Walden University Workplace Assessment Discussion

Respond to a colleague by sharing ideas for how shortcomings discovered in their evaluations and/or their examples of incivility could have been managed more effectively. Please include 2 references. Colleague’s response is below

While performing my workplace assessment there were several things that I never took into consideration that determined how healthy or unhealthy my work environment was. Although, after adding up my score I realized that 67 sounded a bit unhealthier than I perceive my work environment to be. I can’t say that this assessment is entirely accurate. Most of my lower score rating had to do with lack of teamwork or the organization providing room for growth.

The score ratings for management  was scored at a 5. This has a lot to do with the fact that we have an amazing leadership team.

I had a large amount of 4’s that were supported by competitive pay and management taking the view of employee’s perspectives when looking for ideas to make the organization better. Employee satisfaction was also scored at a 4, as I believe most of us are happy working here.

Two things that surprised me from the results was the result score overall. I feel that most of us are happy in this organization. We have a strong and supportive leadership team that has been the best we have had in the past 4 years.

The other thing that surprised me was how many neutral scores I had, and many had to be with trust and feeling valued as an employee, employee self-care and ability to grow within the company.

One area of the assessment that was true in every aspect was that we do not retain, the best and brightest staff. Its sounds terrible, but often times people who come to work in a jail come here from an acute care and often struggle with adaptation to the environment. The environment is very different in jail, every time care is rendered by nursing professional you have to wait on Custody staff member to assist medical staff

The results of the assessment suggest that my work environment can use some work and improvement. The assessment was beneficial in providing insight as to what areas need improvement.

I noticed with the assessment provided that there is a lot of incivility amongst peers. Although the facility I work for states it is a zero tolerance facility for inappropriate of unprofessional behavior, this typically is behavior that management has turned a blind eye too due to bigger situations going on. This is usually not addressed unless the gravity of the behavior is significant and causes a hazardous or hostile working environment. 

Incivility is defined as “a low intensity deviant behavior with the ambiguous intent to harm the target, violating the workplace norm of mutual respect.” (Bambi et al., 2017). This type of behavior ultimately affects patient care. When working in a hostile environment or working with individuals that cause incivility, it makes it difficult to provide mutual aid to a patient especially if people can’t set aside their differences during a time of need.

The facility I work for can promote a healthy working environment by providing flexibility with staff, allowing for breaks. Over the past couple of years, I believe that nursing staff has struggled with burn out due to increase loads of patient. Nurses have worked and excruciating amount of hours covering for nursing staff that has been off sick due to COVID, staff that has left the medical field or the facility in general. Fatigue and stress has definitely contributed to incivility in the workplace. Not because we are bad people but because we are tired. The organization could foster a healthier work environment by providing us with mental health services, and promoting physical wellbeing ensuring adequate rest time between shifts (Stoewen, D. 2016).

A healthy work environment for nursing is safe, empowering and satisfying (Wei et al., 2018). Allowing for coworkers to discuss areas that need improvement can help to promote a healthier work environment as well as the organization maintaining and enforcing zero tolerance for unprofessional conduct regardless of the severity. After all, having a healthy work environment is not only beneficial to staff but ultimately is most beneficial and in the best interest of our patients.

I had a situation a couple of years ago where we had one particular individual that was extremely hostile and boisterous when things were not done in the specific way that she wanted them done. Unfortunately, she was a difficult person to deal with on a daily basis. Yes, we were hard up for nurses hence why leadership turned a blind eye, but it wasn’t until her behavior was directed to patients and custody staff members that they finally had to take action. None the less the behavior went on for much longer than it should have.