MN7181- People and Organization - The Organizational Culture and Built in Environment for a High Performing Health Care Setup.

MN 7181 - People and Organaization - Enhancing Employee Engagement for Efficient  Health care Environment

 

The employee engagement or work engagement is commitment of the people for their work and organization. It brings about benefits to both individual and organizational levels ( Armstrong,2006). Most of  health care systems usually would be suffering from inadequate staff and increasing workload. In order to cope up the increasing demand for the health care services with the existing human resources the work efficiency has to be enhanced undoubtedly. The application of transformational leadership and strategic management principles are frequently discussed in the literature to improve the workforce efficiency while maintaining the high quality and safe practice which is mandatory in health care scenario. Thus the enhancement of Employee engagement is of paramount importance health care scenario.

According to Kanter(1977) the power of an organization is the ability to mobilize human and material resources to accomplish organizational goals. According to Kanter’s arguments workplace empowerment is influenced by the structural elements like access to information, resources, support and opportunities to learn and grow. The newly recruited nurses perceive more engaged and more committed for the organization with the work place empowerment for them( Laschinger & Wong, 2006). When the employees have a perception of empowered through the leadership, they get a feeling of connection and belongingness to their organization. And also they develop an affective commitment and less likely to think of leaving the organization(Albrecht & Andreetta, 2010)

The workplace health improvement as part of the organizational culture by paying attention to the employee health needs like weight management, improving fitness and nutrition, decreasing coronary risk and improving psychological wellbeing, enhances the employee engagement with the other outcomes  like improved work capability, job satisfaction, productivity and retention of the staff. The hospital administration should adhere health risk assessment to the whole staff and ensure the perception of  the staff about its relevance and importance to have sustainable effect( Seymour & Dupre, 2008).  

Overall the identification of main drivers of engagement by the leadership and authentic administrative moves would improve the employee engagement which would matter the performance of the clinical care delivery with high quality and safety. It is important to realize that none of these drivers are not associated with an additional cost but application of basics for strategic management to motivate the employees ( Lowe, 2012)

References

1. Michel Armstrong(2006), Human resource management practice, 10th edition.
2. Laschinnger H & Wong C A( 2006), Workplace empowerment, work engagement and organizational commitment of new graduate nurses, Nursing Leadership 19, pp 43-60.
3. Albrecht S A & Andreetta M (2011), The Influence of empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement on affective commitment and turnover intentions in community health service workers, Leadership in health services 24, pp 228-237.
4. Seymour A & Dupre K (2008), Advancing employee engagement through a healthy workplace stratergy, Jornal of health services research & policy 13, pp 35-40.
5. Lowe G (2012), How employee engagement matters for hospital Performance, Health care Quaterly 15, pp 29-39.