Creating a Culture of Engagement - Essay Example

"Creating a Culture of Engagement" is an engrossing example of a paper on care.
Retention of nurses lies mainly in their engagement within a healthcare facility. This paper offers an evaluation of a recent workplace by sharing the total score of a survey and elucidates whether this core accurately captures the culture of this workplace. The culture cluster that I consider the most critical to address in the workplace is also outlined in this paper, as well as suggestions of interventions I could initiate to effectively change this aspect of the workplace's culture. Additionally, this paper explicates how this culture diminished my feelings of organizational commitment.

Evaluating the score of the survey

The scores of the survey were clustered in terms of points with 90 to 100 denoting a culture of retention, 70 to 89 denoting presence of opportunities to strengthen the environment, and 69 and lower indicating the need for implementation of best practices before nurses start to leave. The total scores of the survey of my recent workplace had a score of 39. This clearly shows that there are areas that need improvements and hence effective strategies to improve engagement ought to be implemented. This score accurately captures the culture of the organization. This can be proved using the survey results that show that employees do not feel supported by the management and employees are not put first. According to Laureate Education Inc (2012), if nurses are put first by the management, then they are also likely to put their patients first as well. The organization has not also invested in coaching its employees to improve their competence. Therefore, there is a need for improvement.

Most critical cluster to address and intervention

Vlachoutsicos (2011) asserts that "Successful managers depend on the capabilities of their subordinates" (p. 123). Therefore, I consider the 'coach for and expect competence' cluster the most important to address. It is important to coach new nurses so that they can align their objectives with those of the organization. The role of coaching newly employed nurses lies primarily on experienced nurses as they understand the needs of the patients better. Coaching forms the basis through which newly employed nurses sharpen their skills and knowledge, and also learn how to work in collaboration with other nurses as teams. One of the interventions I would implement to change this aspect of the workplace culture is goal setting. As Shantz and Latham (2011) note, "Goal setting is a core variable in effective performance appraisals, coaching, training, transfer of training, and self-management" (p. 289). Encouraging newly employed nurses to set goals enables them to improve on their performance as well as their skills and abilities as they have set targets.

Diminished feelings as a result of the culture

The fact that the workplace lacked a culture of coaching diminished my feelings. Nurse managers ought to find out the interest of the employees so that they can identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can assign duties in relation to employees' strengths. Coaching can as well be directed towards addressing areas of weaknesses of the employees. The absence of this culture meant increased the likelihood of allocating nurses' duties in areas they are not interested in. This increases stress levels, nurse burnout, and dissatisfaction hence diminishing my feelings of organizational commitment. This is attributed to the fact that the organization is not committed to improving the working environment and conditions. In a nutshell, putting employees first, being result-oriented, forming strong relationships, training, and coaching, and forming a partnership with nurses increases their retention.