employee experience Archives - Greatness Magnified

Why Everyone Should Care about Nurse Burnout: Recognition at the Frontline

April 15, 2021 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

A joint post by Stephanie Staples & Sarah McVanel

If you aren’t a nurse, have never been treated by a nurse or know for a fact that a nurse will never touch you or your family’s lives, you can stop reading now.

Are you still here? I sure hope so because according to our very rough calculations based on a 20-year career in healthcare, working 228 days a year, impacting only three patients a day, three of the patient’s family members and three people in their personal circles – we conservatively estimate that one nurse makes an impression on over 40,000 people during their career. We can almost guarantee you that the topic of the ‘well nurse’ will become important to you, or someone you love, in the not-so-distant future – if it hasn’t already.

Why Nurse Burnout Matters to Everyone

Would you like to have a nurse care for you that is on the verge of burnout?

Would you like to have a nurse who has compassion fatigue to care for your loved one? (And by the way, compassion fatigue can hit us all so for resources we’ve got you covered here & there!)

Would you like a nurse who is overwhelmed to be tending to critical needs?

We know we wouldn’t. In fact, Steph has been that burnt-out nurse who felt guilty and anxious and frustrated and worried and questioned her every ability the more burnt out she became; nurses wouldn’t want their loved ones to be cared for by someone in burnout because they know the toll it takes in care. So…

We all need to ask the question, not just our healthcare system or hospitals or families with loved sick loved ones, what are we doing for our nurses? We all need a nurse – now, in the near future, in our lifetime – so we all have a vested interest starting today.

Oh, the Irony

2020 was the ‘International Year of the Nurses’ but was it really? We think most nurses would say, ‘no’. Call it a matter of bad timing – who could have predicted a global pandemic in 2020 – nurses deserve a redo! And it’s unlikely to happen in 2021 (as Sarah writes this in wave three lockdown in Ontario and Steph is in B.C. with COVID numbers going the wrong way!)

It may not be a year for the nurse, however, it can still be a year that we celebrate and build up our nurses. In fact, it needs to be the year we celebrate and support them.

Did you know that every year, right around May 12^th – the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, we celebrate nurses with nurses’ week? This is often an opportunity when healthcare organizations celebrate their nurses. We’d like to suggest, given how important nurses are in all of our lives, that we need to all take this opportunity to formally acknowledge the life-enhancing, life-saving, life-giving work that nurses do. Yes, we may have shouted and banged pots, yes, their employers may have brought in donuts but nurses are about done with the whole ‘hero’ thing – they just want support!

And healthcare organizations, if in past years you’ve put donuts in the cafeteria, that’s not going to be good enough this year. If you brought ice-cream bars around to the units, Infection Control rightly will be shooing you away from the communication station. And communal spaces for the sake of physical distancing isn’t possible. So what to do? Here are some ideas:

How You Can Celebrate Nurses Week?

Post stories of the “real” nurse stories; newspapers, healthcare organizations, family members, share what it’s been like for nurses and create a call to action to call, text, or write the nurse you know to say thanks (tag a nurse if on social).
Family members of those impacted by COVID, write a specific, personalized note of thanks and send it to the unit, public health unit, home care team that provided or are providing care; even better if someone is currently receiving care, write a note every day of about the great care you’re hearing is being provided and when your loved one is discharged send those notes to the unit(s).
Be part of events that bring nurses together safe and virtually across the organization or even across the country, better yet North America, to be a community of nurses. Our event the Nurses Week Resiliency ReBoot is intended to do just that.
Forward this post to a nurse you know and say “I so appreciate you and I get it’s tough…what is something I can do to support you?”

We all have an opportunity to celebrate our nurses and healthcare teams.

What have you done lately to show your appreciation? And how will this inspire you to elevate your appreciation game the next time you or a loved one receives care?

PS. – No time to plan an impactful nurses week celebrate with nurses week hot on our heels? This year we wanted to make things easier for everyone so we designed a live virtual learning experience designed to teach resiliency-building strategies that combat burnout in both the short and long term. Our goals: make it easy to access, cover all shifts, inclusive of nurses and everyone they work with, and all of the materials built for busy healthcare organizations to just invite nurses and that’s it. Want to celebrate with us? Reach out to us here.

Some Shocking Stats

Not fully convinced? According to the 2020 study by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), nurses report experiencing the following at some point in their career:

81.7% – Critical Incident Stress
63.2% – Symptoms of Burnout
36.4% – Major Depression
33% – Suicidal Ideation
26.1% – Generalized Anxiety
23% – Post Traumatic Stress

Don’t make them wait any longer. Who do you know that would benefit from a resiliency reboot? Please thank a healthcare provider and share the Nurses Week Resiliency ReBoot with a nurse or healthcare organization that is important to you. 🩺 ☀️ 🥾

Employee Engagement Surveys – Employee Experience is the Pulse

October 29, 2020 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

Last week we talked about the good, bad and the ugly about how we’re using (or not sufficiently using) the huge investment we make in employee engagement surveying. Many of you shared great reasons for conducting pulse surveys including using the results as input to elevate culture, reduce barriers in people doing their best work, retain great people, ensure people feel valued, and to gauge individuals’ wellbeing (particularly right now.) All great intentions for taking a measured pulse and following it up with intentional resources based on what was uncovered.

I still want us to take the conversation one step deeper. Whether you’re describing it this way or not, these intentions really are about elevating the employee employee experience and go beyond measuring the employee experience.

And there is no better time than now.

One of the opportunities in this zany world of work we’re in right now is that we can do things differently. We can shake things up. We can push the pause button on “how we do things” and evaluate if it’s working. It is also a great time to refocus on only what matters most to the busy folks (still left or busier than ever). If there is anything that may not be working about your pulse surveying, now is the time to raise the red flag and right the ship.

I invite you to learn more in my previous vlog about Engagement Surveys.

Why the Employee Experience Matters

Although different organizations may define the employee experience in different ways, the employee experience, in essence, is everything that happens from hire to retire that impacts the lives of employees and leaders both inside and outside of work. It also is inclusive of all the factors impacting the physical, emotional, social and fiscal well-being of the individual.

While this may seem like semantics, there are some key work constructs that the employee experience helps to untangle such as deconstructing the misnomer that there is a work and home self and challenging the notion that work happens “at work.” It also challenges us to do better with respecting and valuing people by backing up the time when people “earn” our appreciation; in the world of the employee experience, our working relationship starts the second someone considers working for us. (For more on this, check out this article that talks about the seven phases of the employee experience.)

How to Ensure Your Engagement Survey Still Fits

If engagement surveys are the check-in about “how” people experience work in a consistent standardized way across teams, divisions and even countries, it’s essential to ensure the questions and the method it’s delivered fits with the employee experience you’re espousing to have.

The “why” is to create an employee and leader experience where everyone feels they belong, contribute meaningfully, want to stay, would recommend to others, and can do their best work. Your survey is not engagement – it is one way to evaluate it – and to validate the findings other key measures are required (frankly they were required all along but it was just far easier to just do a survey every two years to say we get what everyone is feeling).

Ultimately, we’re trying to create an army of recruiters. A network of raving fans. A congregation who agrees with the big “why” of your company. It’s pretty tough to do that if your employee experience stinks. And it’s pretty hard to validate you have a great employee experience if you never quantify it (what we measure matters after all).

This post, and the two that have preceded it, is a call for us to get real about how much time and effort we’re spending on surveying versus actually impacting a culture that people can’t wait to tell their friends, neighbours, customers and even social media followers about.

During these uncertain times, we have an opportunity to completely shake up the way we do things, what we invest our time and financial resources in, and what we are measuring to ensure that it matters. If you have had any doubts as to the effectiveness of your engagement surveying, now is the time to fill the holes. Even if you have a procurement contract with a survey company, this doesn’t preclude you from raising the bar; partner with the company versus delegate such important work to them. Together you will get better as a result.

If you were serious about reinventing employee experience and you’re just not sure where to start, why don’t we grab a virtual coffee? I’m happy for you to pick my brain As a fellow Traveler in the quest to ensure that people deserve to feel fulfilled and do meaningful work in the place where they spent the most waking hours of their life.

Here are some links to previous blogs about Employee Engagement Surveys:

Employee Engagement Surveys – 4 Solutions to Ensure Great Results

October 21, 2020 By Sarah McVanel 4 Comments

Last week we talked about how we’re largely underutilizing (or sometimes misusing) engagement surveys. We’ve lost our way a bit. Although we started off with great intentions, our process and post-survey work often fall short of our best hopes such as:

to elevate the employee experience
to increase retention
to elevate trust
to give enable focused continuous improvement

They cost a lot of money. They take a lot of time. And everything surrounding your survey – from the questions you ask to the way it’s launched to your follow up – is a reflection of the current climate and even of your overall culture. And it can be worth it. This post is about ensuring it is.

(PS – fellow organizational behaviour nerds like me, you may be interested in this article on the difference been organization climate versus culture.)

A Solution-Oriented Approach to Engagement Surveys that Trust Engage

If you follow my blogs regularly, you will know I find it challenging to sit in a problem-centric place for long. Let’s talk about solutions. What is within your power to influence and implement the most effective engagement survey possible? Here’s some of my best advice (from 20 years of practice…insert “it must be Oil of Olay” commercial reference for anyone over the age of 35 ;-] )

Make it Mutual

If I were to ask you why you’re doing an engagement survey and you answer “because somebody is expecting us to do it” (e.g., you are legislated to do one) but you know good and well that there will be no or minimal follow-through, then match the survey with minimal effort for you and the recipient.

If your launch, communication, and/or survey is more robust than your follow-up to results, scale back the front end so it’s not quite so lopsided. Otherwise, it’s a one-sided benefit: it’s like asking someone to the prom and then deciding to go to a movie instead (without them).

Make it Valuable

So much is on busy middle managers’ shoulders. Asking them to tell their staff, having them nag people to complete a survey, and then emailing them a report and saying “fix it” (among 100 other competing priorities) is completely unrealistic yet often the reality. Not only do managers not want to (or can’t) do it, it’s based on the premise we used to call “competition by nagging.”

If people see that the information will be used, that the organization cares what they have to say, and (as we’ll talk about next) they have the time and resources to complete the survey, they’re more likely to do it. If it’s not seen as valuable, it’s like asking your teenager to pay you every time they clean their room.

Make it Accessible

We make staff jump through all kinds of hoops to fill out our surveys. Computer surveys for staff who don’t normally work at a computer or a private spot to access one. Short timelines outside of when casual staff might be at work. Only an English version when not everyone is English speaking. Not to mention, not meeting accessibility standards (such as AODA in Ontario).

Consider all the barriers to people completing the survey in advance, and work hard to combat them. One way might be to ask fewer questions (e.g., some folks use the Gallup 12). Knowing there is a barrier yet not addressing it is like expecting Siri to cook dinner for you just because you asked her to look up a recipe (Apple will probably figure out how to make this happen within a few years but for now, likely not).

It’s Your Turn

What have I forgotten here? Rockstar readers, I know you have great suggestions too:

What additional “Make it…” tips do you have?
Have you had success in elevating the effectiveness of employee surveys?
What changes have been made to increase ROE (return on effort) and/or validate ROI (return on investment)?

In the third part of our series, I’m going to dive into the employee experience as the next frontier for engagement. The train has already left the station so don’t get left behind.

In the meantime, if your employee engagement surveys have been telling you for years that you need to elevate recognition, I’ve shared all my secrets below. These are all the tools that I use to build (or rebuild) recognition programs now all in one short course (that HR folks, you’ll get continuing education credits for).

For more content on creating a great employee experience, check out these links:

Employee Engagement Surveys – Expectations vs Reality

October 15, 2020 By Sarah McVanel 2 Comments

Employee surveying started with the best of intentions. Let’s face it; there was a time when no one cared about employee safety and wellbeing let alone their opinions and experience. As the saying goes, we’ve come a long way baby.

That said, it’s time to do our own pulse check about how effective engagement surveys are today.

More on this in my VLOG: 5 Ways to Boost Recognition Scores: The Easiest Employee Engagement Metric to Impact Before Your Next Survey

Why We Need to “Take The Pulse”

We need to keep the pulse of how our people are doing. As organizations continue to grow – in locations, in size, across the globe even – it is virtually impossible to keep our fingers on the pulse. Engagement surveys provide a mechanism to gauge, in a comparable way, how people experience their work that transcends (as much as possible) work variables.

We also need a mechanism to check in about what roadblocks stand in the way of people doing their job – equipment, supplies, development opportunities, feedback, etc – as this can have a major impact on corporate priorities and team success. Although most organizations have some form of performance appraisals and check-ins, it has been my experience that it is the exception rather than the rule that they are completed robustly, on time, and with everyone, including part-time and casual contributors (in fact some of you will argue that the whole PA system needs an overhaul anyway).

In our growingly remote world of work, pulse surveys can be helpful to check in more frequently and on a broad scale about a range of satisfaction-related drivers. Even before working remotely, leaders’ spans of control (how many people report to them) often grows beyond the number that regular robust check-ins are possible.

In other words, employee engagement and pulse surveys have had an important place in the world of work.

This is the good news. Now the other side of the story.

Taking a Weak Pulse

Unfortunately, a few things continue to plague us with engagement surveys. The original best intentions – to understand, address and elevate the work experience of our contributors – has become usurped in the noise of corporate life. Here are some of the reasons engagement surveys get a bad name:

The energy is put into promoting the surveys and increasing response rates, leaves little left over for disseminating or executing on results (one client compared it to planning her wedding and how “none of us wanted to go to the post-wedding day brunch we were all so tired!”)
Many organizations can find willing participants to build or procure a vendor and execute the survey, however, it’s a unique talent and the organization may not have Organizational Development and related experts on staff (or on retainer) to help teams and leaders address gaps
The drivers we ask about include factors the organization is unable to change – such as asking not-for-profit employees if there are sufficient resources and supplies to do their job – so we set people up for disappointment
Too often very practical and easy to address drivers (e.g., recognition) are intermingled with broader hard to address drivers (e.g., trust)
There are significant time delays between when employee complete the survey to when – if at all – they hear the results
The seriousness of issues raised in the comments creates a difficult situation for HR who want to address it, yet can’t due to confidentiality and anonymity
On the flip side, many do not believe surveys are actually confidential and therefore getting honest responses or people to complete the survey at all can be challenging

Some have begun to suggest that we should no longer do engagements surveying. But is that really the answer?

Getting a True Read on the Pulse

I would be hypocritical to say we should do away with engagement surveys:

In my co-authored first book Forever Recognize Others Greatness, chapter 5 on organizational recognition leveraged a huge engagement survey database to tell the story of how dramatically different employee behaviour is when they were highly satisfied with recognition from those who were not
I espouse the virtues of an engaged workforce when I keynote on recognition and encourage organizations to gauge just how well they’re doing with recognition through regularly informal and formal check-ins
I remind my clients regularly that an engagement survey combined with other data – voluntary turnover, length of service, customer feedback, sick time – can provide a vivid picture of the health of the culture – Download these stats as a poster here called “Recognition is Not Fluffy Stuff”

If you just need a pulse of how people in the organization are doing, are committed to wholeheartedly listening, are willing to do something with the results, and will absolutely ensure people know the results, then engagement surveys can be incredibly valuable. In other words, the problem is not engagement surveys per se, it’s that we often treat them like a project to be delegated, outsourced and managed versus an invaluable tool to tell a broader story about the employee experience.

Join me next week as we do a deep dive into how to make the most of your engagement survey investment and how to course correct your process if it’s gotten off track of your original intention.

In the meantime, if your engagement surveys have been telling you for years that you need to elevate recognition, I’ve shared all my secrets below. These are all the tools that I use to build (or rebuild) recognition programs now all in one short course (that HR folks, you get continuing education credits for.)

For more ideas on engagement surveys and employee satisfaction, check out these other blog posts: