a href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13399006">Disengagement Party appeared on economist.com, the web portal for The Economist, on March 31. This brief unattributed op-ed piece explored the relationship between employee engagement and the current economic recession. It opened by questioning the belief that the high levels of employee engagement seen in successful companies over the past decade were due to factors distinct from economic success. The article went on to explore some things that might be done to re-establish - or at least stem erosion - in engagement during a down economy. There are some pearls here for health care leaders - who have always relied upon the personal commitment and mission orientation of employees without having the luxury of being able to bestow large economic rewards to motivate the workforce.
The article begins by referencing a study by Quantum Workplace demonstrating that over 60% of companies surveyed in both 2007 and 2008 reported a decline in employee engagement over this period - the first time they had seen this in many years. The author comments: "This will come as a disappointment to some advocates of employee-engagement initiatives, who were convinced such efforts would be pretty much immune to the economic cycle." If that were the case, they go on, engagement would be relatively insensitive to economic hardship. Granted, their focus was on the financial industry, but some lessons can be generalized.
To be fair, in most health care provider organizations, employees who are neither physicians nor senior executives have generally not received substantial financial bonuses or incentives to reward their work in quality, patient satisfaction, productivity and efficiency. Engagement has usually come through management's success in promoting patient, community, professional, mission. So it might have been interesting to use this work force as a "control group" for the survey.
But that doesn't mean health care employees are not at risk for disengagement during times of financial hardship. It's not unreasonable to assume that with increasing external financial pressures, even the mission oriented health care work force could slip in its engagement. This could be due to distractions and worries about the economic environment in general - or as a result of personal and family financial or credit limitations that are directly related to the current economy.
The authors take it as an article of faith that adding back large economic incentives (at financial services companies) at this time is a non starter strategy for stabilizing employee engagement. But they do identify some strategies organizations can use to stem further engagement erosion. And some of these might be tools for health care leaders to consider preemptively. Here are a couple:
- Maintaining low cost but high visibility "perks" that benefit employees communicates that the organizations "cares" about them and honors its commitment to employee recognition. These might include such tokens as modest rewards and awards for excellence, refreshments at certain meetings, subsidized parking, certain professionally beneficial travel and education benefits, low cost food at employee cafeterias, etc. Many of these are easy to cut, non-essentials that have marginal impact on large organizational budgets yet are symbolic of organizational workforce culture. They should not be seen as wasteful spending.
- Regular reporting on organizational operational and financial performance, even if unflattering, should not be eliminated or reduced. This has the effect of distancing management from employees, and actually increases fear and anxiety about organizational viability and job security, If we can't talk about it, it must be really bad. Openly engaging employees in realistic discussions about performance is not only reassuring but might yield some constructive ideas.
You can undoubtedly think of others. The point is that there is plenty of objective evidence that a highly motivated workforce positively impacts organizational performance - in health care as much as anywhere. And this recession is real, deep, and likely to last longer than we would like. While it has largely spared the health care industry itself (so far) it certainly impacts our work force. So investments we can make to sustain workforce morale, engagement, and commitment should be considered seriously.
We have used this blog's Leadership in a Recession series to identify a number of preventive and preemptive strategies health care leaders can begin to think about and use to preserve organizational health. We'd be interested in hearing about others from you - so please comment.
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