8.1 A Brief Introduction

A healthcare administrator will have a much easier time in meeting stakeholder-related goals if he or she oversees a vibrant workplace environment. An office-level leader will also stand a better chance of convincing staff to accept and utilize continuous improvement (CI) methodologies if this person cultivates a healthy departmental culture. With that fact in mind, I will begin the chapter by delineating some of the key elements of a high-performing office environment. Next, I will discuss some of the reasons why employees who are ensconced in these types of cultures often perform better than their peers who labor in dysfunctional workplaces.

I will then highlight some tactics that healthcare administrators can utilize to help them create and maintain vibrant office cultures. As part of this process, I will divide the workforce into three groups: habitual complainers, cheerleaders, and fence sitters. I will provide readers with tips that they can use to aid them in dealing with these employee types. Next, I will discuss ways in which leaders can cultivate healthy workplace environments by managing the office narratives and via using rituals and ceremonies to boost employee morale and disseminate department-related values. Finally, I will posit five additional techniques that healthcare supervisors can use to assist them in fostering high-performing office cultures.

In some cases, I will build upon conversations that I started in other parts of this book. These topics include, among other things, a healthcare administrator’s self-interests and responsibilities, the use of best practices management techniques, and the creation of CI-supportive office cultures. I will revisit these issues at this time in order to provide a context for key arguments or to analyze these subjects from a different perspective than in prior sections of this text.

8.2 The Typical Healthcare Administrator’s Important Office-Related Objectives

Before I focus on the topic of office cultures, I think it is worthwhile to denote some of the important objectives that the typical healthcare administrator usually desires to achieve. I discussed this issue in detail in Chapter 2, so I will only provide a brief overview of the key goals here. They include:

• Satisfy Any Self-Interests: It goes without saying that almost every office-level healthcare leader is going to be motivated, at least somewhat, by his or her self-interests. Each individual will prioritize different desires. However, every administrator likely wants to procure material rewards, including tangible ones such as money and intangible inducements such as flexible working hours (Prasch, 2000, pp. 679–689). At the same time, in my experience, supervisors want to earn the respect and approval of their peers and higher-ups. According to researchers, most of these people also prefer to work in an environment that is relatively free of infighting and other friction (Iqbal, Khan, & Fatima, 2013, pp. 18–19; Morrison, 2011, p. 17; Shanks & Dore, 2012, p. 47).
• Meet One’s Duties to Employees: Some healthcare administrators might not care about their employees. They are only interested in satisfying their own desires or in achieving company-related goals. However, almost every office-level leader who I have known or conversed with has shown an interest in his or her workers’ needs. Even the most close-minded or seemingly self-serving supervisors have demonstrated some level of concern for their staff members’ welfare. In fact, most of the leaders who I have met believe that they have significant obligations to their employees, even if they sometimes find it difficult to uphold these duties.
• Honor Any Company-Related Obligations: I think readers will agree that every healthcare administrator has certain obligations to his or her organization. For instance, he or she should, when possible, adhere to the firm’s (and hopefully state and federal) rules and regulations. An office-level leader also needs to perform key management and other job-related tasks. As important, this person must ensure that his or her department meets certain productivity, quality-related, and customer-focused goals.

8.3 The Healthcare Supervisor’s Key to Success: Maintaining a Vibrant Office Culture

In most cases, healthcare administrators will find it easier to meet both their self-interests and their obligations to stakeholders if they oversee vibrant work-place cultures. I will discuss these benefits in the next section. Here, I want to describe some of the core aspects of a high-performing departmental environment. They include:

• Employees Treat Each Other with Respect and Dignity: In my experience, a healthcare administrator must cultivate an office environment in which stafftreat each other with respect and dignity. If a supervisor allows employees to bully coworkers or constantly fight among themselves, the department will usually suffer. At the same time, an office-level leader who wants to meet his or her obligations to subordinates needs to foster a nurturing environment in which these people feel safe and secure. Healthcare experts agree with me on these points (Cleary, Hunt, Walter, & Roberston, 2009, pp. 35, 40; Costello, Clarke, Gravely, D’Agostino-Rose, & Puopolo, 2011, pp. 115–116, 125).

• Staff Buy into Their Organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values: As I noted in previous chapters, employees usually need to buy into the mission, vision, and values of their particular organization—modified to meet their specific department’s needs—if they are going to be most effective. Speaking from experience, staff members whose views align with those of their companies will tend to work harder and focus more attention on doing the best jobs that they can for key stakeholders. By contrast, individuals who do not share in their respective firm’s values or who do not believe that their particular workplace lives up to its stated ideals will often perform poorly on a number of key metrics (Groscurth, 2014; MacFarland, 2013).

  To ensure that employees adhere to the organization’s/department’s mission, vision, and values, the healthcare supervisor must cultivate an office culture that inspires staff to live these ideals. As a part of this process, he or she needs to foster a workplace system that utilizes signage, incentives, and other methods to encourage subordinates to remember and follow these guidelines (MacFarland, 2013). In my experience, an administrator should also create and maintain a departmental environment in which employees hold each other accountable for meeting their firm’s mission, vision, and values. Otherwise, individual staff members might not adhere to these goals.

• Workers Think in Terms of “Us”: Most employees will be self-interested, to some degree. However, in a vibrant culture, they prioritize the needs of the department, as well as those of the organization. In other words, they consider themselves to be part of a team and do what is necessary to ensure that their particular unit performs well. To use a sports metaphor, these individuals are willing to sacrifice some of their own personal glory in order to help their squads win. What I have just said is common knowledge. However, in my experience, many people do not exhibit this mentality.
• Employees Trust Their Administrator and Coworkers: In a vibrant office culture, the employees not only believe in their supervisor, they also have faith in each other. In my experience, an individual usually performs best when he or she can trust his or her colleagues to act with integrity, to meet their work-related obligations, and to dutifully perform any other requisite tasks. By contrast, staff who do not have confidence in each other are unlikely to commit fully to the goals of their particular department. They are also more apt to withhold vital information from coworkers or even to lie to them. Additionally, they might not be willing to collaborate with these people to perform team-related tasks (Measom, 2017). This only makes sense. If employees have faith in each other, they can devote additional time to their own jobs; they know that someone has their backs. At the same time, they feel more comfortable working with their peers to achieve shared objectives.

• Staff Feel Free to Share Relevant Information with Their Coworkers and Supervisor: It goes without saying that a department will generally be more effective if its personnel feel empowered to freely share relevant information with coworkers and superiors. Staff who effectively communicate information between themselves will, among other things, be able to better coordinate tasks, help each other to master on-the-job skills, identify and fix flaws in systemic processes, and respond to changes in the external environment. At the same time, some business experts contend that (all other things being equal) employees who work in corporate cultures that promote the open sharing of pertinent information tend to be more engaged and satisfied with their jobs (Johnson, 2017a).

  In my experience, if a healthcare administrator wants to oversee a department in which employees freely share relevant information, he or she must cultivate an environment of mutual trust. However, individuals can sometimes have faith in their coworkers but still withhold vital information from them. To counter this tendency, an office-level leader also needs to foster a workplace culture that incentivizes staff to openly communicate with each other.

All of the aforementioned aspects have one thing in common; they in some way transcend individuals. In a vibrant office, these elements are embedded in its cultural schema. The supervisor and employees, via their shared values and ways of doing things, create a zeitgeist that is larger than any one of them. The department’s regulations, documents, design, and so forth help to reinforce these norms A visitor to one of these units would, for instance, be hard put to delineate the exact processes that breathe life into ideals relating to mutual respect, honesty, and the like (LaGuardia, 2008, p. 56). However, he or she can nonetheless intuitively sense these elements.

8.4 Some of the Important Benefits of Creating a Vibrant Office Culture

In my experience, healthcare administrators (and their employees) might realize a number of benefits when these supervisors oversee vibrant office cultures. Below, I will briefly delineate some of these advantages. In truth, all of the key “benefits” that I posit in this section also serve as components of healthy departmental environments. They are both products of these cultures and important to the continuance of these states of affairs. For example, I believe that office-level leaders who oversee high-performing workplaces will generally have more satisfied employees than their colleagues who manage dysfunctional units. At the same time, individuals who are content with their jobs might be more likely than unhappy peers to engage in actions that benefit their departments (Sarwar & Abugre, 2013, p. 23). The list includes:

• Satisfied Employees: In my experience, healthcare employees who are ensconced in vibrant office environments are, in general, happier than their peers who labor in dysfunctional departments. This phenomenon makes sense. Individuals, by and large, want to work at places that espouse principles based on trust, mutual respect, and family-centered ideals. If staff feel like they are part of a caring team that values their contributions, these people will be more likely to tell researchers that they are satisfied by their jobs (Herman, 2014, pp. 4–5). The correlation between a healthy office culture and high employee satisfaction rates is significant, given the role that worker morale plays in influencing any number of other department-related metrics.

  In my experience, if a healthcare supervisor’s employees are content, that person will usually find it easier to accomplish a range of objectives. For one thing, satisfied staff members tend to work harder and are therefore likely to be more productive (Revesencio, 2015). They also often provide better service to patients and other key stakeholders (Herman, 2014, p. 5; Pikey, 2011). Additionally, if workers are happy with their employers, they are less likely to search for other jobs, thus helping to limit turnover (Herman, 2014, p. 5; Sarwar & Bugre, 2013, p. 23). Finally, contented personnel, in my experience anyway, are not as apt to intentionally do things to harm their companies. In short, high employee satisfaction rates serve as drivers for a host of other positive workplace-related behaviors and outcomes.

• Cooperative Workers: From what I have seen, people who work in vibrant office cultures tend, on average, to be more willing to cooperate with each other to perform key job-related tasks. An individual can posit any number of reasons for this phenomenon, including ones related to employee satisfaction, an “us not I” mentality, and the promotion of values relating to trust and mutual respect. Regardless, healthcare supervisors who manage both clinical and non-clinical units benefit when their staffs adhere to team-focused ideals. That is because, in today’s healthcare facilities, employees need to be able to work together in order to successfully accomplish key departmental and organizational objectives (Buchbinder & Thompson, 2012, p. 288).
• Engaged Staff: In my experience, staff who are part of vibrant office cultures tend to be more motivated than their peers who labor in dysfunctional workplaces. One key reason for this phenomenon is that, as I noted previously, people are more likely to be content with their jobs if they are ensconced in healthy departmental environments. Researchers have demonstrated a direct correlation between employee satisfaction rates and worker engagement levels (Kumar & Pansari, 2015, pp. 68–69). And it goes without saying that staff tend to be more willing to put in 100 percent effort when their coworkers are friendly and offer to answer these individuals’ questions. Finally, they are more likely to come to work each day filled with energy when their colleagues espouse a team spirit (TNS Employee Insights, 2014, p. 12). These men and women will go the extra mile to help their departments perform well.

• Committed Personnel: Staffwho work in vibrant office environments are often highly committed to their employers. As a result, these individuals are less likely to jettison their current jobs for ones with another company. They also do not spend as much time scouring the Internet for new career opportunities when compared to their peers who labor in dysfunctional department cultures (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 170; Johnson, 2017b, S004). This is because, in my experience, a large percentage of employees are more than happy to stay on with their current organizations (and often content to remain in the same units) as long as they enjoy their jobs, like their coworkers, and feel like they are valued members of a team. Healthcare experts have corroborated my observations (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 170; Johnson, 2017b, S004).

  When they keep turnover low, healthcare administrators benefit in a number of key ways. Perhaps most obvious, supervisors with long-tenured staff members do not have to spend as much money on training costs or deal with the productivity-related issues that come with hiring and onboarding new personnel. This is a significant advantage as, according to one study, the “typical cost of turnover” for each new employee is “[16 percent to] 20 percent of salary” (Boushey & Glynn, 2012). office-level leaders might have to devote even more resources to replace some health-care positions (Boushey & Glynn, 2012). From what I have seen, units that experience high turnover can also be harmed by the chain reaction effect that sometimes results when an individual who leaves a company entices coworkers to come with him or her to the new firm. I have noticed instances in which one staff member, after exiting an organization, convinces several of his or her previous colleagues to bolt as well. Finally, administrators who oversee departments with significant employee churn rates have to deal with fallout from worker-related gossip. These people might say things like, “I hear Moneta is much happier at her new job,” or “I wonder why Janis left?” As any supervisor knows, these employee-related discussions can negatively impact office morale (assuming staff morale is high in the first place) and impede a department’s efficiency and effectiveness.

• Employees Are Willing to Change: In my experience, staff are often more willing to adopt new technologies and to change their work routines in order to meet stakeholder-related goals when they are part of vibrant office cultures. I discussed this topic in some detail in Chapter 5, so I will not rehash the narrative here.

In short, a healthcare administrator might achieve a number of key objectives by cultivating a vibrant workplace culture. On the one hand, he or she can meet obligations to staff by fostering an amicable and caring environment that treats them as human beings and not as automatons. At the same time, the office-level leader who oversees a high-performing departmental culture will usually have an easier time meeting customer-related and organizational goals. This supervisor can also promote his or her own self-interests by parlaying any wins in managing the department into a significant raise or promotion.

8.5 Focus on Developing the Right Infrastructure

Readers can find an almost inexhaustible supply of books and articles that offer to aid them in improving their interpersonal skills and in building great relationships with employees and other key stakeholders. I do not feel that I can add much to those discussions. Instead, I will posit suggestions that these indi viduals can utilize to help them cultivate vibrant, sustainable office cultures. Ideally, important elements of these environments will persist even if the administrators in charge of the departments leave or retire.

8.6 Three Types of Workers: Habitual Complainers, Cheerleaders, and Fence Sitters

The workforce in any good-sized healthcare department will likely be quite diverse. The employees will come from a variety of backgrounds, possess a range of skills, exhibit an array of personality traits, and have disparate desires and goals. Hence, any attempt that I make to describe healthcare staff will prove to be inexact and will inevitably oversimply some things.

With that said, I think I can provide readers with some valuable information (based on my experiences in the field) if I attempt to describe key employee-related categories. I will give it a go and divide a typical department’s workforce into three types of people, including:

• Habitual Complainers: These staffmembers tend to be dour individuals, at least while they are at work. Habitual complainers are apt to be pessimistic about their particular department’s future and are quick to criticize their supervisors, coworkers, and other stakeholders for perceived slights or misdeeds. They often refuse to embrace company-sponsored initiatives. Ironically, although some of these employees might be disengaged and lackadaisical, many of them produce high-quality work.
• Cheerleaders: These employees come to work energized and engaged. Their demeanor is usually upbeat. Cheerleaders might complain on occasion; however, they generally focus on the positive aspects of their office environments. These individuals serve as champions for their supervisors and for their organizations. In this capacity, they try to boost the morale of fellow staff members and tout their particular unit’s successes when conversing with other stakeholders.
• Fence Sitters: In my experience, the majority of employees in any particular department are made up of fence sitters. They possess a range of beliefs, attitudes, and opinions about their supervisors, coworkers, and organizations. At any given time, these staff members might be highly motivated to perform their jobs or disengaged in the process. The key aspect that links all of these people together is their susceptibility to outside influences. If the office environment is vibrant or they are surrounded with positive influences, these individuals are more likely to be content with their jobs and to work hard. On the other hand, they can become disgruntled and disengaged if the departmental culture is dysfunctional.

8.7 Controlling the Narrative: An Important Part of Creating a Vibrant Office Culture

To an extent, an office culture is composed of a series of stories and myths that all employees are familiar with. In some cases, the department’s personnel will, through their conversations, create these narratives. In other instances, management or even external actors will develop and disseminate these tales. Although each staff member might interpret these narratives in a slightly different way, everyone will use them to frame his or her view of the workplace (Bolman & Deal, 2008, pp. 259–261; LaGuardia, 2008, pp. 58–59). From what I have seen, these stories and myths might represent the most important aspect of almost any workplace culture.

In my experience, many of the activities and decisions that occur in the typical office setting are, in and of themselves, neither good nor bad. It is the department’s stakeholders who, through the stories that they generate, determine if environmental events, managerial actions, employee behaviors, and the like are positive or negative. For example, assume that an organization decided to give all employees a $100 gift card to the local grocery store as a Thanksgiving present. Initially, some staffmight be grateful to the company for taking this action. Others will be angry with the firm because they believe that it should have given them a $500 gift certificate. Over the next few days, these workers discuss the matter during their breaks. By the end of this period, a large majority of them come to believe that the corporation’s management is miserly. A few people still view the leaders’ gesture as magnanimous; however, they are in the minority and therefore constantly on the defensive. These “thankful” individuals have to push back against the dominant narrative, which sees the corporation’s executives and administrators as cheapskates. As a result, both the supporters and the opponents of the company’s gift use the “miser” story as their starting point or base case.

In a dysfunctional culture, employees are bombarded with negative stories. Even the most optimistic and energetic among them might come to believe the narratives that portray their particular organization, department, and leaders in a bad light. By contrast, in a vibrant office environment, the staff share positive reflections among themselves. They might not see every workplace-related action as good; however, the meta-narrative is a happy one (LaGuardia, 2008, pp. 60–61).

A frontline healthcare supervisor will not be able to fully control the story-making process in his or her unit. However, given the power of these narratives to influence employee-related perceptions and behaviors, it behooves the administrator to do what he or she can to ensure that the workplace is filled with as many positive tales as possible (LaGuardia, 2008, pp. 60–61). Each office-level leader might need to develop different strategies for disseminating these department-friendly messages. The person’s choice of methods will, in large part, depend on the unique aspects of his or her workplace situation. With that said, I believe that every supervisor should ensure that these narratives are authentic. In my experience, people react poorly to company-related missives that appear to be contrived.

8.8 Leveraging Rituals and Ceremonies to Boost Employee Morale and Affirm Organizational and Departmental Values

Many of the defining characteristics of a particular department’s culture are encapsulated in its shared rituals and ceremonies. These consist of routine tasks that most staffperform or events (either recurring or one-time affairs) that these people take part in together (Bolman & Deal, 2008, pp. 261–262, 265). They can be seemingly mundane occurrences, such as the fact that all employees clock in when they arrive at the organization. Alternatively, these ceremonies and rituals can be less frequent and contain unique elements. For instance, the annual review process at a typical company meets these criteria.

A healthcare supervisor and his or her staff may, among other things, rely on these rituals and ceremonies to help them learn or reaffirm key departmental beliefs, values, and rules, to deepen social ties or to boost morale (Bolman & Deal, 2008, pp. 261–262, 265–266). For instance, the administrator might host weekly or monthly unit meetings where he or she goes over the office’s core objectives and assesses how workers are doing with regard to conforming to the organization’s mission, vision, and values statements. As another example, a department’s employees might have to engage, on a daily basis, in performing certain team-focused routines related to a shared job endeavor. Sometimes, management or staff will host social gatherings in which the goal is to boost morale or to help attendees develop closer bonds with each other.

Given the power of these rituals and ceremonies to impact the workplace, a healthcare administrator should find ways to incorporate these rites and events into the office’s routines and schedules. Additionally, he or she wants to carefully construct and monitor these occasions to ensure that they achieve key goals (related to the topics I noted in the last paragraph). Each supervisor will probably handle these matters in different ways, as that person must meet the unique needs of his or her department. However, I believe one can posit some general strategies and have listed them below:

• Plan in Advance: In my experience, healthcare administrators too often develop new office rituals for staff or come up with ideas for large-scale or recurring department events without having given these things much forethought. Supervisors should create mini-strategies in order to maximize the effectiveness of these occasions or rites. As part of this process, they need to list the event-related objectives.
• Routinely Assess the Effectiveness of These Activities: Similar to any other project implementation, healthcare administrators should monitor recurring ceremonies and rituals to gauge their effectiveness in achieving important department-related goals. office-level leaders need to be willing to adjust the events if these activities no longer meet key objectives.
• When Possible, Make the Events Enjoyable: From what I have seen, even the best-run departments sometimes suffer from employee morale–related issues. With this fact in mind, healthcare administrators should try to make all recurring ceremonies as fun for staff as possible, while still meeting other key objectives. In my experience, when workers enjoy performing a task, learning new information, or participating in a team-building exercise, they come away from the experience with “a lightened step.” Supervisors can liven up almost any type of event (including heretofore boring training sessions) by adding interactive features, by including game-related elements into presentations, and via finding other ways to engage employees in the process.
• Utilize Personal Resources When Necessary: In some cases, a healthcare administrator might not have enough finances available in the departmental budget to fund a certain ceremony, especially one that focuses primarily on morale-boosting activities. When this occurs, the supervisor should consider paying out of his or her pocket to host the event if this person feels that it will benefit the office. For one thing, the leader is accountable to stakeholders for his or her unit’s performance. Therefore, the individual needs to be willing to allocate some of his or her money to meet important objectives. At the same time, the administrator, by spending some of his or her own funds on employees, will generate goodwill with these people. The supervisor can leverage this staff-related capital not only to improve the workplace culture but to accomplish other goals as well.
• Terminate Fun Activities as a Last Resort: In my experience, employees look forward to fun ceremonies such as monthly birthday celebrations, annual awards dinners, and the like. As such, when in their control, healthcare supervisors should only terminate these activities as a last resort. When administrators cancel these types of events, they create negative repercussions within the department that might harm employee morale, hinder worker productivity, and damage inter-office relationships.

8.9 Five Additional Strategies That Healthcare Administrators Can Use to Help Them Cultivate Vibrant Office Cultures

Before I conclude this chapter, I want to posit five additional strategies that healthcare administrators can utilize to help them build vibrant office cultures. Having worked in management, specialist, and frontline positions, I can attest to the potential power of these methods in helping supervisors to cultivate high-performing workplace environments. These techniques include:

• Interacting with Employees on a Routine Basis: Most healthcare administrators are probably aware that it is in their best interests to walk around the workplace on a routine basis and talk to staff. However, in my experience, many of them botch this job. Some of these individuals treat this activity like it is a chore. They perform “their duty” only sporadically and finish the task as quickly as possible. These people rarely stop to chat with their personnel. At best, they might nod in the direction of a particular worker. In other instances, supervisors handle these walkthroughs like auditing visits. They keep their eyes open for any employee-related violations or errors and are quick to publicly denote occasions when they see one of these foibles. They focus all of their attention on critiquing staff and not on complimenting them.

  In my experience, a supervisor who holds the aforementioned attitudes frequently does more harm than good when he or she walks around the office. This leader’s visits to the cubicles often leave employees feeling less self-confident, negatively impact worker morale, and otherwise poison the departmental culture. At the same time, the administrator’s actions cause some of his or her staff to mistrust this individual, and as a result, these people refuse to share vital process-related information with the supervisor.

  With that said, a healthcare administrator can use these walkarounds to help him or her create and maintain a vibrant workplace culture. As a first step, the leader needs to stroll around the office and talk to staff as often as is feasible—at least once or twice a day. By taking this action, this person will show employees that he or she is interested in what they do. When performing these activities, the supervisor should devote a signifi-cant amount of his or her energies to complimenting staff or on getting to know these people better. The best practices administrator should view the walkthroughs not only as an opportunity to gather department-related information but also as a chance to build relationships with the workers and to garner their trust. He or she should, of course, be on the lookout for employee-related behaviors that might negatively impact the workplace. However, this individual does not want to make it a point to publicly call out the offenders (Fisher, 2012). In this way, the supervisor can generate office narratives and rituals that reinforce cultural ideals, strengthen inter-departmental bonds, and boost employee morale. Many researchers agree with me on this one (Conrad, 2014, p. 109; Fisher 2012).

• Serving as an Advocate for Staff: I have noted several times in this book that a healthcare administrator who adheres to best practices methods must act as an advocate for his or her employees. As part of this process, this individual will often need to defend his or her subordinates’ interests when conversing with higher-ups. This office-level leader should also work with upper management to secure the proper resources for his or her department and, when appropriate, negotiate larger raises for the personnel. By taking these steps, this supervisor will stand a better chance of gaining the loyalty and trust of his or her workforce, thereby allowing him or her to more easily accomplish some of the key cultural objectives discussed in this chapter (Arnold, 2017, p. 110; Murray, 2010, loc. 2709).

• Routinely Reaffirming Core Values and Beliefs: In my experience, nearly all healthcare administrators regularly talk to staff about departmental productivity or service-related goals. A large number of them also post these metrics in public areas within the department (e.g., by placing the total sales for the month figures in a visible area). However, many of these supervisors rarely, if ever, take the opportunity to review departmental and organizational values with their employees, nor do they find other ways to reaffirm these beliefs and ideals. I think this is a mistake.

  An office-level healthcare leader usually needs his or her employees to adhere to the organizational and departmental mission, vision, and values if that individual wants to cultivate a high-performing culture. In almost every company I have worked for, observed, or researched, these ideals extend beyond the self-serving ones and include statements such as, “We will strive to cultivate an atmosphere that makes all staff feel welcome.” In that case, the administrator must find ways, on a routine basis, to remind employees about these beliefs. The supervisor should do this even when overseeing a high-performing culture. Everyone, from time to time, can benefit from being reminded about these ideals. If workers already live these values, they can use the reaffirmation moments to help them find new ways to incorporate these views into their daily routines. Many healthcare leaders and experts agree with me on this point (Bingham & Galagan, 2010; Gilster & Dalessandro, 2008, pp. 24–25).

  A healthcare administrator can utilize any of a number of methods to accomplish this goal. However, in my experience, the best dissemination strategies are the ones that are the most creative and engaging. As an example, the office-level leader could allow employees to spend a few minutes in each staff meeting playing a trivia game that contains questions related to the company’s values. He or she could then hand out prizes to the winners.

• Putting in the Effort to Create a Family and Not a Fiefdom: In my experience, it is frequently difficult for a healthcare administrator to foster an office culture in which everyone feels like a peer and acts somewhat autonomously (see Chapter 5 for more information on structured autonomy). On the one hand, a supervisor often finds it easier to give orders than to allow an employee to make decisions. This is true even when the leader knows that, over the long term, he or she would be better off in according the staff member some freedom of action. At the same time, many workers, although they might openly request more job-related independence, do not really want to possess this autonomy. They would much rather “be told what to do.” I think that anyone who has worked in health-care can relate to these statements; they are common knowledge.

  As I have noted in previous parts of this book, a healthcare administrator needs to create and maintain a workplace environment that espouses ideals of family and affords staff some level of autonomy. In fact, an office-level leader must do whatever he or she can to incorporate these values into the departmental culture. In many cases, the supervisor will have to work hard to accomplish this task. As part of this process, he or she might need to devote time to researching best practices methods for encouraging employees to become more autonomous, treat each other as peers, and so on. However, I feel that, to borrow an old cliché, “It is worth the effort.”

• Continuously Learning: I think almost every healthcare leader would agree with the statement, “An administrator should continuously seek to develop his or her knowledge of best practices management techniques.” However, in my experience, too few of these individuals actually do this. Although these people usually try to keep up-to-date with new regulations, company policies, and business methods, they spend little to no time reading or watching videos related to leadership, developing vibrant workplace cultures, and similar topics. I would encourage all readers, whatever their current positions, to devote some time each week to studying relevant management and culture-building subjects. Additionally, I would suggest that they peruse books, videos, and other educational guides from a wide array of fields. When reading materials from non–healthcare-related disciplines, I have found many great ideas that I could apply to the health services workplace.

  By performing this task, a healthcare administrator will likely, on occasion, be able to identify new strategies or ideas that he or she can incorporate into the office’s routines or use in motivating and managing employees. Even if this person only finds a few of these nuggets of information per year, he or she can justify the time spent in reading or reviewing relevant educational materials. Given how much emphasis most people place on meeting their obligations and creating a legacy, it only makes sense for them to continuously try to discover new methods for motivating and managing employees.

8.10 Summing Things Up and Looking Ahead to Chapter 9—Developing and Enforcing Departmental Rules and Regulations

In this chapter, I provided readers with techniques that they could use to help them develop and maintain vibrant office cultures. I delineated some of the key aspects of high-performing workplace environments, including their focus on treating people with dignity, their belief in “us” over “I,” and their views on transparency. I then highlighted some of the benefits that accrue to units that adopt these cultural beliefs. Following this logic, I argued that healthcare administrators could best meet both their self-interests and their duties to key stakeholders by fostering vibrant departmental environments. Next, I focused my attention on discerning strategies that office-level leaders could employ to help them create and maintain these types of workplaces. As part of this process, I broke the typical department’s staff into three groups: habitual complainers, cheerleaders, and fence sitters, and I provided readers with tips that they could utilize to manage and motivate these people. I also discussed ways in which administrators could improve their office cultures by controlling the narratives and by tailoring rituals and ceremonies to meet their area’s needs. I ended the chapter by proffering five additional techniques that managers and professionals with de facto power could use to help them create and sustain vibrant departmental environments.

In the next chapter, I will provide readers with guidance on how to develop and enforce departmental rules and regulations. I will begin the narrative by listing the four types of directives and delineating some of the important ways in which these rules help to shape and mediate office workplace cultures. I will then discuss strategies that administrators can employ to successfully enforce externally imposed regulations. I will also instruct readers on how they can create rules that are fair and effective. I will end the chapter by positing methods that supervisors can utilize to aid them in successfully implementing and enforcing office-level regulations.