivating health workers and allowing them to continue to meet the changing medical needs of their communities [17]. Increasing the number of job opportunities, whether is moving up the organization hierarchy or provided with the ability to learn new things, is an important indicator of job satisfaction [17]. Career planning – whether personal or institutional – allows health workers to increase learning and job commitment. Organizations or health systems which assist health workers in planning their careers can improve morale and encourage retention of ambitious personnel [18].
In low-resource countries, increasing salaries may not be realistic [19]. Tino Maliselo and Rita Magawa [19] argue that a more cost-effective method to augment motivation for health workers in rural areas would be for governments to provide more amenities and infrastructure (such as better roads) in those areas. A study in Asia and the Pacific found health workers value modern working facilities with proper water and sanitation systems and up-to-date lighting and communication technologies [8].
This method can also work for health workers in other locations. Providing safer and more pleasant working conditions increase health care workers’ productivity and quality of service [4]. In Kenya, health facilities successfully increased staff motivation and pride by undertaking such low-cost interventions as cleaning the public areas of health facilities, growing flowers onsite and offering free tea to staff in break rooms [20].
Insuring health workers feel safe at their job is also important to motivation, productivity and their decision to remain at work [10]. This includes such issues as providing health workers access to clean water; insuring workers have adequate supplies of safety equipment and are trained to handle chemicals properly; further, making minor adjustments to the physical environment – such as increasing ergonomics of equipment and decreasing the amount of heavy lifting for health workers – decreases the amount of absenteeism [10]. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Following positive management protocols and providing quality supervision is also important [21]. This can be done by improving the overall quality of managing. Examples include employing properly-trained managers who set clear expectations [11]; [3] increasing the time they spend with health workers [8]; having them provide appropriate and constructive feedback [22]. and establishing transparent incentive schemes [3].
Deussom and Jaskiewicz [4] argue that well designed performance-based financing systems or other types of payments for performance plans can reinforce accountability for particular services through verification and more or better supervision. Increasing accountability will compel staff to have a greater stake in meeting the facility’s performance goals [4].
But challenges often exist. Supervisors often lack quality management tools. Supervisors can have a hard time acquiring proper transportation to make trips to visit health workers. Managers also spend a lot of time fulfilling administrative duties for donors and their own administration [21].
Motivating health workers does not fall only on their supervisors. Health workers from rural backgrounds or with rural work experience are more likely to be motivated to go and work there [23]. National policy-makers and stakeholders have roles to play, too. Developing national plans to attract, motivate, and retain health workers should be conducted through evidence-based decision-making [4]. This includes leveraging proper data to help drive policy and decisions [4]. However, when working with health systems, it is often difficult to know what to measure – especially in the developing world [3].
Any motivation and retention strategy is not complete without a cost-benefit analysis, which allows policy-makers to weigh the pros and cons of specific proposals [24]. Policymakers should gather a diverse mix of stakeholders to ensure proposed policy changes are properly vetted. Finally, careful communication is necessary to ensure proper expectations are set for the health workers [24].
The ability to motivate employees is critical for managers in any industry. In healthcare, which faces tremendous change, uncertainty, and challenges, motivation becomes even more vital.
Nothing can happen without the cooperation of employees. Helping people see a common vision and feel enough of a connection to it to make the necessary efforts for its realization is the fundamental responsibility of leadership. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Basic motivation methodologies
Realize that people differ in what they find motivating. Salespeople, for example, may thrive on increased income, as the money becomes a way of keeping score. But past a certain point, bonuses aren’t the best type of motivational tool for most people.
Recognition is more important. People who want to make a difference, and that describes many who go into healthcare, want to know that they have done just that. Public recognition awards for employees who go beyond the usual call of duty or who find better ways for the organization to operate are good candidates can be a good tool.
The facilitation of communications among employees also helps. The more they work together on projects tied to the strategic goals of the provider, the greater a sense of community that develops.
Special conditions of healthcare
Healthcare is an unusual type of industry, focused at least as much on a sense of humanitarian mission as on profit. There are also personal development issues. That aspect alone can require special handling: Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Career development is generally defined as the possibility to specialize in a specific field or be promoted through the ranks of health workers. Doctors and health workers laboring in rural settings commonly cite limited career development opportunities as a demotivating factor. A study of South African doctors working in rural areas found that many complained about being unable to connect to online training courses to learn a specialty. A lack of promotion opportunities is another problem. Nurses in Tanzania reported working for as many as ten years without a promotion. This has led to bad feelings, where the researchers point out that simple communication—such as staff appraisals and transparent promotion procedures—could lead to better morale
Inadequate and outdated equipment and supplies can increase frustration, leading eventually to dissatisfaction and departure. Although money is not necessarily a primary motivator, salaries, particularly for highly trained personnel, also come into question. If employees do not feel as though they are adequately compensated for their expertise, they could become less motivated.
This is an exciting moment in human history. For the first time, people have turned the uncontrollable forces of nature—famine, sickness, and extreme poverty—into manageable challenges. This hasn’t come through any magic pill, of course. These once-insurmountable issues have been slowly brought down to size by motivated people, both individuals and groups, armed with the flexibility and desire to generate innovative ideas. Indeed, motivation is a seed that produces innovation.
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The good news is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, they're interesting, or part of something important. What sector could better fit that criteria than Healthcare?
“Healthcare is unique in that you find that most people have intrinsic motivation around the mission of helping people. Though there are a lot of problems inherent in healthcare related to burnout, it’s this notion of doing something to better people, to improve human health and to ultimately have a purpose,” says Greg Button, Korn Ferry International’s President, Global Healthcare Services. “Intrinsic motivation as it relates to healthcare is naturally embedded in the industry for most people as the purpose piece is a meaningful driver.” Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Purpose, in fact, goes beyond the walls of just the bedside provider in healthcare. In drug development, people are finding cures to some of the toughest diseases that exist; their mission is to make the planet healthier. You can find those ties throughout Healthcare, but there are other sectors that haven’t been able to achieve that. Why is it that some can find that motivation, reshaping healthcare organizations and ultimately optimizing performance? It ties back to intrinsic motivation and purpose.
“It should be the responsibility of leaders in an organization to make sure when bringing people into the organization, that these individuals are suited for a role in which they will perform with excellence. If healthcare workers can spend 80% of their day doing what they do best, it will trickle not only unto their colleagues and patients, but also their friends and family members,” says Katie Bell, Senior Client Partner and Global Account Lead for Korn Ferry’s Healthcare Sector. “Research has shown that when all factors are put together and people are doing the jobs they enjoy and are meant to do, we see significant performance improvement and impact on patient satisfaction. Better day-in, day-out results, less turnover, and when you look at teams working directly with patients there are fewer medical errors. High impact teams are comprised of individuals doing what they do best, with a great leader and in a team laden with mission and purpose for patient care. High performing teams have established transparency around performance expectations, and openly recognize and celebrate success at all levels.”
So how are we motivating our leaders? Is it individual performance? Is it team-based performance? Is it organization-performance metrics with everybody marching to the same vision, the same focus and the same goals? That’s far more effective. If you have a leader that has different goals than the front-line nursing staff or others, you don’t have that consistency or that jelling and that teaming that comes from that. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
“We’re doing that by using a combination of quality and employee engagement metrics along with technology to enhance the patient experience. These measures align closely with the purpose or mission to build that type of intrinsic motivation within your workplace,” adds Button. “And there’s no doubt there’s correlation: If you can build that motivation and people are ready to go and feel energized in the workplace, there’s a very close connection to performance. Intrinsic motivation leads to engagement, which leads to better performance, job satisfaction, and reduction in stress.”
People still have the drive to work hard, but much of this drive has become sapped inside corporate hallways and factory walls. One of the most comprehensive surveys of the American workplace finds that 70% of workers say they are not highly engaged in their jobs—a disappointing figure given the funds companies dedicate to engagement.
Korn Ferry has done a lot of work around how engagement and outcomes relate to building a successful executive profile using assessment tools and looking for key attributes that fit in this new model. Engagement is the top priority among the C-suite within healthcare. Healthcare is investing heavily in engagement data collection. Organizations are often not equipped or supported to see their data with clarity and vision. This creates an attractive entry point to clients achieve value-driven outcomes through engaged and enabled people.
“Organizations really need to look beyond scope and experience and know what kind of environment and culture they want to create and then hire people who have the DNA to naturally and intrinsically fit into the culture,” says Bell. “We can help understand the natural fit of an individual to an organization through assessment such as KF4D (Korn Ferry’s four-dimensional proprietary assessment tool). If an organization wants to be a high-purpose, high-mission, high-patient-centric culture, we must select people who are naturally like that. The ramp up time is shorter. The training is more meaningful, and it creates the environment leaders and patients want.”
In Healthcare it’s become more and more important to create a motivating environment with cohesive cultures and strong leadership in which an important mission and purpose is key; quite literally, if teams don’t function properly, a patient can die. Not very many industries that can state that, but in Healthcare oftentimes it is a matter of life and death.
“The shift is moving into outcomes, away from volume and transactions and into value and the holistic approach of what is ultimately best and what gives us the best outcome,” explains Button. “You look at re-hospitalizations. If you treat somebody, you run “x” number of procedures, you send them home, and then they come back to the hospital, you obviously missed something. It was not outcome driven, so you’re highly penalized for that.” Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Healthcare needs leaders who are naturally built that way, naturally patient-eccentric and of high integrity; the sector needs leaders who are built of the same ilk and motivated in the same way. The cascading effect of how individuals are compensated and rewarded is important, but secondary to intrinsic motivation.
The Korn Ferry Institute believes this mystery in motivation can be unlocked. According to our research, the heart of the problem centers on several very topical factors, from rapid tech disruptions to antiquated corporate structures to a disturbing rise in employee stress. Indeed, our analysis of a major global employee survey covering nearly 50 countries reveals that employee stress has risen nearly 20% in three decades. But we also believe that companies and employees together can turn the power of motivation to their favor, by creating a greater sense of purpose in the workplace, improving individual and corporate agility, and evolving leadership practices and operating structures.
The recent paper, The Case for Motivation, provides a roadmap to these steps, reaffirming the value of human capital in general and human motivation in particular. With the pace of change only increasing, stress is not likely to recede, so individuals must learn to cope, or better yet thrive, under a new management paradigm, while prevailing leadership and organizational practices must be re imagined to unleash the true adaptive potential of today’s workforce. Some measures can come with relative ease; others may require a more demanding process. But the stakes behind today’s battle for motivation could not be greater, with the very momentum for the pervasive innovations we enjoy today—and expect for tomorrow—now hanging in the balance.
Ways to Create a Highly Motivated Healthcare Workforce
Boosting motivation across an employee population can be tricky, as motivations are personal and can be as unique as people themselves. Motivating healthcare employees can be an even bigger challenge, as research shows they tend to find their motivation from intrinsic sources, which can be difficult to manage through external measures. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
“Motivation is a surprisingly complex, multifaceted topic and many theoretical behavior models have been developed by psychologists to explain it,” says Nicholas New sad, Co-Owner of Healthcare Transaction Advisors. “There is no one single factor or thing you can do to improve motivation.”
Because motivation is such a personal experience, HR leaders need to take a broad approach in healthcare employee motivation, says Natasha Alexeeva, Founder and CEO of GoGoHealth. “Some people get motivated by an opportunity to advance their career, while others seek a life-and-work balance.”
With that in mind, here are six ways to create a highly motivated healthcare workforce.
Show How Roles Fit With Goals
People are motivated when they know what they do matters, says Paul White of Appreciation at Work. That includes understanding how their work helps the organization achieve its goals, so make it clear to employees how their tasks and roles help serve patients.
“That’s important for any employee, whether they’re a member of the housekeeping staff or the director of volunteers, or the director of development, or a cafeteria worker,” White says. Front-line staff members, in particular, may not know how their work serves the greater purpose.
Hearing about the overarching effects of the organization’s work can also help, White says. For example, announcing that a hospital served 50,000 children in the past year can help all employees feel like they’re making a difference.
Recognize a Job Well Done
Employees like to be recognized, and healthcare employees are no exception. White recommends establishing a “feedback loop” that provides ongoing feedback to people to reinforce positive behaviors, such as: Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
- Positive work habits: “Thanks for getting here early and making sure things are going well.”
- A supervisor’s priorities: “Thanks for getting that report done early; now mine will be early as well.”
- The organization’s priorities: “Thanks for getting here early so we can get a jump on that project.”
- Patients needs: “Thanks for staying late and helping that family get through a hard time.”
Get Out of Employees’ Way
“If you want to motivate them, you want to get out of the way,” White says. Make it easy for employees to do their jobs by minimizing barriers and obstacles. Healthcare organizations often require piles of forms to make changes or get supplies, and White recommends looking into whether all of those are really necessary.
Physicians may be especially frustrated by requirements to use technology for record-keeping and other administrative tasks. “Doctors spend a decade in medical school and residency because they are passionate about helping and caring for people,” and HR leaders should ensure technology doesn’t stand in way of that goal, Alexeeva says.
Consider Taking a Survey—and Acting on Its Results
With the physician employment model becoming more prevalent, healthcare organizations may want to try a physician engagement survey, Newsad says. “Periodic physician engagement surveys are an effective way to assess the individual and collective perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of physician employees in a nonjudgmental way.” You can’t just do a survey, though; you must also respond to the survey’s findings.
Manage Motivation Over the Long Term
Managing motivation isn’t something you do once; it’s something you need to work on over time with the help of a strategy and measurements. Motivation can be affected by individual perceptions of barriers to success, the costs and benefits of success, the costs of failure, the severity of the problem, one’s expectations about the outcomes their actions will produce, self-confidence and peer pressure, New sad says. “Generally speaking, if you want to change a behavior, you may have to offer up specific knowledge, personal experiences, testimonials and other evidence for or against the behavior you are trying to modify.”
Motivational interviewing can help engage healthcare employees’ intrinsic motivation. It takes several weeks of training to learn how to do it correctly, but it consists of asking open-ended, nonjudgmental questions that are designed to build discrepancy between their current situation and the situation they’d like to be in, New sad says. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Remember You’re Dealing With People
Value your employees as people, not just workers, White says. They have lives outside of work that they value. Being interested in that outside life and finding ways to encourage work-life balance can help them feel more motivated about their work.
It will take time and effort to build employee motivation. Trying a variety of approaches can help you find what works for specific employees and your organization’s employee population as a whole.
1. Keep Calm: Keeping employees productive and effective during stressful situations is challenging, but it’s up to leaders to maintain order and inspire confidence. Stress is often created from the top down, as employees absorb the uncertainty they feel from their superiors. Make sure employees in leadership roles are able to keep calm in high stress environments.
2. Stay Positive: It’s easy to let a bad situation get the best of you, but a positive leader can keep people from shutting down. According to Barbara Fredrick son, a research psychologist at the University of Michigan, positive emotions help individuals and organizations thrive. They also broaden the way people think so they build their personal resources, such as connections with others, knowledge of their abilities, and physical health and strength. Committing to positive behavior helps employees build up their internal resources, which end up operating as reserves that help them cope and overcome the negative feelings stressful situations can bring on. A University of Chicago study found that writing down negative thoughts and unloading anxiety before the situation occurs has a calming effect and can increase performance. Having employees take time to write down negative thoughts about certain situations could be helpful. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
3. Make Sure Employees Are Trained: The best way to ensure that employees are prepared to deal with unexpected circumstances is to train them. Not only will it lead to better outcomes, but it will reduce stress, since workers will feel equipped to face a difficult situation calmly. Since not every scenario can be addressed beforehand, give your staff a guiding set of core values or standards of behavior that will help them figure out what to do in uncertain times. Reinforce the training often so it’s not forgotten.
4. Keep Lines of Communication Open: Effective communication is key in every organization, but when stressful events take place, open communication is essential to keeping a positive and supportive environment. Healthcare workers see more tragic things in one day than most do in a year. Encourage your employees to be open and honest about their everyday challenges and frustrations. Make it a point to touch base with everyone at least on a monthly basis to listen and provide support for some stress relief. As healthcare workers, you’re responsible for the care of ill patients, but you can’t forget about the well being of yourself and your coworkers. One study found that nurses who used effective interpersonal communication on a daily basis were able to support their own emotional and psychological development, reduce stress, and keep morale high among employees. An effective workplace communication strategy isn’t just good for business; it’s good for the overall health and well being of your staff.
5. Give Recognition: Healthcare workers have what can feel like a thankless job. They work long hours; they have to comfort fearful family members; and sometimes the outcome is negative despite their best efforts. It’s important to recognize and reward these workers for upholding your organization’s core values under times of duress.
At Work Stride we have the privilege of administering Orlando Health’s recognition program, which was awash in hundreds of positive messages between staff members after the horrible tragedy at Pulse nightclub. Employees thanked each other for working overtime, coming in on their days off, and for their skilled performance under extreme pressure. They expressed pride in their teams and in their hospital. As small as it might seem, seeing positive messages of thanks and appreciation after such a stressful event provides inspiration to all staff members. It keeps them motivated to carry on even through the most difficult of circumstances.
Ways Healthcare Managers Can Motivate Hospital Personnel
What are the most powerful practices that will motivate hospital personnel? The healthcare manager’s responsibility is to see that services are coordinated and are provided so that the hospital can function as a unified whole to benefit the patient and the community. The effective manager understands that employees need to know that they matter, to know what the organization is trying to do and their role in it, and to feel connected to others in their common efforts. The manager can optimize personnel functions by attending to these three basic human needs: to be recognized, to be informed, and to be connected.
How to Motivate with Recognition
We are motivated to do our best when our efforts are recognized and appreciated. A well-run hospital is staffed by people who care about what they do and know that their efforts make a difference in the effective functioning of that hospital. They also know that their work is seen and appreciated, by coworkers as well as by management staff and by patients. To produce this level of awareness, the healthcare manager throws a light on the work that is being performed and communicates this in ways that motivate and encourage excellence. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Successful recognition programs in hospitals are well designed and tied to the organization’s mission and goals. Excellence standards are articulated for the entire staff, and those nominated and selected for the awards are recognized in a formal way. The awards may be in the form of a plaque, a monetary gift, or some other prize that is valued by employees. Recognition awards need not be tangible; social recognition can be a powerful motivator. Examples of standards are new ways to improve services, procedures that can raise efficiency and lower costs, and work performance that went over and beyond the call of duty.
The healthcare manager can institute other recognition programs that are informal and department centered. When employees can give voice to their own ideas of what constitutes excellent service and how they would like to be recognized, their sense of ownership will be a motivating force.
Motivating by Keeping Personnel Informed
It is important for every member of the hospital staff to know that their daily work is connected in some way with the work of other staff, and to the overall functioning of the hospital. It is important for them to know where the hospital is heading, the changes that are being planned which will affect them, and also how the hospital will be affected by societal changes that are occurring. In other words, it motivates employees to have the big picture and to be part of changes that will occur to meet the needs of the future. It is motivating to be an important cog in the wheel. It is motivating to do your daily job not knowing what’s going on around you.
A major part of the healthcare manager’s work is to communicate in its widest sense–to keep all levels of personnel informed not only of information that is directly relevant to their positions, but which affect the hospital as a whole and other departments so that employees have the big picture and can adjust accordingly. To know is to be empowered.
Motivating by Establishing Connections
When provisions are made for employees to communicate with others about their common concerns, and to work together to solve their mutual problems, team work is formed. When employees get to know their coworkers as thinking/feeling persons, the sense of community grows. The healthcare manager can provide this contentedness by creating opportunities for interactions within and between departments.
The communications of the healthcare manager mentioned above is an important ingredient in building a sense of community. These should give high visibility to the goals and mission of the hospital and how they are being met. Personal stories of patients and how they were helped, success stories of remarkable medical achievements, noteworthy achievements of staff– anything that reinforces the identification with and pride of being a part of the organization brings loyalty and commitment.
The Hospital of the Future
Demographic shifts in the nation, altered life styles, technological advances and new medical discoveries will bring dramatic changes to the structure and organization of hospitals and medical services. Those hospitals will thrive that have kept their staff informed and working together toward common goals, and who were motivated by recognition for excellence. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Motivation in the workplace is influenced by a set of complex economic, social and professional factors. There are several reasons why nurses are motivated in their job and continue to stay in it.
Generally, they will be motivated and have job satisfaction if they believe that they are effective in their jobs and are able to perform well. However, passion for providing patient care, being able to choose from several specializations, the high demand for nurses as well as learning opportunities can also motivate one to be a nurse.
Here are four key reasons that nurses continue to fulfill their challenging roles despite the various pressures they are under.
1. Passionate in caring for patients
According to the International Council of Nurses, one of the things that nursing encompasses is “autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings.”
Often, one of the things that motivate nurses in their job is their passion in caring for their patients. Nurses often encounter different patient conditions in their career. The care that they provide to their patients makes a positive difference in the lives of patients and their families. Additionally, they enjoy their daily routine in dealing with various aspects of patient care.
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2. Several specializations to choose from
A motivating factor for some nurses is the many specializations that they can choose. An individual must be aware of the various types of specializations that are offered in nursing when doing her nursing studies. In Singapore, one can develop her nursing skills in several specializations after becoming a registered nurse; some examples of these include community health, critical care, ear, nose and throat, emergency, gerontology, and palliative care. In total, there are 17 specializations to choose from.
Hence, nurses can change specialties and move on to the healthcare specialty that suits them best. For instance, a nurse who likes children can choose to work in the pediatrics department; a nurse who likes being on hand to provide assistance in trauma cases can work in the emergency room. In fact, a positive aspect of nursing is that nurses can decide what they want to do based on their tolerance level and aptitude.
3. Ongoing demand for nurses
At present, there is a great demand for nurses; the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projected that the demand for nurses will rise by 2020. Hence, this motivates nurses in their career, as the need for more nurses entails that the job opportunities in this career field will be astounding for the right candidates.
Additionally, changing demographics as well as the increased prevalence of chronic disease means there will be increased recruitment for Registered Nurses. According to the data provided in the Malaysian Human Resources for Health Country Profiles for 2014, the total number of nurses is 92,681 nurses, as combined with public and private sectors. However, by 2020, this country will require 130,000 qualified nurses, thus the demand for nurses is very high (Pillay, 2017). Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
4. Endless learning opportunities
Nurses get the opportunity to interact with doctors, patients, medical staff and administrators on a daily basis. This gives them the opportunity to learn from people of other careers and add to their knowledge base. At the same time, they can sharpen their interpersonal skills. Hence, this is one aspect of nursing that motivates people to pursue the career.
Additionally, nurses can work in different kinds on establishments, allowing them to gain exposure to unique work environments. For instance, nurses can choose to work in hospitals, schools, government agencies and so forth.
There is constant challenge and excitement in the life of a nurse. Every day is a new experience and brings on new learning. While the reasons why a nurse is motivated in her job are varied and depend entirely on the individual, it is indeed a rewarding career for all. MIMS
Motivation is something we all wrestle with at one point or another. First, let's start with self-motivation. To be an effective leader, you have to find what drives you. Recently at Nursing Management Congress 2017, Patrick Baker, MA, MHA, BSN, RN, former CNO of the University of Cincinnati Health System, shared the importance of connecting the meaning of the work you do with its impact on others and how to get back to the basics of why you got into nursing and leadership. Take a moment to think about your “why.” Getting to the roots of your purpose can provide you with some intrinsic motivation.
But, it really isn't that easy, is it? Another way to motivate yourself is to be exposed to new information. One of the most impactful ways to do this is to attend a continuing-education offering in which you're gaining new knowledge. Learning is an extrinsic motivator that can increase your confidence. Another opportunity to expose yourself to new information is by attending a professional association meeting, such as the American Organization of Nurse Executives. This will allow you to see how others are approaching the same issues and can spark you into action.
Setting a goal and staying focused is one more approach to keeping yourself motivated. Establishing a goal provides you with a cause and moving toward the goal can give you positive reinforcement. When we focus on a goal, we're less likely to get side-tracked by nonessential work. And don't underestimate fear as a motivating factor. Fear of failure can often motivate us to accomplish our goals. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Now, when it comes to motivating your staff members, goal setting and staying focused also come into play. Include staff members in the goal-setting process to stimulate their interest. A word of caution: Guide your staff to set easily attainable goals to start; if the goal is too large, it can be defeating. For example, your organization has a goal to discharge 90% of patients by noon; however, your unit's by-noon discharge rate is 30%. Set the initial goal to increase discharges by noon to 35%. Once this goal is achieved, acknowledge and celebrate, and then increase the goal again. By creating internal satisfaction for your staff members throughout the process, you're actually motivating them to achieve more.
Don't forget to personalize your motivational approach by discovering what drives your team members. Take time to educate yourself on motivational theories to assist in tailoring your style to your unit's needs. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic, but the key to both is a sense of achievement tied to goals and expectations.1 With a little push, you'll be surprised how motivated you—and your staff members—become.
Using Evidence to Motivate Hospital Employees
All too often, we miss out on opportunities to learn from another area of our business. One clinical approach that can be emulated throughout the hospital is evidence-based practice, which integrates current research, caregiver perspectives and experience, and patient preferences. [For more information, see Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare by B. Melnyk and E. Fineout-Overholt;Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2005.]
Physicians and nursing professionals have been using EBP in various forms since the 1970s to improve patient care outcomes. Its longevity is due to its documented success in many different areas, including infection prevention and patient falls.
In more recent years, scholars have studied and written about evidence-based leadership and evidence-based management. A logical progression in this thinking is evidence-based employee engagement. Employees are engaged when they are satisfied (they like what they do), energized (they put effort behind it) and productive (their work contributes to organizational goals). Leaders who are effective in engaging others are facilitators of the engagement process. Because no one external source can motivate an employee, providing an environment that encourages intrinsic motivators is critical.
Using EBP as a model, leaders practicing evidence-based employee engagement can take into account current research, the leader's perspectives and experience, and employee preferences. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Current Research
We know that engaged employees produce better results. Studies conducted by human resources consulting firms and prestigious universities, and published in scholarly journals and popular business magazines, all show that engaged employees have a positive effect on business outcomes. But that doesn't mean that leaders behave in ways that engage their employees. Consider what we know about hand washing and infections: Everyone agrees that hand washing cuts down on infections, yet clinicians still often neglect to wash their hands. Therein lies the challenge of employee engagement — the research may be clear, but the leaders and employees must incorporate its lessons into daily practice.
The Leader's Perspectives and Experience
As a leader, have you spent time thinking about engagement yourself? Have you held regular discussions with your leadership team to tap into their perspectives and experiences? All too often, we focus on actions and outcomes at work at the expense of missing out on the beliefs and mindsets that drive them.
As a way to learn more about other's perspectives and experiences, ask three questions at your next leadership team meeting and really listen to the responses:
- What about engagement (being satisfied, energized and productive) did you learn as a front-line employee?
- How have these beliefs changed since you've become a leader?
- What effect do your beliefs have on your ability to create an engaging environment?
Until leaders are honest about their own biases, negative beliefs and mindsets, they will remain unproductive when it comes to engagement. Many organizations shy away from these types of discussions and miss out on a valuable opportunity to create positive change.
Employee Preferences
The final piece of the evidence-based employee engagement puzzle is employee preferences. Many health care organizations conduct employee engagement surveys that help focus on what needs to improve. This information can be helpful to involved and interested managers who believe in the power of engagement and make the time to focus on it. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
The often-missing element is one-on-one knowledge of employee preferences. Many nurse managers are overseeing 50 employees, so this becomes a daunting task. Other managers are responsible for front-line duties that take away the time needed to really get to know employees. While these challenges won't diminish anytime in the near future, highly effective leaders see engagement as a key priority and make time to learn about employee preferences.
Here are three questions to ask employees to learn more about their engagement preferences:
- Tell me about a time in the last week when you were satisfied and energized at work. What were you doing?
- What could I stop, start or continue doing to help you feel more engaged at work?
- What obstacles do you routinely face that prevent you from being engaged?
Because engaged employees produce better results, there needs to be a daily connection to each employee and his or her preferences. I'm not suggesting that you, as a manager, should do all the work; I'm saying that you need to show interest and share the accountability for engagement.
The Future of Evidence-based Employee Engagement
Many studies show that key health care metrics — including patient satisfaction, safety, infection prevention and readmission rates — improve when employee engagement is high. Using the three questions listed, current leaders have an opportunity now to transfer skills learned from years of EBP success to this timely topic.
Adopting an evidence-based employee engagement approach that combines current engagement research, leadership insights and employee preferences, leaders can positively impact important business results without subtracting from the bottom line.
The reality, when you talk about how to motivate employees, is that they're already motivated. As a manager, you're charged with figuring out how to tap into that motivation to accomplish work goals. Fortunately, you control the key environmental factors that are necessary to achieve this. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
The most significant factor under your control is your relationship with each employee. The second-most important factor is a work environment and organizational culture that foster employee motivation and engagement.
Ideally, the work culture consists of an environment in which employees are trusted, treated like the adults they are, and not micromanaged. Employees are entrusted with the values, vision, mission, and strategic framework within which they're expected to do their jobs.
They receive frequent communication, are regarded with respect and civility, and have input to every facet of the work they're hired to produce. They're also encouraged to speak up about what they believe when participating in solving a problem for a customer. And the organization trusts them with its most significant and critical financial information so they're not blindsided by business problems.
These are factors that help produce a work environment in which employees choose to be motivated to accomplish the requirements of their work. Nothing is more powerful than a group of contributing, motivated employees.
7 Ways Managers Can Motivate Employees—Today
No workplace will ever give managers the perfect work environment and culture to support their efforts toward fostering employee motivation. But you can create an environment that motivates your employees and increases their level of satisfaction by taking seven key steps, such as providing them with opportunities to grow their knowledge and skills and giving them all the information they need to do their jobs effectively. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
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Management Matters Most in Motivation
The most important emotion that employees bring to work is motivation, according to Jon Gordon, author of Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture. Although some managers want to zap emotion from the workplace altogether, Gordon argues that this is a mistake and shares his wisdom on how to plug into your employees' inherent motivation during challenging times by cultivating your relationships with them, creating a climate of trust, expecting only the best from your team, and more.
You Can Make Their Day: 10 Tips for the Leader about Motivation
Increase workplace motivation and morale by understanding that as your employees' manager, you're their passport to a boom or bust day. Words matter, but there's much more you can do to help employees get a handle on motivation and high morale, including setting high standards and clear expectations, focusing on their personal and professional development, and starting every day with a smile and a luminous attitude. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
It's All About the Managers...Duh!
David Maister, best-selling author, expert on the management of professional services firms, and former Harvard Business School professor, gives you a window into his insights on how managers can catalyze employee motivation. First and foremost, behave as if you're a part of the team by lending a hand with the work, making yourself available to anyone who has a personal or work-related problem, and actively helping your people to achieve their goals.
Leadership Inspires Motivation
Expand your motivational toolkit with six leadership actions you can take to promote trust and feelings of security in the workplace while minimizing anxieties, hostilities, and cynicism. Start by communicating honestly and frequently with each employee in your group, really getting to know your employees (and letting them get to know you), and infusing your team with your own optimism and vision. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
The Bottom Line for Motivating Employees: 10 Tips
Make progress toward creating a work environment in which employees choose to be positive, enthusiastic, and motivated. Strategies for achieving this type of environment include treating employees with respect, recognizing their contributions to the team, providing unambiguous direction, responding quickly to complaints and requests for help or feedback, and asking them to tell you what motivates them if nothing else seems to work.
You Need to Know What Motivation Is—Really
Understand that motivation is basically a person's own drive to achieve something, like winning an award or completing a project. As such, your employees don't need you to motivate them but rather to set the stage by empowering them to motivate themselves. If you get this, you'll be in a better position to structure the work environment to engage, excite, incentivize, and retain your employees.08
How to Demonstrate Respect at Work
The most common response to questions concerning what employees want from their workplace on a daily basis involves their need to be treated with dignity and respect. Investigate some of the ways you can show respect in the workplace—from watching your tone of voice and body language to delegating meaningful assignments to treating everyone with courtesy and kindness and encouraging the free expression of opinions and ideas. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Top 10 Ways to Show Appreciation
Show your employees that you appreciate them for who they are in a variety of ways, in addition to valuing their contributions to the organization. Suggestions include asking them about their interests and activities outside the workplace, bringing in the occasional bag of bagels or donuts for the team to share, or taking them to lunch on a birthday or other special day.
Provide Motivational Employee Recognition
Establish unequivocal, objective employee recognition criteria and communicate them to all employees to head off confusion, hurt feelings, and sapped morale. This means spelling out exactly the deliverables or behaviors employees will be recognized for and how they'll be recognized. It also means recognizing every employee who meets the criteria.
Clinical leaders need to be able to motivate and inspire others. As many clinical leaders are not in positions of 'power over others, they need to consider other more appropriate and effective motivational approaches. In light of this vital aspect of clinical leadership, approaches to motivating and inspiring others are considered in this chapter. The chapter explores the issue of inspiration and how clinical leaders might inspire others to follow and engage with steps to improve patient care and the health service. Motivation theory has been around since the 1940s, although it is only in recent times that its relationship to the work environment, and specifically leadership, has been recognized. The chapter discusses the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, expectancy theory, and the job characteristics model (JCM). Positive behaviour, learning to let go a little, being prepared to be wrong, and allowing others to step forward are some requisites of a clinical leader.
If your organization is struggling to motivate its healthcare call center staff, chances are that morale and job satisfaction are low. As this Harvard Business Review article points out, “happy people are better workers.” That’s why it’s important to make your employees job satisfaction a top priority. Fortunately, there are many ways you can improve your organization’s employee morale and motivate your workers to perform at their greatest potential.
Here are three tips for engaging and motivating your healthcare call center staff. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Recognize superior performance.
Seems like a no brainer, right? Well, sometimes employers forget about the simple things. Employee recognition is one of the hallmarks of a positive organizational culture. By recognizing your team for their achievements, they will be motivated to continue working to the best of their abilities. Don’t underestimate the power of a “Thank you” or “Well done.” You call center staff crave recognition for their accomplishments and appreciate positive feedback for their work. In addition, you may want to consider having a structured and achievable system of recognizing superior performance in every employee – this gives each employee, new or old, an incentive to work hard both individually and within a team. It’s basically free for you to dole out praise, but expensive to have under performing employees and high turnover.
Offer a variety of tasks.
Call center work can become very monotonous if employees have nothing to break up their day. By offering a greater variety of tasks, you can keep call center staff engaged and interested in their work. For example, many call centers can disperse tasks among calls, email, web chat, and social media channels so employees are not solely focused on over-the-phone contact. The variety of responsibilities will keep your employees on their toes and give them the opportunity to work in different capacities so they do not become bored with their jobs. How much would it cost you to cross-train staff on a variety of skills to make them more productive and happier? Probably a lot less than replacing them after a period of under performance. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Provide growth opportunities.
Unmotivated employees often feel unchallenged by their day-to-day tasks. Providing opportunities for your call center staff to grow within your organization will inspire them to aim for more advanced roles, motivating them to perform their current job at a higher level. Additionally, offer your employees options to work on projects or assignments beyond their current scope of work. Providing these opportunities gives your employees other outlets to showcase their skills and be more engaged within their work environment. Give employees the opportunity to contribute feedback and participate in shaping their work environment. It doesn’t cost you anything to do so and keeps them engaged, productive and happy.
Creating a true sense of meaning within your work environment is one of the keys to developing a culture of happiness among your employees – which will ultimately lead to increased motivation in your call center and throughout your organization.
The more you foster genuine relationship-building and give employees the opportunity to grow, the more you will build a workforce that is aligned with your organization’s mission and values.
They say the success of any facet of your business can almost always be traced back to motivated employees. From productivity and profitability to recruiting and retention, hardworking and happy employees lead to triumph. This most certainly rings true for healthcare; employees who are satisfied with their work are essential for healthcare organizations in order to deliver high-quality, patient/resident-centered care. When staff members are happy in their jobs, it has a positive effect on the quality of care being delivered. Remember, happy employees = happy patients and residents.
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Here are three ways you can motivate employees to boost employee satisfaction thereby increasing patient/resident satisfaction: Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
1. Promote Strengths-based Coaching
Strengths-based coaching is a great way to energize and enable employees to reach their full potential. With this coaching method, managers identify areas of growth that each employee should work on and set corresponding goals. They also provide consistent positive feedback. When combined with supervision, strength-based goals help employees stay connected to their purpose. Libby West by, Recruiter at Hospice of the Valley agrees, she notes: “If a person has a consistent positive attitude and heart, we can teach them.” Strengths-based coaching is a great way to motivate employees, while increasing communication between managers and employees.
2. Align Employee and Organizational Goals
When setting individual employee goals, they should be measured against organization-wide goals to reinforce how the employee’s work supports the organization’s vision. Performance management software with goal functionality enables healthcare organizations to more clearly define their objectives. With clearly defined measurable goals, employees know what’s expected of them and what they’ll be measured against to be considered successful. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
How does goal setting increase employee satisfaction? According to Christina Shalley in the Academy of Management Journal: “Managers cannot constantly drive motivation, or keep track of an employee’s work on a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers, since goals have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that helps employees prioritize tasks.” Managers can utilize goals as a mean of keeping employees on track, which will improve their performance. Improving employee performance means improving employee satisfaction.
3. Recognize Employee Achievements
For most employees, recognition for a job well done keeps them more motivated to succeed. Utilizing performance management software helps organizations create an environment that encourages managers to keep track of their employees’ varied accomplishments in order to better recognize them. In addition to using performance management software, many healthcare organizations participate in frequent acknowledgement of outstanding employee work through employee recognition programs. As part of their “Wow!” program, Heritage Community employees and supervisors are encouraged to write notes to recognize outstanding resident service. Those accolades are then converted in “Wow! Bucks” gift cards. These initiatives boost employee satisfaction by preventing employees from feeling undervalued and unmotivated. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
Cost effective programs like these are a great way to motivate employees without breaking the bank. As we learned from the HealthcareSource article on recognition in HR Pulse, two central components of Trinity Health System’s employee recognition program are the Employee of the Month and Employee of the Year awards. Judy Hare, retired Human Resources Manager and Trinity Health System Employee Reward and Recognition team member, said last year: “We have run these programs for at least eight years and it’s a big honor for staff members. When a person is nominated for Employee of the Month, managers are asked to publicly comment about what makes the employee outstanding.” Trinity Health System makes it easy for managers to find specific examples of an employee’s exception performance, since recognition and accomplishments are recorded in their performance management software.
The Employee Reward and Recognition Team at Trinity Health also developed several other ways to reward staff in non-monetary ways. For example, when managers do rounding and an employee is mentioned by a peer, thank you notes are sent to that individual’s department or home. In addition, each department celebrates employees’ years of service and birthdays. Their “Wow Team” organizes social events like an annual picnic and holiday party, and doctors also donate prizes and rewards for employees. The Employee Reward and Recognition Team is currently working with the finance department so managers can issue gift shop vouchers to employees as a small token of appreciation.
By coaching, setting goals, and recognizing your employee’s successes, you’re motivating them to perform well – boosting employee satisfaction levels and improving patient and resident care. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
An evaluation led by researchers from Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics found that when recruiting community health workers in Zambia, emphasizing career incentives rather than social incentives attracted workers who were more qualified and performed better on the job. The workers conducted 29 percent more household visits and organized twice as many community meetings, while also seeing the same number of patients. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new guideline citing this research in a recommendation that a career ladder be offered to practicing community health workers. The results also influenced that Zambian Ministry of Health to use the career incentives posters in a nationwide recruitment of a new cadre of community health assistants.
Community health workers may be one solution to the shortage of formal health workers in the developing world. Recruited from their communities, trained, and then deployed back to their communities, these workers are thought to have the necessary relationships, local knowledge, and sense of community responsibility to deliver health services to these under served areas. While small-scale, informal community health worker programs of this kind have existed for years, recently many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have sought to formalize the cadre and implement national programs at scale.
As the Zambian government got ready to launch their Community Health Assistant (CHA) program in 2010, the Ministry of Health wanted to adopt effective recruitment and motivation strategies for the new cadre. IPA-Zambia had a longstanding relationship with the Ministry of Health in Zambia, especially through Professors Nava Ashraf and Oriana Bandiera. The researchers designed an evaluation in close collaboration with the ministry that addressed the government’s key questions. Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper
The study found that advertising career incentives, such as opportunities for promotion and further professional development, attracted CHAs that were more qualified and had the same level of intrinsic motivation as those recruited with social incentives. The CHAs recruited with career incentives performed significantly better on the job: those recruited with career incentives conducted 29 percent more household visits and organized twice as many community meetings. They also managed to see the same number of patients at the health post and maintain the same quality of care. Furthermore, after one year, retention rates were identical in both groups, but longer-term data is required to establish the long-run effects on retention. Read a full description of the evaluation here.Motivating Employees in Healthcare Paper