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Taking Care of Our Care Givers

The last Insights column introduced the concept of being advocates for our employees - a role that we as EMS leaders all too often neglect.   There is nothing more important to the success or failure of an EMS system as the valuable employees, who we all rely on to meet the daily challenges of our life-saving work.  

Having an empowered and committed team of professionals, especially with the "millennial" workers entering the workforce today, requires a shift in "business as usual" attitude of most EMS leaders.  

The "Short Course"...   Foundations for an empowered workforce.

Transparency:

For the life of me, I can't understand why some organization leaders feel it's acceptable to hide information from our most important stakeholder group.   If your agency is doing well, tell them HOW well and what the benchmark measure is.   More importantly, if the agency is not doing well, clinically, operationally or fiscally, tell them that too!   First, to celebrate success as an organization and second, if we are having challenges, the employees are the group that can have the most direct impact on our improvement.  

In our organization, we publish our operational and financial performance each month to our workforce (and to the community).   Clinical performance is published to the workforce directly from the Medical Director's quality improvement department each quarter.  

During recent union negotiations, we were evaluating potential pay scale changes based on current pay rates.   We shared actual pay rates and salaries for all employees, field and leadership - all of them.   Yes, every employee in our agency can look up what I make - SO WHAT.   If you are unwilling to be transparent about your salary as an agency leader, my guess is you feel the employees might think you're over paid - if so, you probably are...

This also applies to plans "in the works".   Don't hold out information until something is 100% finalized.   If something is planned to happen, tell the employees the current status and next steps.   It helps alleviate anxiety and prevent idle chatter that can undermine leadership.

Honesty:

Whenever an employee (or any stakeholder for that matter) asks a question, tell them the truth!   If something is not possible, say so, but explain to them why.   Our employees deserve to know why something can or cannot happen.   You'll be surprised by their reaction if you tell them the honest truth up front, and follow it up with proof if they ask (of course, that also makes it crucial that you be truthful, because if not, you will be discovered!).  

Don't provide lip service and promises that you know you can't keep.   All you do is set a level of expectation that will lead to almost certain disappointment.   Fail to be once, and you will be labeled - and it's a label that you may not be able to easily erase.

Accountability:

Agency leaders are often bombarded with ideas, suggestions, comments or complaints from employees.   If you tell them you will do something, you better do it!   You may forget, but they won't.  If you commit to doing something, give them an anticipated timeframe and then follow-up with them when it's done, or if you miss the deadline.   One of the tools I've used for doing this is the trusty Blackberry.   When asked to do something, I put it in my calendar - not the 'to do list'.   That way, in "X" days, the item pops up and reminds me to actually do it!   Now, I'd be fibbing if I said this works all the time, but using this method I seem to hit the mark more than I miss.    

Going the Distance - Taking it to the next level.

If you successfully complete the "Short Course", consider these strategies for building truly empowered workers.

Act on Employee Suggestions:

One of the most common complaints from EMS workers is that "management" does not listen to them.   Despite what you may think, our 'street level' employees know our business and local market usually better than we as leaders do.   Tap into that knowledge.   If an employee or group of employees comes to you with an idea for new posting locations, start of shift procedures, dispatch processes, or a change in the scheduling process, take their suggestions seriously and actually try the new strategy - it may work better than you think (or than the computer predicts!).  

If the idea does not work, you can always revert back.   But, you win anyway because the message you send to the workforce is that you were willing to listen and ACT on their idea.

Use Employee Work Teams:

There is nothing more powerful than empowering an employee team to complete a project or process.   Here are some examples of several employee work teams we use at Tri-State Ambulance:

Interviewing and recommending for hire new applicants and for promotional interviews.

If the applicants do not pass the employee interview, they do not get hired or promoted.

Managing our information technology program.  

Employees do everything from managing internal servers, changing content on our web site, recommending purchases of new technology and even installing new technology equipment on the ambulances and in the stations.

Evaluating and recommending new equipment for purchase.

This process was recently used to field test two types of power cots and determine if we should invest in either.   It was interesting to see employees who initially said "no way" to power cots, suddenly realize the value.   After full evaluation, the employees negotiated the deal with the vendor and decided how many to purchase (and what to do with the current cots).   I just signed the order...   Whew!

Developing our Budget.

Employees are involved from the inception and agree to the budget before it is finalized.   We even negotiated with the union a Gain Sharing arrangement - if the organization does better than planned financially, the employees share in the success through bonuses.  This is a great way to align incentives between management and employees!

Recognize what motivates employees:

Most EMS managers and leaders come from a different work era than today's workers.   Things that motivated us like pay (mostly), opportunity for promotion, health benefits, longevity and retirement; really don't mean much to today's workers.   Today's employees care more about the mission of the organization and meaningful work, a say in how the organization operates, flexible scheduling, time off, cool toys to work with and responsive leadership.   If your organization is not meeting those needs for your current workers, you can skip having recruiting booths all the EMS conferences, creating slick flyers, advertizing in JEMS or EMSNetwork.org, or sending smoke signals to moon.   None of that will work.   EMS is too small a community - potential employees will contact current employees for a referral on your organization.   If it's a good place to work, they'll apply - if not, well, put another ad in JEMS I suppose.

On a side note - the #1 source for new applicants in EMS is your web site.   If your web site is not fast, current, cool and interactive, you're missing out on a huge potential employee base.   In the past year almost all of our paramedic applications came in through e-mail from a visit to our web site.   Look at yours, if it does not "WOW" you, ditch all other recruiting efforts until you fix it - and of course, have an empowered work team fix it for you!

Special Note on Managing the Millennial Generation:

The " Millennial Generation" is people born between 1980 and 2000, they're a generation nearly as large as the Baby Boom, and they're charged with potential.   They're sociable, optimistic, talented, well-educated, collaborative, open-minded, influen tial, and achievement-oriented.   They've always felt sought after, needed, and indispensable.   Most notably, t hey are arriving in the workplace with higher expectations than any generation before them - and they're so well connected that, if an employer doesn't match those expectations, they can tell thousands of their cohorts with one click of the mouse [i] .   More importantly, they also have the ability to influence non-millennials in the workforce.  

Therefore, it is up to us as leaders to engage them.   We will live or die based on our ability to work with these new workers.   What's even harder at times is managing a blended workforce.   In most organizations, you have "traditional" Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials in the same workforce.   Managing them together will take the recognition that what motivates some, will not motivate all.   You'll need to blend your leadership style to appropriately meet the needs and exceed the expectations of the vast majority of the workforce.

Wow, just realized how long this column has become - sorry about that reader - but this is a significant issue that I feel rather passionate about.  

Hopefully, if you have not fallen asleep, or clicked to another more interesting part of EMSNetwork.org, you'll find one or two pearls you can use to 'take care of your care givers'.  

Chances are you and I will need them in the near future.  

I don't know about you, but if one of the employees our organization is coming at me with a needle, or tube for my trachea, I want them to feel empowered!