Have staffing issues? Use common sense
By Stephen W. Earnhart, MS
CEO
Earnhart & Associates
Houston, TX
In nearly every business, the single largest expense and asset is people. Staff! Full time, part time, per diem, travelers — however you classify them, they are the largest line item on your budget, and often your largest headache.
Every company and industry with more than one person has staffing issues! Whether you are on staff at the local hospital or working in a surgery center, there are issues associated in how you interact with your peers, supervisors, and/or employees. Dealing with personalities, egos, demands, and shortness of. Also overstaffing, increasing, reducing, cutting back, hiring, firing, managing, tracking, laying off dealing with staff!
Adjectives describing staff members to me over the years are: demanding, frustrating, exhilarating, surly, committed, aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, bipolar, asset, brutal, whiney, psycho, best, rude, worse, fun, dangerous, eager, timid, and, the best of them all, awesome! Staff is the reason we have managers, personnel departments, human resource professional, headhunters, attorneys, insomnia, and time-consuming details all focusing around individuals.
I want to share some of my experiences in dealing with staffing from hundreds of clients over the years, be they hospitals or freestanding facilities. More than revenue or profits, staffing is the number one issue I hear about from surgeons, anesthetists, administrators, and staff. Fifty percent of the individuals at each location will tell me their problems stem from too little staff: "People here are over worked." "They don't get their breaks." "We are going to lose them." Etcetera. In the same hospital, I hear the other 50% telling me the opposite. "There are too many people here doing nothing." "Members of the staff are falling over themselves." "Why do we have so much staff?" Etcetera. It is 100% predictable.
So, what is the right answer? How much staff is too much, just enough, or too little? How do you measure it? How do you track your staff and with what? As surgical consultant, this is music to my ears. I can assure each of you that you are not the only one who has issues. We all do! I have it in my own company, and I should know what I'm doing!
Let me try to sum up staffing in requirements for every facility out there: common sense! Software tracking systems, scheduling tools, seminars, experts, and conferences will never replace using common sense to solve your staffing issues.
Common sense advice for the manager:
- It is common knowledge to most that if you assign a task to a group of people, it will not be done as well as if you had assigned it to just one. The more people assigned to any task that we deal with in healthcare, the more they think it is someone else's responsibility and the task will suffer. Never assign something to more than one.
- People work better and harder if they know they are being watched. Watch! Walk around your environment. Ask questions of your staff. The old school term is "management by walking around."
- Be a leader. No one wants to work for someone who is wishy-washy. Make the difficult decisions. Stay with them unless it is shown that it is the wrong decision, and then have the courage to adjust the first decision. We all make many decisions in management. The more decisions we make, the higher the risk for making wrong ones. When it happens, admit it, adjust, and move on.
- Socialize with people who are outside of the workplace. You might consider yourself to be the exception, but a well-liked supervisor or manager is ineffective. You want to have your staff's respect, not friendship.
- Stop using Facebook. Your staff saw what you did on your vacation, and it was not pretty.
Common sense advice for the staff:
- Working for a paycheck is a terrible way to make a living. If you can change your outlook on your job to the point that you like it, it will be much more rewarding for you.
- Never accept a task from your manager that you do not understand. Ask until you understand what is expected of you. If you have to ask too many times on common sense issues, then you probably need to get another job that is easier to understand.
- Never get involved in office politics if you can avoid it. It is not like a gang where you will lose a finger if you don't join. Rise above the petty stuff.
- Never hang around anywhere in the facility! If you are not busy or have finished everything that you need to do, hide!
- Stop using Facebook. It hurts more people than it helps in the workplace. Take my word for it: Your supervisor sees everything you write! Get a paper diary with the little key lock, and put it under your bed instead.
- Practice smiling in front of a mirror. Keep practicing until it doesn't look fake. It really does make a difference at work. [Editor's note: Earnhart & Associates is a consulting firm specializing in all aspects of outpatient surgery development and management. Earnhart & Associates new address is 238 S. Egret Bay Blvd., Suite 285, Houston, TX 77573-2682. Phone: (512) 297.7575. Fax: (512) 233.2979. E-mail: [email protected]. Web: www.earnhart.com.]
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