Excerpt from the Healthwire article CREATING AN EMPOWERING WORK CULTURE

By Russell L. Nicholson, MBA

(Note: Additional content in the original article)

Strategies to Create Empowerment at the Organizational Level

To move toward an empowering environment, executive leadership, managers and employees must all be committed to shared values that support such a culture. These values can become imbedded in a culture that develops employees to their full potential by using the five (5) levers of change listed as follows:

Commitment – Individuals at all levels take responsibility for their job, team, function, and organization and commit to the way they wish it to be. They engage in self-management and involve themselves in every aspect of the change process. They are active agents of change and not reactive victims of circumstance. Managers and supervisors model the desired behaviors, coach others toward changes and recognize/reinforce efforts.

Cultural Cues – Managers and employees feel safe enough to try out new behaviors and take risks without fear of reprimand or being put down by their superiors or peers if they make mistakes. There is a genuine sense of goodwill and well-being that pervades the organization. Employees feel valued and inspired to give their very best discretionary efforts.

Communication – Communication between managers, employees and peers is authentic, open and transparent. Everyone at all levels is able to talk about the real issues affecting the company and productivity.

Capabilities – Individuals have sufficient training and development opportunities to become proficient to do their jobs and practice interpersonal skills required to resolve conflict and project management issues.

Configuration– Individuals are encouraged and rewarded to work on real growth issues and innovations for personal and professional development. They challenge and support themselves and their team members in healthy and constructive ways—a strategy especially important in a virtual team environment.

Strategies to Create Empowerment at the Managerial Level

More specifically, managers can truly create a culture of flexibility by leveraging the five (5) levers of change within their teams and more consciously doing the following to achieve extreme customer satisfaction:

Commitment: Define and determine corresponding behaviors such as team leaders to motivate team toward greatness and maintain an energizing work environment; involve team members in process changes that directly affect them.
Cultural Cues: Implement culture/behavior practices and accountability such as promotions based on expertise and the person’s ability to coach, train and lead a high performance team; 360-degree feedback for all levels; refer to employees as individuals, associates and team mates and actively seek their input to increase their level of engagement.
Communication: Continue to reinforce shared values and create a participatory setting through significant encouragement and positive feedback; find small successes indicating greater internal/external customer satisfaction to build upon and publicize them in a big way.
Capabilities: Build the capacity to implement behavioral changes by providing training and mentoring programs at all levels to increase competencies and spur creativity and innovation; work closely with first-level supervisors to coach them to relinquish control, provide direction and trust employees based on shared values and clearly defined work outcomes.
Configuration: Evaluate team and individual results, with more weight given to the team’s performance, especially in virtual teams; provide support to those who have demonstrated that they are true believers in new culture; give feedback to all levels and measure progress; evaluate, disseminate and adjust as needed.

According to Gallup Research, organizations utilize less than 20% of their employees’ potential. An organizational culture that engages and inspires employees to learn, grow and reach their full potential will be able to succeed. An empowering environment is the basis of how we treat internal and external customers and how well we carry out our roles and responsibilities on the basis of shared values. These values then become the criteria for the appropriateness of actions at all levels.

Employees at all levels will choose to give their discretionary contribution and invest themselves in a company that lives out its values. Supervisors and managers who relinquish direct control may actually find that they gain even more power, support and loyalty from more committed and engaged employees. Developing their untapped potential will be critical in achieving competitive advantage in the external marketplace and the retention of top talent in the human capital market.

Private Dynamic Network and Interim HIM Manager Staffing

PDN of Chicago provides interim, HIM manager staffing personnel and medical staffers for local area healthcare facilities. We also maintain onsite medical coding personnel and offsite coding labs for healthcare transcription, coding, billing and insurance billing for companies nationwide. PDN is committed to workforce empowerment and the continuing education of our certified medical and billing coders. To learn more about PDN’s staffing solutions, or how we can assist your company, please contact PDN today. Read more about workforce empowerment strategies and news about Chicago healthcare.

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