Today in health, it quiet, quitting what it is and its impact on healthcare. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.

Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Alright, interesting story about quiet, quitting in Becker's. So the title is what does quiet quitting look like at hospitals? Okay. So first of all, the trend of quiet, quitting.

Has recently gained traction on social media, referring to a phenomenon in which workers. Are reducing their enthusiasm at work and stick to the minimum expectations of their role. So, , essentially this is when you go from being honorable a student and really being a go getter in college or high school. And you say, you

B's and C's are fine. I want to spend more time with my friends and that kind of stuff. I'm simplifying here, but essentially it's not quitting your role. But it's reducing your. , your investment in the role, your investment in the company and your enthusiasm towards your role and saying, what do I need to get a C what do I need to make sure I don't get fired? But, you know,

But don't kill myself in the process. So that's a, that's how I'm reading in this. Some professionals. Including gen Z workers. I've embraced the concept as an Inc as an increased form of work-life balance. And others see it as a lesser version of actually quitting, regardless of how an individual interprets the idea, the concept is not new among us workforce.

Or in healthcare, according to Jeremy Sadlier executive director. Of the American society for healthcare, human resources administration. And I'm going to talk about this with, , Melissa Morris on Monday on our Newsday show. So you might want to. Tune in there to get her thoughts on this. But, , essentially, I'm going to go on and give you a little bit more of this.

And a healthcare. This phenomenon has only grown in April. Gallup poll found that 34% of us employees. We're actively engaged at work in 2021 compared to 32%. , this year healthcare professionals saw the largest dip and engagement with their engagement scores dropping nine points year over year. This is likely due to the pandemic for shore. ,

But it could be some other things could be the changing nature of work within healthcare. , could be the fact that other. Types of roles have shown more flexibility through the pandemic and delivering care doesn't allow for that kind of flexibility. These are some of the things. That could be leading to that.

, any lack of engagement on the part of staff ultimately impacts patient care, teamwork, safety and All of which impact financial health of an organization and the patient experience. It's incredibly important for leaders to focus on engagement, growth opportunities, and to recognize and reward hard

Now, so that's interesting because it goes on later. Let's see. Additionally, he pointed Too. He pointed to financial struggles at us hospitals. As a contributing factor for workloads increasing on August 29th, Kaufman hall released a new report that showed Are experiencing some of the worst margins since the beginning of the pandemic.

This means some organizations have had to implement layoffs and cost. Cutting measures, cost cutting measures are becoming harder to accomplish without having a direct effect on the care of patients. When full-time equivalents are affected. In many cases, the responsibilities are shifted to other members of the team. The additional responsibilities can lead to frustration and burnout and negatively impact.

Employee engagement, these factors. R what then lead to quiet, quitting. So, , interesting phenomenon probably at work in any healthcare system of size, anywhere you have a thousand people there in the, , In the distribution curve, there's going to be some people who are are saying, look, I'm going to spend more time with my family. Again, not a bad objective. I'm going to, , keep myself from completely burning out by turn, turning down the volume a little bit.

Turning it out are tuning out the, , the noise a little bit, and that's understandable I guess my, so what on, this is, what can you do? What can you do with regard to this? There's only so much from a systemic approach that you can do? , yes, you should do pulse surveys. You should be listening to people. You should try to understand what's going

But I think fundamentally the work force is driving change in healthcare and the workforce is asking for change in healthcare. So the first thing Absolutely must do. I mean, it's the reason I go to pulse surveys is you have to listen. But electronically may not be the best way to listen. The best way to listen might be in person. And I know we've gone to remote work environments.

But in order to address this specific item. I would recommend sitting down face-to-face with people getting in front of them. I don't care if you have to go to a local restaurant and invite people in, , your employees and, and reserve a room. I don't care if you have to do it at a hotel, I don't care.

, you know, whatever it takes to get in front of people. And, you know, again, zoom is great. I use zoom all the time. My team is scattered to the four winds. I now have 10 employees scattered. Across the country. , but we still make it a point to get together every so often. So I can see body language. I could see if people are struggling, how they're struggling.

I know, we think we're getting really good across zoom and it, my guess is we're, we've gotten better. And we equate that to being good. , across zoom, but there's nothing. , quite like being in front of a person and seeing the look on their face. When you say something. And being able to respond to that or ask you a follow on question to that. So again, listening is going to be the first.

Absolutely. I have to get in front of them and listen. Then the other thing is I would assume that the work paradigm has shifted dramatically. And if it's changed dramatically. Your workforce, who now has a lot more options than they've had in the past are going to be the people who define what that work looks like. And, you know, in the case of it,

A lot of you have started this work and we're heading in that direction and saying, oh, well we're fully I don't think that's the answer to the question. I think the question becomes beyond fully remote. Answering questions, like what does it look like to, , What does it look like to progress in our organization? What does it look like to bring up ideas? What does it look

To, , to, I don't know, to celebrate one another. What is, what is our culture going to look like moving forward? I think it's a deeper level of question than just, Hey, we're remote. We're not remote. , we do this via zoom. We don't do this via zoom. And, , I think your HR team becomes really important partners here, but I think it's listening to the staff. It's getting in front of the staff, listening to

, creating the new work environment in terms of the clinicians. I think it's imperative. If you are on a leadership team, I think it's imperative to encourage the leadership team, that the paradigm for work has changed amongst the clinical staff. And it's time to sit down and listen to them. And to incorporate as much as you possibly can to establish a foundation of trust.

Between the leadership and the clinical staff across all of the hospitals. , it's now probably more important now than ever to get in front, listen and have them be co-creators of the culture of the future for your health system. So that's a interesting phenomenon going on and something, obviously we need to get ahead of that's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note.

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