Manage your Morale
August 1, 1998 4 minutes read
Manage your Morale
By Liz Jazwiec, RN, President, Liz Jazwiec Consulting, Crestwood, IL.
So often in health care, I hear caregivers say, "Morale is at an all time low" as if this observation is independent of themselves. Or more often, people wonder what administration is going to do about poor employee morale. The way you feel about your job is in your control. The organization you work for cannot determine how you feel about the work you are doing. It is of great concern to me that individuals in healthcare have given up the control of their morale.
As I travel around the country speaking to emergency department personnel, the frustration and hostility that seems to be expected and acceptable sadden me. The deeper concern is that so much of this discontent is with issues that are not going to go away. Some of the reasons I hear are, "we aren't staffed well enough, the patients are too demanding, things are changing all the time". . . I hate to break it to you, but these reasons are not going to go away. Staffing is not going to get better next year, or the following year, or even the next 10 years. If you link your job satisfaction to issues that are going to be present for at least the next 10 years, you are sentencing yourself to be miserable for the next 10 years.
As far as patients being too demanding or too unrealistic or too whatever, you need to think about your own job satisfaction. It is impossible to feel good about your job if you don't like the patients. Period, end of discussion. Ponder this for another moment: If you do not like the patients, and this means all of them, you can never expect to be fulfilled in your career.
Change is often given as a source of discontent. We all know that the only thing we can control about change is the way we react to it. If we decide to resist change, it is a certainty that we will make our day-to-day work life more difficult. Learning how to manage and react to change will help us develop a hardiness that will be necessary for the next several years in healthcare.
The one aspect of change that is not acceptable is the persecution syndrome that I find amongst healthcare workers. We feel as though we have been singled out as an industry to have to change against our will. Every industry is forced to go through profound changes on a continuous basis. Healthcare is not the only industry that is being challenged to change.
Some say to me, "yes, but healthcare is regulated by entities that don't understand us, such as insurers and the government." Guess what-so are other industries. There are many, many businesses that are controlled by people that don't understand the interworking of their operations. Manufacturing, banking, and transportation are all examples of other industries that have to meet regulations set by organizations that do not fully understand them. And the worst, most difficult contingency to have to yield to, is the general public.
We are a tough group to please. We don't have any set guidelines or standards, yet we make decisions that influence and control a business's success. Most of us do not understand what it takes to make a good garment, or create a gourmet meal but we certainly regulate those businesses by controlling their cash flow.
Staffing, patients, and change are only some of the reasons I hear being cited for this wave of bad morale. The message that I want to deliver is that we have to manage our own morale. It is too important to put in the hands of anyone else. We spend about 2000 hours a year at work. That is an awful lot of time to be miserable. I am going to list some tips that you can take in order to take control of your morale. The purpose is to acquaint you with the concept of taking charge of the way you feel at and about work. In future columns, I will explain these measures in more detail.
Here are 10 steps to regaining the control of your morale:
1. Plan your career-are you doing what you want to be doing?
2. Decide to be happy-yes it is a decision not an occurrence
3. Get out and interview-it helps to see the bigger picture
4. Manage up-this means manage your boss
5. Communicate-we need to learn to communicate about our needs
6. Accept change-remember it is here to stay
7. Realize that we need each other-more than ever
8. Be a good leader and a good follower-sounds crazy but we need to be both
9. Do something different-you've been in the ED how long?
10. Have fun-please do not underestimate the power of fun
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