For the most part, I consider myself an engaged employee. I understand the importance of the work we do at my organization and strive to come in and do my best work every day. I make myself available to my indirect and direct reports for questions and concerns. I prioritize team building and not being an “all work – no play” kind of manager. Like everyone else, I do have my “off” days where I may lose focus and motivation but those are pretty few and far between. I do think that I
can work on being more emotionally intelligent. When things get stressful, I don’t always express my emotions appropriately. I find myself becoming a bit of a loner because being truly engaged seems like a bit too much to handle sometimes.
“At work, my opinions seem to count” made me think about how my organization doesn’t always welcome differing opinions. This results in people not speaking up in meetings. I can remember a specific time when me and one of my direct reports brought something up to senior leadership and they completely shot us down. A few months later they decided to stop a certain project due to a situation that arose which happened to be the same issue that we brought up and was concerned would happen. One of our senior leaders did realize this and discussed how they are not always right, and they don’t always know until they try.
Overall, looking into things and accepting differing opinions so people feel comfortable speaking up is something they can improve upon (myself included).
One question I would add to the list is “I am able to successfully balance my
work and personal life”. Having a proper work/life balance is key when it comes to
mental health and turn over rate. I can say from a personal standpoint that on the weeks where I am working super hard and breaks/lunches aren’t feasible, I am less engaged in meetings and my quality of work suffers. If I asked my staff this and the results were poor, I would make sure that breaks and lunches are scheduled and
followed, and that work is evenly distributed.
Managers in the health care industry can utilize these questions to identify problem areas. It is one thing to know you have a problem but another to know exactly what you can attack first to make an improvement. I would most likely ask these questions in an anonymous survey so that my team felt safe answering them without fear of retaliation. A good example would be “I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right”. If my employees rated us poorly on that, I would try to decide whether re-training is needed or if I needed to create resources for them to reference while they are working. Another example would be “This last
year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow”. If my employees rated us poorly on that, I would try my best to give them the opportunity to grow in their role to prepare them for promotions (running meetings, taking the lead on certain projects, etc.).
