Question

Employees of Kingston General Hospital (KGH) are divided by the area of the hospital in which they work, and there is little 'cross-over' - the staff of the Intensive Care Unit tend to only socialize with their team, the staff of the Emergency Department don't really converse with any other department, etc. It has now gotten to the point that those nurses that work the night shift don't really have anything to do with those that typically work the day shift, and the nurse managers are noticing that this is starting to affect their patient reports at shift change. The lack of communication outside of work is now transferring to a lack of communication for work-related tasks and as a result, patient safety is at risk.

The issue is not only communication, but employees also do not seem motivated to improve upon the feedback given on their lack of communication. Suppose you are a unit manager and have been tasked with putting in place some strategies to help improve their communication and lack of motivation. List and clearly describe 3 strategies you might use as a manager in this situation. Please make sure to specifically mention the scenario in your strategies.

Answer 1

The decline in the communication at the workplace can be due to various factors, inertia, different timings that make up for less face to face communication or professional jealousy, us vs them scenario.

A manager must understand what is plaguing their team and come up with solutions accordingly. Thus, the strategies can be

a) Have interdepartmental or different batches lunch/team outings - This is an initiation that would help understand the problem. Manager can organize events which can help people either from ICU or other departments to socialize with each other. It can be games that disassemble the department and help people engage with one another. A few prizes or cash rewards can be used in the games to motivate employees to play it sincerely.

b) Change the timings - For nurses in the different shifts. They can be given an opportunity to work on a different shift. For example, a nurse in the day shift can work in the night shift. They can be incentivized accordingly, to help them adjust to the change. This would help break the rigid group of communication

c) Make instructions clear - It would be better for the manager to assign the task accordingly and not keep anything to be done voluntarily. For example, one batch of nurses has to communicate particular things related to the patient to another batch. Or people from ICU have to collaborate with Emergency unity for a particular thing. If instructions would be clear, then they would not have much problem in not accepting that, as it a part of their job now. It would also give them time to get along, utilizing work. Also, they would be motivated as not complying with instructions may call upon penalty.

Other than that, the manager should also try other forms of communication like webspace, where people from different departments can get to know each other and talk without any boundaries. It can be an internal social media platform.

Hospitals can also have an internal portal to keep the patients' information updated that can help other departments(related) to also keep a track of it.

These can be a few ways, in which a team can be motivated to communicate. Plus, the manager must be all ears to listen to any grievance. He may individually ask people regarding their work and how they feel about people from different departments or batch. It would clear up most things for him.