Finding Joy at Work, Continued


After sending out last week’s Minute Motivator talking about creating a culture of joy at work, Sandy Johnson, Director of Patient and Family Experience, sent me a fascinating white paper on the subject, titled “IHI Framework for Improving Joy in Work.”

From the paper’s introduction: “Health care is one of the few professions that regularly provides the opportunity for its workforce to profoundly improve lives. Caring and healing should be naturally joyful activities. The compassion and dedication of health care staff are key assets that, if nurtured and not impeded, can lead to joy as well as to effective and empathetic care.”

The authors then lay out four steps to take in moving from the current state to a culture of “joy in work:”

1.      Ask staff, “What matters to you?”
2.      Identify unique impediments to joy in work in the local context.
3.      Commit to a systems approach to making joy in work a shared responsibility at all levels in the organization.
4.      Use improvement science to test approaches to improving joy in work in your organization.


The paper goes on to look at each of these steps, taking the concept of “joy at work” from being a fluffy, pie-in-the-sky ideal, to a guiding principle that is systematic and measurable. The specific steps identified very closely resemble the action planning process we will be beginning soon.

Over the next couple of weeks our facilities will be spending time looking at the results of the Employee Engagement Survey. As you consider the results of your area, I’d encourage you to take a look at this paper and ask how these principles can help increase engagement, and indeed, joy, in your area.

Called to Care Action

Take some time to look over the white paper at this link:

http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/IHIWhitePapers/Framework-Improving-Joy-in-Work.aspx

(To read the paper at the link, you will need to click under Download White Paper. You will then be asked to register with your name and email address. This is free after entering your information.)

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