Maintaining Motivation Working in Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare is ever-changing. New advancements, increasing new knowledge of successful interventions for positive patient delivery services are imperative to stay up to date. As a result, any changes result in a stressful work environment. As an upcoming Chief Operation Officer, it is important to create a positive relationship with staff and increase morale among all employees.

Motivation can have several influences and factors that play a role in a successful organization. Each employee is different, therefore satisfaction levels can vary from what drives each individual motivation level. Therefore, it often to question how to achieve job satisfaction to identify key issues. What are some influences that keep an individual going? How to maintain positive morale within the workplace?  To clearly understand organizational behavior, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg Theory will be addressed with the hopes to align the hospital mission and value into a positive patient delivery system.

Introduction

As being the new Chief Operation Officers of a local non-profit organization, the ability to create positive change within the organization will be the top priority. As a solution focus leader, it will be imperative to create an environment that inspires and supports strong employee motivation.

Understanding the high demands and high expectations are all often too often associated with healthcare workers. Stress often results from various reasons such as insufficient time, lack of skill or social support with the work environment (Lambrou, 2010). Therefore, stress is inevitable working within any healthcare delivery system.

The dilemma in the past couple of months is achieving two objectives within the work environment. The first is enhancing productivity and performance and secondly improving the quality of the employee working life (Katzell, 1975). Often two barriers are obstacles in improving both productivity and satisfaction which is inadequate knowledge and resistance to change (Katzell, 1975).

What is the motivation?

Motivation is defined as the process of stimulating individuals to externally or internally accomplish goals that need fulfillment for desires, wants, or drives. (Prachi).  Motivation is needed for survival as it can be known as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Linder, 1988).  According to Prachi, motivation can be completed through three steps process. The first is a felt need or drive followed by a stimulus in which the needs should be aroused by completing the needs of satisfying a goal until accomplish. Similarily in the various definition of motivation reveal that the common three key elements all contain the effort, organization goal, and need to reach satisfaction. (Yusoff, 2013).

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The key to motivating employees within the workplace is inquiring what motivates staff and designs a motivation program based on their needs. (Linder, 1988). Factors of motivation vary from person to person that could influence productivity in any work environment. Below list the motivating factors that Linder ranked by the importance of what keeps staff satisfied with their job responsibilities.

1. Interesting work
2. Good Wages
3. A full appreciation of work done
4. Job security
5. Good working conditions
6. Promotions and growth
7. The feeling of being in on things
8. Personal loyalty to employees
9. Tactful discipline
10. Sympathetic help with personal problems

  Motivation is one of the most important factors affecting human behavior and performance. (Yusoff, 2013) Therefore, work motivation has a direct correlation on employee productivity that is influential affecting the quality and work-related outcomes, especially in healthcare. Most employees need the motivation to feel good about their job and to perform well. (Ganta, 2014). Workers who are motivated provide quality outcome and strive to maintain positive morale for their organization. Various researchers can agree that individuals’ motivations first start with recognition of a desire that is not present at that given time. It is then followed by a mental desire to achieve something resulting in physical actions to obtain that given desire. (Yusoff, 2013). Two theories of motivation can be utilized within a workplace to help alleviate the challenges of increasing motivation level in employees. 

Maslow’s Theory

A great concept to understand the hierarchy of needs from an administrator perspective is the needs of individuals serves as a driving force in human behavior which is goal-directed resulting in motivation(Prachi). According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchical theory of needs, individuals have five levels of needs. Maslow theory believed that the lower level needs to be satisfied before the next higher level of need would motivate employees. 

Physiological needs are essential for daily life. These are the basic needs for survival and maintenance of human life. This would include the needs of food, clothing, shelter, and safety;

Safety needs are also important because everyone wants job security to be protected against any harm way; Social needs include loves, affection, friendship; Esteem needs are the desires for self-respect and lastly; self-actualization needs as the highest level of need according to Maslow.  For instance, a manager wouldn’t be able to motivate their employees with esteem factor such as positive feedback if their basic physiological needs aren’t met. (Ganta, 2014)

Herzberg Theory

Frederick Herzberg categorized motivation into Two-Factor theory was designed in 1959. Herzberg theory “argued that meeting the lower-level needs (extrinsic or hygiene factors) of individuals would not motivate them to exert effort, but would only prevent them from being dissatisfied. To motivate employees, higher-level needs (intrinsic or motivation factors) must be supplied” (Yuosoff, 2013). In other words, the motivational factors can result in satisfaction or no satisfaction, however, in comparison, the hygiene factors cause dissatisfaction when absent and no dissatisfaction when present (Pardee, 1990)

The first-factor theory is known as intrinsic factor. Intrinsic can be defined as motivation that comes from within. Intrinsic motivation is has a major impact in today’s work environment. Research showed that it is a key factor in performance and innovation that include achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth. (Ganta, 2014) At a personal level, intrinsic motivation makes your work fulfilling. It can have an influence in deciding to stay on a job. It also helps keep your stress level down. With the statement supported by Rasskazova, “Workers evidenced that the highest degree of intrinsic motivation includes organizational commitment and engagement when both kinds of needs met.”

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In comparison, Extrinsic factors or also referred to as Hygiene factors are less to contribute to employees motivation need. (Yusoff, 2013). Extrinsic factors influence motivation by takes place when individuals feel driven by something outside of the work itself such as promised rewards or incentives” (Ganta, 2014). Herzberg suggested that once the hygiene factors were met, employers should focus on recognizing the achievements of the employee and providing opportunities to learn and grow (Ganta, 2014). Examples of Hygiene factors include company policy and administration, supervision, relationship with supervisor, work conditions, salary, relationships with peers, personal life, and relationships with subordinates, status, and security. (Babic, 2014). Moreover, Babic commented that Herzberg “proposed that the presence of hygiene factors leads to baseline satisfaction, but motivators are necessary to generate greater employee commitment and performance.”

Motivation verse Productivity

As management, one of the key roles is to create willingness among the employees to perform their best ability (Prachi, 2019).  It essential for a manager to understand organizational behavior and psychology. An effective manager must understand what motivates their employees to be productive and know how to satisfy the missing needs. No one is the same. It’s essential the new Chief Operating Officer of the local not-for-profit hospital find creative ways to constantly keep employees motivated as much as possible. Changes can be stressful and potential result in worse working conditions such as changes in role, responsibilities, and workflow. (Friedberg, 2017).

As a new Chief Operating Officer, it would be imperative to create and set improve goals can be the key to reinforcing employees self-efficacy.  Ensuring that employees have active participation will help the organization better understand the implementation of new goals and helps them achieve the goal. Assuring that the new goals are attainable will be the first component. This is be followed by obtaining feedback from the staff. As a new Chief Operating Officer utilizing feedback can help in several ways. It can help employees improve on work productivity status as well as determine if adjustments to their performance are required.

As the tension is high, unprofessional work behavior taking place, and financial constraints will have negative productivity in the hospital which would need to make a dramatic change. As the Chief Operating Officer, there would several questions that need to be resolved as quickly as possible. According to Paree study, there is two explanation of why some employees are motivated to work verse lack of interest employees. Study showed the level of motivation to work varies in people. Also, there will always be significant changes in many employees attitudes in regards to work (Pardee, 2010)

The key to motivating employees is what motivates them and designs a motivation program based on their needs. (Linder, 1988). Understanding job satisfaction and work motivation would be the key components that influence improving workplace productivity. As a leader, knowing what motivates employees and incorporating this knowledge into a reward system will move the organization in a positive direction.

With the statement supported by Prachi, some of the psychological factors that stimulate people behavior within a work environment are the desire of money, to be successful or receive recognitions. An incentive is a great type of motivating influence that can drive behavior and produce quality work. Incentives are benefits provided to the employee in recognition of achieving or increase in work productivity. Offering workers incentives will increase work productivity and cause workers to strive more to obtain than a regular paycheck.

Discussion

A once highly motivated employee has lately been revealing out of the norm behavior characteristics. As a leader, it important to allow employees to voice their concerns to resolve the issues that they face. It was once commented by Katzell 1975, that “Giving workers more “say”…usually has favorable effects…on productivity…when the scope of influence includes goal setting, work methods, and compensation methods. Therefore, it would be my top priority to set a meeting to discuss recent changes in their behavior and strive to promote positive motivation levels as demonstrate prior. Workers who see themselves as having more influence over what goes on in their jobs, their workgroups and their organization generally have more favorable attitudes about their jobs than those beliefs are less influential.” (Katzell, 1975). Study shows healthcare professionals tend to be more motivated by Herzberg’s Two-Theory Factors. As a result, intrinsic factors would be a target for effectively motivating employees by utilizing both monetary and non-monetary incentives (Lambrou, 2010).

By understanding the reward systems and the effect when it’s not implemented or properly designed could result in lack of employee motivation level is important to resolve (Linder, 1998). When staff has low motivation level can ultimately lead to a weak health care system performance (Lambrou, 2010). As a patient-centered delivery service, it is imperative to always provide safe and effect care with avoidance of any negative factor. Being that motivation and job satisfaction work conjointly to increase job performance ensure that all employees to maintain professional and competence to give the best care possible to the patients.

One of the major plans is to conduct frequently in-office staff meetings. The frequent goal-setting meetings will help create a mutual understanding of work-related problems to make improvements. By identifying and analyzing the problems as a team will help motivate and enrich the work of employees (Marine, 2016). The meeting will allow communication among staff to continue to work together and strive to maintain the organization goals. 

Conclusion

Motivation is highly important to maintain in working within healthcare. While maintaining patient-centered focus, it always imperative to communicate with managers before stress level increase to avoid any potential harm or negligence due to lack of motivation. Productivity has a direct correlation with motivation, therefore employee satisfaction level should always be monitored and address accordingly.

Reference:

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