A MANAGER'S PRIORITIES
Much is heard these days about the hectic pace experienced in organizational life, especially in industries such as health care, in which rapid change abounds. Many organizations, health care providers among them, are hiring only when absolutely necessary, and increasing workloads are more often than not addressed by loading more work onto existing staff. And some organizations are eliminating positions, adding to a growing sense of insecurity in many employee groups.
Nowhere is the overloading phenomenon more evident than with first-line and middle managers. In flattening their organizational structures, many organizations are eliminating entire layers of management and expanding the scope of responsibility of those who remain. The tendency is to demand that more and more be accomplished by a diminishing number of people.
The response of many managers to an increasing workload is to try to work longer and faster, to put in more hours on the job, and to step up the pace. As one first-line manager expressed her frustration: "I can see that I'm starting to look like a workaholic, but I can't continue to keep up what for me is an unnatural pace. How can I lessen the stress on myself when the work just keeps piling up and no help is forthcoming?"
Even in the best of times, the job of the first-line manager is unending. Beware of the manager who claims to be "all caught up-not a thing to do for the rest of the day." There are always tasks of lower priority or lesser immediate importance, even if they consist of the likes of weeding out old files, straightening up a couple of desk drawers, or catching up on job-related reading. More often than not, however, the manager who is "all caught up" is simply lucky enough to be without a current crisis to address.
The manager who controls the job-rather than being controlled by the job will indeed experience times when there are no crises. It is during these times that the manager should be addressing tasks of lower priority, not necessarily sorting or cleaning or reading but perhaps analyzing work procedures with an eye for improvement, striving to improve personnel scheduling, or perhaps, especially, following up informally with employees and simply talking with them about their work.
The key word involved in lessening the stress on the individual is priority. A keenly developed sense of priority can make the difference between a manager who gains reasonable control of the job no matter how overloaded he or she may be and a manager who succumbs to accumulated stress. It is possible, through practice and self-discipline, to develop that needed sense of priority.
A sense of priority begins with an honest and accurate answer to a question asked of yourself once, twice, or perhaps even several times each day: Right now, what is the most important task facing me? The question should not ask what I prefer to do at the moment, or what the person who yells the loudest wants me to do right now, or where the path of least resistance may lead me, or where a completely unplanned approach to the job may lead me. Avoiding these tendencies and pressures, it is possible to focus directly on the job's real tasks and begin to distinguish priorities.
Learning to distinguish the truly important from the not-so-immediately-important can set the manager on the path to reduced job stress. Even with undone work overflowing the in-basket, there is comfort to be taken from the knowledge that at any time you are giving your attention to the most important task on your list.
This issue of The Health Care Manager (31:2, April-June 2012) offers the following for the reader's consideration:
* "Guidelines for Conducting Bulletproof Workplace Investigations: Part I-Preparation and Interviewing Issues" is the initial portion of a 2-part treatment addressing how to minimize the chances of legal difficulties when conducting workplace investigations. Included is advice concerning proper interviewing techniques and the protection of employee rights and confidential information.
* "An Employer's Guide to Controlling Healthcare Costs" offers a brief background on health care benefits and costs, addresses consumer-driven and traditional models of health care plans, offers some cost control tactics for employers, and recommends means of moderating future health care costs.
* "Improving Quality in Long-term Care Facilities Through Increased Regulations and Enforcement" reports on research addressing the inadequacy of long-term-care regulations owing to fragmentation and inconsistencies that have resulted in conflicts of interest, inequitable services, underfunded care, low reimbursement, and other related problems.
* "The Effects of National Health Care Reform on Local Businesses-Part II: Study Methodology and Primary Research Questions" is the second installment of a 3-part report addressing a comprehensive study of the potential effects of national health care reform on businesses, suggesting that the business community could benefit from the legislation in the early years but could be adversely affected in subsequent years. This part addresses the principal questions addressed by the study.
* Case in Health Care Management: "Not in the Job Description" asks the reader to consider how to encourage an employee who does excellent work but shows no initiative to address or even report any problem or need that falls outside his or her understanding of his or her job description.
* "Project Management Office in Health Care: A Key Strategy to Support Evidence-Based Practice Change" describes the contribution of a transition support office in a health care center in Canada in supporting changes in practice based on evidence and organizational performance in the early phase of a major organizational change.
* "Innovation Spaces: Six Strategies to Inform Health Care" reports on a study undertaken to examine strategies for innovation in various industries and formulate lessons for improving innovation in health care. Six categories of innovation strategies are identified.
* "Dysfunctional Health Service Conflict: Causes and Accelerants" examines the causes and accelerants of dysfunctional health service conflict and how it emerges from the health systems core hierarchical structures, specialized roles, participant psychodynamics, culture, and values.