Checkpoint Matt K. Morton 8/09/2012

Incident 14-1: No Extra Effort Now after reading the incident about the issues she is facing with her staff of nurses, I have several ways to deal with them if I were the supervisor. Let’s look at some of the possible reasons this may be occurring, it could be a lack of fulfillment in their jobs, they feel they will not gain either more monetary benefits or some form of self-accomplishment by doing more than the minimum needed, and they may even feel some animosity toward the new supervisor, because she came from outside the company rather than promoting from within. Many employees’ see money as a means to improve themselves or enhance their performance; they view everything as a monetary gain in one manner or another. Some employee’s will have burn-out from doing the same duties on day-to-day bases which does get old after a while. Since many employees who have been working at the same company see hiring a manager from the outside as a slap in the face because upper-management feels no one employed there has the skills to run the ward. This makes the new supervisors duties harder to accomplish, and adds more stress to their jobs. The first thing I would do is to hold a meeting with as many nurses as possible, but leave enough to cover the floor and deal with patients. I would use this to find out any issues or problems that the employee’s may be having, and to ask for any suggestions as what could motivate them more other than a monetary benefit! I would also give out paper to allow them to write any needed information that may aid me in helping to improve or encourage them in their jobs, either negative or positive. I would also remind them of why we all got into this profession in the first place, to help others in their time of need. I do feel that there needs to be a better means to gauge how the nurses are performing rather than using the amount of complaints they receive to evaluate them. Also by not assigning other duties for the nurses to complete, they might feel undervalued and possibly get bored in the same daily routine. Now as the supervisor, I would incorporate different tactics to improve and motivate the nurses. I would set daily goals for each nurse to complete, with a checklist for them to use, as well as for me to check and see if they were done or not. A performance appraisal needs to be instilled for use, so I would need to sit down and decide on which appraisal would work to analyze any weaknesses, or strengths of every nurse under me. I would assign the daily goals to each nurse in accordance to their strengths or weaknesses so as to improve their skill set and to help keep them motivated. Each nurse will receive more tasks to complete during their daily shifts, doing this they will be able to see their improvements, and worth to the company. I would also meet with the upper-management to see if it would be possible to give bonuses which would be based on performances in completing extra duties, fulfilling their job responsibilities, and improvements in employment skills. I would need to enforce punishments for violations for showing or having a lack of positive performance in their assigned job duties. With verbal or written warnings to employee’s which are unwilling or refuse to perform? This will help the other employee’s to see that there will be consequences for not doing their jobs correctly. This situation is hard to gage, because of not seeing or being allowed to experience it in real life the way things are run at this company. So to give a correct solution is difficult to instill for this given situation. There are so many open questions that need to be answered before instilling a new system, and job duties.

Resources;
Rue: Supervision, Eighth Edition © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2004
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