In the last year or so several important reports have been produced that focus on well-being at work. These reports all make the point that high levels of employee well-being are associated with beneficial outcomes for the organisation, including improved customer satisfaction, better productivity and lower sickness-absence levels. One of these reports is Dr Steve Boorman’s review of the health and well-being of staff in the National Health Service www.nhshealthandwellbeing.org. The interim version of Steve’s report contains a great deal of useful information, including the striking finding that indicators of staff health and well-being are linked to MRSA infection rates in hospitals!
This report and others, such as the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines www.nice.org.uk also stress the important impact that management and leadership have on employees’ mental well-being. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence that shows how managers can affect the well-being of employees – in some quite extreme ways, including the discovery of links to psychiatric illnesses and cardiovascular problems.
All of this makes me wonder about two things. The first one is why it is that more Boards and top teams don’t take decisive action to improve the well-being of their workforce. Of course there are many organisations, such as AstraZeneca, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline that already have great programmes for employee well-being but across the board things could be better.
So, in the light of the overwhelming evidence, why don’t all top teams prioritise employee well-being? It could be for many reasons. Perhaps they are not aware of the evidence; perhaps their HR/Occupational Health Directors are not influential or strong enough; perhaps they are aware of but don’t believe the evidence; or perhaps they would like to take action but are not sure how to improve well-being cost-effectively. I suspect that the reasons may be a combination of all of these things.
The second thing I have been reflecting on is just how much we depend on managers and leaders and how much we expect of them. It seems that almost every problem in organisational life, particularly the ones that relate to people, seem to be the responsibility of managers. So the diagnosis is simple – it’s all caused by the managers, right?! The solution is more of a problem. I don’t disagree with the point that managers have a significant impact on the well-being of their workforce – the evidence is too strong to disagree. What concerns me is whether managers are really able to deal with everything that’s on their plate, or are these increasing expectations just making it more and more difficult for them – and probably having a serious negative impact on their own well-being?
A significant trend I’ve observed and heard from the personal reports of younger people in the workforce is that when managerial and supervisory opportunities open up, they are reluctant to take them. They see the huge extra demands that come with relatively little extra reward – hardly the way to create a vibrant talent pipeline in our economy!
Thank you.
I’ve witnessed this theme in my local hospital, where staff nurses and junior sisters are reluctant to apply for senior sister posts. The pay rise is minimal and they often lose out of hours shift payments. The additional responsibility vast. The training and support to make the transition to these more demanding roles is far short of what they need.
I suspect that this is a widespread problem in the NHS.
So, how do we break through the demands of the job, the requirement to save money, be faster, put patients first – and nurture talent, skill and passion in our nursing managers? And in addition help them to make self-care a higher priority.
Without some serious answers to this we risk creating an NHS where compassion aftigue rules the day.