Minute Motivation

Trustworthy. Innovative. Competent. Caring. Collaborative. These are the values that define and drive Kettering Health Network. At Network General Orientation we share these values with our new employees, and tell them that these are merely words on a badge or on a banner until they are put into action. Values that are lived out become behaviors in our everyday interactions with our patients, their families, and our teammates. In a blog on the Globoforce.com website, Scott Thompson talks about connecting our people with our values. He suggests that there are three ingredients for making this connection: Values need to be operationalized. Values need to be lived – starting at the top. Values need to be communicated. Thompson elaborates on each of these, then closes by sharing that one of the best ways to communicate values is through our stories. “For example,” says Thompson, “one storyteller we spoke with had just moved to a new city for a job when she found out ...

At this point, you’ve had the opportunity to process the scores for your team from the Employee Engagement Survey. You’ve probably shared that information with your team, or are doing so very soon. So what happens next?   An article in Forbes addressed this issue. They suggested that too many organizations try to create solutions from the top of the organization, which all are expected to follow. The author, Kevin Kruse, suggests this is the wrong direction. Here’s his thoughts:   “…the problem with this brainstorm-at-the-top approach is that over 70% of the variance in engagement correlates to the  manager  (source:  Gallup Business Journal , April 8, 2015). In other words, who your boss is counts more than anything. Front line leaders are the  regulators  of engagement.”   Kruse goes on to talk about sharing the information with the team:   “…have managers share their results with their own teams. This is not an HR meeting,...

In our recent Employee Engagement Survey, one of the open-ended questions asked about work-life balance. Many of the responses indicate that this is a big issue for many of us, that stress and burnout are very real problems. A recent piece by Arianna Huffington, on the website www.greatplacetowork.com , challenges the concept of work-life balance. Huffington writes, “The way we’re working isn’t working. Our workplaces – and our lives – are fueled by stress and burnout, and it’s not sustainable. To be able to thrive both at home and at work, we need to bring humanity back to the workplace. “This starts with the very simple recognition that we take our whole selves to work. We don’t leave our humanity behind when we head to the office. We don’t have a work silo and a home silo, a work life and a home life – we just have one life. And it’s all connected. “This sounds obviously true, but the entire premise that so much of our workplace culture is based on – the idea of ba...