How Can I Better Engage My Staff

Question I am the director of volunteer and pastoral services at our hospital. I automatically applied everything you said to both my departments. I feel that the Nine Principles are just as applicable to volunteers...

Question Our patient satisfaction scores are at an all-time high: the 85th percentile. Our challenge, however, is turnover at the nursing director and manager level. Have you seen any good interim solutions (i.e., outside help)...

Question I have a situation in which the entire customer service initiative is very difficult for employees from certain cultures. Do you have any information on customer service and cultural diversity in the workplace? Answer...

Question We have established a team to redesign our performance appraisals for frontline employees. We want these appraisals to be effective and meaningful to employees and managers alike. Any advice? Answer To start, identify expectations...

Question Do you have some advice on working with multiple managers and a large number of employees? I am a department secretary and I handle plenty of issues in my department. I am an assistant...

Question I do report development for my supervisor, who recently mentioned to me that I have not been completing this responsibility on time. But I get the requests in bunches and am given only a...

Question We are embarking on the quality journey and have certain department directors who think they get it, but in reality they aren’t even close. How do we help them recognize that their autocratic style...

Question Personally, I believe in your Nine Principles to creating a Culture of Excellence, but my VP doesn’t believe in this approach. Explain to me why I should once again attempt to be a leader...

Question Although we have tried, we cannot seem to successfully motivate our staff to use and update white boards we have placed in patient rooms to keep patients updated on their nurse’s name/extension and other...

Question I have been on the Recognition and Recovery Team for over a year now. I enjoy being on the team and doing the rounding, but lately we have been getting complaints that we do...

Question Our Customer Excellence Team is struggling with ways to recognize and reward non-patient care areas that are not part of the patient satisfaction survey process—finance, information systems, material management, etc. We are wondering about...

Question How do you handle anonymous complaints made against specific Management Team members? In our case, these take the form of anonymous letters to the administration. The charges are incorrect and cannot be validated. Answer...

Question I am the “working supervisor” of a small department. My problem is that I don’t know how to approach a staff member when I have a complaint against him or her. In order to...

Question Our area recently decided to incorporate peer review, sometimes called a “360,” in our review process. Do you have a list of questions to use in this type of process? Answer Ironically, I was...

Question What is the best way to develop a Standards Team (to set organizationwide standards of employee behavior) within a hospital setting? Answer The team should be a cross-section of about 10 hospital employees, including...

Question What should a new supervisor do to be successful? Answer Let me address this question from this angle. These are the reasons I see new leaders struggle: They talk way too much about themselves...

Question We have a bright ideas program and have received many great ideas from employees. But how do you encourage employees to submit ideas that are financially sound without discouraging them from the program or...

Question Our COO has been conducting employee forums for about one year. At the forums she reviews organizational information and results based upon the Five Pillars. We report the work that work teams are accomplishing...

Question How do you make this journey contagious and genuine? We have many great minds here who can be quite cynical and who may have been disappointed in the past. Answer Making change contagious takes...

Question What kinds of questions can we ask to get interdepartmental feedback to improve the service we give to each other on a day-to-day basis? We have an “Internal Report Card” that we feel could...