workforce
now with the royal commission, there’s a
spotlight on what we’re doing.
So how do we reinvent the workplace
and make it a place that people want to
work in?
When our nursing staff and clinicians
wake up in the morning and get ready
for work, how can we make sure they’re
inspired – excited – about the day ahead?
I think it’s really about the work
environment: how we give feedback to
people, how we enable them to develop
professionally, and how we create a place
that has a good work/life balance, so
we’re not just expecting people to only
work there, we’re also enabling them
to have thrills both at work and in their
personal life. Engagement of staff is one
of our biggest challenges in healthcare.
You spoke about an employee
engagement program you run at your
facility in Canada. Can you talk a little
about that?
A key thing right now is, if we’re having
a workforce that is engaged, we need
a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you’re
directionless.
What we do is look at the key
deliverables of an engaged workforce,
because the opposite of an engaged
workforce that we found was overtime
costs and absenteeism. Unless people are
sick, they really should be at work. Paid
absenteeism and overtime are a cost we
shouldn’t be incurring.
We have key deliverables of attendance
management. But more than that, it’s
really making it a workplace that people
want to come to: an engaging staff,
looking at performance development,
as well as key ways that we’re engaging
with our staff through social media and
also just in the public, so people have a
positive outlook and a positive image of
the workplace and they want to continue
working there.
You got a lot of nods in your talk when
you mentioned how nurses get bored
today: how they need to grow, and
want to grow, and want to learn, and
that we should invest in nurses.
Recently, a director of finance said to
his CEO: “Look how much money we’re
spending on education and professional
development. It’s a big chunk of our
spending on staffing-related costs.”
The CEO replied: “I’m not worried
about them leaving, I’m more worried
about not investing and them staying.”
It’s important that we invest in their
education and professional development,
that people feel like you care about
them, because they feel that investment
is about them and that you care about
their health, wellbeing and professional
development.
This includes having time off. Giving
people time off, making funds available,
making the organisation a learning place.
It’s also having young people coming in
as students, so that they see that they’re
training the next generation, they’re
giving back. People want to help others.
One more piece of this is the flexibility.
As you grow in your career, you should
be able to move from one department
to another, one role to another. And if
you want to go from a line to a casual,
you can have specific days when
you’re available and your workplace
will accommodate you accordingly.
You talked about having best practice,
about how people can sometimes get
dismayed when they’re doing things
incorrectly, and how employing best
practice can help nurses grow and feel
like they’re working better.
We often look at other organisations or
industries and think, “Look at how they’re
doing things.” Then we think, “Well, how
can we do that in our organisation?”
That’s a point of frustration, I would
suggest, for workers when you don’t
have the best practice, or you don’t
have the right technology. I think it’s the
responsibility of leadership to be making
that technology and those best practices
available, and then holding the staff
members accountable for it.
At the same time, I believe the direct
service providers – the clinicians, the
nurses, the caregivers – they have
a responsibility to be informing the
leadership when they don’t have those
resources. When they think there’s
a better way of doing it, they should
suggest it, then work with leadership and
as a team to make that become a reality.
At two different ends of the spectrum,
you spoke about utilising the
older, retired workforce, but also
encouraging students to take up
nursing. First, how do we encourage
young people into nursing?
It’s about how we market that to young
people. One way would be to talk to
some of these younger people and ask
them: “As you look ahead to your career,
what kinds of things are you looking for
from your work life that would want to
make you work in a hospital and as a
nurse? What are you looking for from your
employer?”
We know that younger people these
days don’t necessarily have the same
commitment that older generations had;
they might change jobs a number of
times. How do we, then, give them the
best chance of having a positive career
when they’re starting out?
For the aged workforce, how can we
make the workplace flexible so that it
encourages them to keep working beyond
65 when they’re eligible to cash in their
superannuation and claim their pension?
How can we encourage them to take up
shifts and to continue to contribute to their
organisation that has been good to them?
You did a TED Talk on rethinking
ageing. Why is this an area that
interests you?
I think it’s the last ‘ism’ out there that
people are still okay with. We make
fun of old people, we make fun of
ourselves, and I really think it’s based
on fear, our own mortality, our own
misapprehensions about growing old and
When our nursing staff
and clinicians wake up in
the morning and get ready
for work, how can we make
sure they’re inspired?
no longer being able to do things that
younger people do.
We’ve seen the way our grandparents
aged and we don’t want to go through
the same journey they went through. We
hear bad stories in the media about how
seniors are mistreated. What interests me
the most is being able to change that.
We changed it with civil rights, we
changed it with almost every other group
of people we can think about. We’ve
reconciled as much as possible with
First Nations people. We’ve reconciled
with people who have different sexual
orientations than us, different hair
colour, different eye colour, different
stature, different body shapes. But one
thing we haven’t done yet is reconciled
with ageing. I think we all have a vested
interest in this – to make it a better place
for us when we become old. ■
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