Positive Ways to Encourage and Motivate Employees in a Healthcare Setting

Positive Ways to Encourage and Motivate Employees in a Healthcare Setting

Many healthcare settings are extremely stressful environments, and the prevalence of burnout syndrome among healthcare workers such as registered nurses in emergency rooms is among the highest of all professions (Lombardo & Eyre, 2011). Therefore, identifying positive ways to encourage and motivate employees in healthcare workplaces has assumed new importance and relevance in recent years. To determine some optimal approaches, this paper provides a review and discussion of two peer-reviewed journal articles concerning positive ways to encourage and motivate employees in a healthcare setting, followed by a summary of the research and important findings concerning these issues in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Although all healthcare workers are unique, they share some common wants and needs that can represent the starting point for any initiatives that are intended to encourage and motivate them. For instance, one method that has proven efficacy in encouraging and motivating hospital employees is known as internal marketing. In this context, internal marketing involves "attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining qualified employees through job-products that satisfy their needs" (Chen & Lin, 2013). In order to optimize the effectiveness of internal marketing strategies for employee encouragement and motivation, it is vitally important to focus on the variables that play a role in engaging all types of employees, including: (a) empathy and consideration, (b) job-quality and rewards, (c) upward communication, (d) information-sharing, (e) training and development, (f) incentive systems, and (g) and promotional activities (Chen & Lin, 2013).

There are three basic steps to implementing and administering an internal marketing strategy for employee encouragement and motivation in tertiary healthcare settings as follows: (a) collect internal-market related intelligence that helps specify employee needs and expected value; (b) establish internal communication between supervisors and subordinates; and, (c) respond to employee needs and expected value (Chen & Lin, 2013, p. 100). Properly conducted, internal marketing strategies that take into account that wide range of variables that have an effect on employee encouragement and motivation can help improve employee engagement levels and reduce unplanned turnover rates in a wide range of healthcare settings (Chen & Lin, 2013).

Another strategy that has proven effectiveness in encouraging and motivating healthcare workers include is the use of short-term incentives. In this regard, Malambe (2013) reports that, "There is a strong, established link between pay for performance and organizational performance. This link, however, does not always have a positive impact, especially in healthcare, where costs are considered prohibitively high" (p. 2). Although long-term incentive programs such as pensions and insurance remain important, short-term incentives can help encourage healthcare workers to remain in their positions to vest in these programs while motivating them to superior levels of performance (Malambe, 2013). According to Malambe, "A good incentive plan must balance the four main roles that incentive plans serve in organizations, namely motivating effort, directing attention, extracting information, and attracting and retaining highly effective employees" (p. 3).