INSIGHTS
DIRECTOR’S CUT
A REFLECTION OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
BY NICOLE DHANRAJ
I
t’s our annual employee engagement time! As I discuss this topic with senior leaders and we prepare for the engagement survey, I reflected on my efforts within the last year with my management and front-line team. I have some insightful thoughts about engagement to share in this month’s column. Why is engagement important to organizations? Research and data from Press Ganey advise leaders that employee engagement is critical to productive and efficient work environments. Employees who share ideas, and participate in projects, are invested in the operation and any departmental improvements. When employees are engaged, work is enjoyable, and patients are not only happy but are provided safe care and increased quality of service. Engagement is therefore a reflection of our leaders and the overall effectiveness as a team and thus organization. Organizations use engagement scores to identify leadership strengths and opportunities to address. Will we have engaged workers all the time? In our current volatile and chaotic operation, I questioned myself and colleagues on the possibility to have engaged workers. Is this even a reality in today’s operation? We now live in an environment where we are seeing new faces every 13 weeks. Travelers are focused on living their best lives with increased compensation, and work-life balance. They come in to assist the organization to the best of their ability but are not necessarily invested to help support change
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nor are most thinking about the future state of the organization. Temporary travelers are satisfied and get the work done but are not necessarily engaged. Even without travelers, is employee engagement a focus of the current workforce? Does it depend on the generation of the workforce, or the new health care environment we operate in? I am curious to see how engagement morphs over the next few years. Many of us mix up lack of engagement for disengagement. However, a person who is not engaged is neither disgruntled nor actively looking to resign from their job. They exist to fulfill their job requirements sometimes at the bare minimum or just “doing their thing” effectively. Then, some are actively disengaged and dissatisfied. These employees are often identified by their lack of initiative, unwillingness to work extra, frequent complaints from the team, absenteeism, and poor quality or lack of pride in their work output. In addition, these employees can be negative and unmotivated. Their attitude and bare minimum work output can affect the team often instigating an epidemic of negativity and dissatisfaction. Underlying reasons for disengagement As organizations obtain focus on engagement, leaders need to understand the root cause of this disengagement to tackle it effectively. Some possible causes I have learned over the years include: 1. Life stressors. Navigating through personal challenges causes stress to bubble over into work and cause
ADVANCING THE IMAGING PROFESSIONAL
