Rebuilding morale after downsizing.
Motivating employees is one of a manager's most important roles, but it is a challenge in today's shifting health-care market. Decreasing funding and a changing patient population are forcing hospitals to either cut costs or go out of business. In such a tense environment, the possibility of layoffs continually looms over our heads. Whether your laboratory is contemplating job cuts or you already have been through them, you know there is no worse threat to employee morale. A March 1996 Strategic Management survey reported that poor morale is the worst human resource problem among 81% of 691 U.S. hospitals. Ronald Henkoff said it best in the January 1994 issue of Fortune Magazine: "A distressing 80% of downsizers admit that the morale of the remaining employees has been mugged. These sullen, dispirited, hunkered-down folks, lest we forget, are the very people who are supposed to revitalize our enterprise and delight our customers." Many times, when we focus on cost constraints and customer service, we overlook what we might do to improve trust among our staff. Rather than letting bad feelings run their course after 1999 job cuts, we decided to intervene. We developed new management tools and recovery interventions at Children's Medical Center to ward off discontent after the changes.
Jones
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Children's Medical Center of Dallas, Texas, USA.
D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D009013:Morale; D010557:Personnel Administration, Hospital / Q000379:methods*; D020415:Personnel Downsizing / Q000523:psychology*; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling; D014481:United States