This article summary from EENet on the organizational dynamics in providing care may help strengthen your day to day efforts to participate within your organization.
Along with the usual, keep a grip on thyself, it does a good job of incorporating managerial along with front line perspectives to actions at the organizational and systems level.
Research Snapshot: Organizational conditions that influence work engagement and burnout
What did the researchers find?
From the interviews, the researchers summarized their findings into three main organizational contexts related to enhancing work engagement and/or mitigating burnout:
Work culture that prioritizes person-centered care over productivity and other performance metrics.
In the first theme, the researchers found that organizational culture was driven by high workload from productivity and documentation requirements, and these factors led to burnout and a decrease in client care. Furthermore, the participants felt that understaffing, including delays in filling vacant positions or not filling vacancies at all, impacted their ability to provide all aspects of care that clients needed. Also, participants reported that a lot of these pressures might not have come from management, but from health system level policies and budget constraints, which further led to difficulties managing rapid and sometimes conflicting policy changes.
Robust management skills and practices to overcome bureaucracy.
In the second theme, several sub-themes were identified as follows:
Communication and leader accessibility. The researchers identified that poor communication, at multiple levels, affected participants’ burnout. Participants felt comfortable voicing concerns or asking questions of upper management, but found inadequate communication regarding expectations and policy changes. Managers themselves were also impacted by poor communication. Some participants liked that their supervisors had regular contact with staff and appreciated upper level managers who had “open door” policies, such as having monthly lunch with staff, which connected them to the organization.
Streamlining processes to maximize efficiency. The researchers noted the main contributor to inefficient work systems was bureaucratic requirements around documentation. There was a need for better coordination between departments to make processes flow better.
Empowering managers with good leadership skills. The researchers identified several key leadership skills that were helpful in promoting work engagement. Managers who were most helpful supported employee autonomy, held employees accountable, accepted and acted upon feedback, and built trusting, supportive relationships with their staff. Burnout occurred when managers elicited feedback through huddles or other forums but the feedback was not acted upon, often due to a lack of authority by staff or managers. Furthermore, the researchers discovered that managers who were overcommitted or had a high workload were inattentive.
Opportunities for employee professional development and self-care.
In the third theme, the researchers discovered that time was needed for training and professional development, including mentoring, continuing education or retreats. Participants wanted management to prioritize time dedicated to self-care, especially practicing mindfulness, relaxation, prioritizing tasks for minimal disruptions and preserving time for lunch. They also wanted management to focus on efforts to help separate work and personal life by giving participants vacation and time away from work to re-energize and focus. Overall, some participants noted that managers could proactively encourage self-care, but others acknowledged the struggle to take time off and meet high productivity demands.
SEE the full research snapshot here: https://kmb.camh.ca/eenet/reso...gagement-and-burnout
This EENet Research Snapshot is based on the article “Organizational Conditions That Influence Work Engagement and Burnout: A Qualitative Study of Mental Health Workers” published in Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal in 2021. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/prj0000472