To be productive and effective across healthcare operations in digital India, institutions and organizations are promoting the concept of “Work-Life Balance”. You work at work, you take care of life issues otherwise. This objective mantra of corporate benevolence demands a stabilized and sustainable equipoise between a healthy, stress-free working lifestyle and the abject demand of impartial productivity. But how do you extend it uniformly across your work force?
Work Organisation
To begin with, any healthcare organization must establish a distinct work scheduling policy that factors and figures the static and dynamic needs of their employees. The enigma remains to find the balance between what the organization wants and what the employee prefers. The goal is to efficiently streamline the delivery of work and reduce inessential stress. Judicious promotion of regular breaks, time-offs and flexibility in schedule on a selectively rational ad-hoc basis will massively enhance the work-life balance and productivity of the employee.
Physical and Mental Health Support
Any organization must aim to provide constant physical and mental well-being programs to its employees, for genuine contemplation rather than to serve the disenchant purpose. Employee welfare measures in the form of insurance, amenities, awards, rewards, group outings, incentives and unbiased appraisals will create a robust aggregate group of employees ready to tackle challenges with organizational pride.
Diversification of Roles
Understand that employees are not the same in terms of productivity and temperament. A skilled surgeon may not necessary be a skilled documenter, a skilled documenter may not be a skilled implementer. When you expect every employee to fulfil their vulnerable roles with precision, therein arises inaudible discomfort and hushed burn-out. For staff well-being, the first and foremost challenge is to identify the shortcomings and strengths of each staff in the work-force, and to use it judiciously for organizational improvement. You want the right person at the right place with the right role where he/she/they can contribute significantly, to the best of their abilities. Every employee needs a purpose. A stress-free and productive working environment can be created by just giving the purpose.
Skill Upgradation & Retention
Any organization should train and re-train their work-force in their significant professional role. Employees are assets, and assets have to be developed over time. The employee should have pride at their role and contribution to the organization. Talent developed and trained over time have to be retained with practical perception.
Corporate Networking – In a frazzled, fast-paced and incorporated environment like healthcare, having a support foundation and therapeutic system becomes crucial. The organization should actively promote inter and intra-organizational conferencing and networking on a regular basis. Connections with consentient and compatible employees across organizations helps the employee understand the evolving challenges in the domain of healthcare and anatomize the solutions with integrated scrutiny.
Hear Your Employees
Any strong organization boasting of staff well-being measures aplenty will have a robust Feedback, Grievance and Safety culture, safety not only from physical dangers but from corporate politics, slanderment and aggrievement. Hence, it becomes imperative to hear out your employees regularly. Employees are humans, and humans have emotional, mental and circumstantial vulnerabilities.
In corporate healthcare culture, often the ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ is neglected for executive ambitions. Different employees have different modes of delivery of goals.
The organization has to decide if they are remunerating the employee for goal-accomplishment or simply paying them for attending a set number of hours. This conception is controversial but so is to acquire the quintessential desire to achieve a comprehensive staff well-being.
Dr Shadab Ahmed is an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon, and a translator of several books on Historical & Ethnic poetry.
