Workplace Environment Assessment. Clearly, diagnosis is a critical aspect of healthcare. However, the ultimate purpose of a diagnosis is the development and application of a series of treatments or protocols. Isolated recognition of a health issue does little to resolve it.
Assignment: Workplace Environment Assessment.
Introduction
Clearly, diagnosis is a critical aspect of healthcare. However, the ultimate purpose of a diagnosis is the development and application of a series of treatments or protocols. Isolated recognition of a health issue does little to resolve it.
In this module’s Discussion, you applied the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory to diagnose potential problems with the civility of your organization. In this Portfolio Assignment, you will continue to analyze the results and apply published research to the development of a proposed treatment for any issues uncovered by the assessment.
To Prepare:
- Review the Resources and examine the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, found on page 20 of Clark (2015).
- Review the Work Environment Assessment Template.
- Reflect on the output of your Discussion post regarding your evaluation of workplace civility and the feedback received from colleagues.
- Select and review one or more of the following articles found in the Resources:
- Clark, Olender, Cardoni, and Kenski (2011)
- Clark (2018)
- Clark (2015)
- Griffin and Clark (2014)
The Assignment (3-6 pages total):
Part 1: Work Environment Assessment (1-2 pages)
- Review the Work Environment Assessment Template you completed for this Module’s Discussion.
- Describe the results of the Work Environment Assessment you completed on your workplace.
- Identify two things that surprised you about the results and one idea you believed prior to conducting the Assessment that was confirmed.
- Explain what the results of the Assessment suggest about the health and civility of your workplace.
Part 2: Reviewing the Literature (1-2 pages)
- Briefly describe the theory or concept presented in the article(s) you selected.
- Explain how the theory or concept presented in the article(s) relates to the results of your Work Environment Assessment.
- Explain how your organization could apply the theory highlighted in your selected article(s) to improve organizational health and/or create stronger work teams. Be specific and provide examples.
Part 3: Evidence-Based Strategies to Create High-Performance Interprofessional Teams (1–2 pages)
- Recommend at least two strategies, supported in the literature, that can be implemented to address any shortcomings revealed in your Work Environment Assessment.
- Recommend at least two strategies that can be implemented to bolster successful practices revealed in your Work Environment Assessment.
By Day 7 of Week 9
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Module 5
Workplace Environment Assessment
Introduction
Whether in the healthcare or business sector, every organization desires to cultivate a conducive and productive work environment that is customized to meet the specific needs of every worker. Having such a workplace environment guarantees that the workers are comfortable while performing their daily activities. Workplaces that put the workers’ comfortability first result in many benefits for the employees and the organization (Sawada et al., 2021).
As a result, both the organization management and its leadership have to conduct regular work environment assessments to ensure a healthy work environment herein considered safe as it is empowering and satisfying. There are several indicators of a healthy environment. The main ones are that the organization in context encourages and appreciates positive values; every worker, regardless of their rank, has a commitment to excellence and utilizes open and honest communication while fostering cooperation, support, support, and empowerment.
Other indicators include flexibility, having workers who demonstrate compassion, respect, and understanding with a sense of humor to boot. Suffice to say that a healthy work environment constitutes an essential component of healthcare service delivery in the nursing fraternity, leading to more quality healthcare and the facility’s productivity.
Nursing professionals acknowledge civility -defined as the formal courtesy in one’s speech and behavior- as a vital cog in fostering good employee relations. Consequently, this essay investigates the components of good health at the workplace premised on Clark’s Workplace inventory. The discussion is divided into three parts: work environment assessment, review of relevant literature, and evidence-based strategies.
Part 1: Work Environment Assessment
To determine the factors that hinder or support the workers’ health conducting a work environment assessment enables one to evaluate the physical and organizational work environment for particular health hazards and risks. Recognition of the importance of a healthy workplace environment becomes worthwhile if one also acknowledges that nurses have a significant role in ensuring civility at the workplace.
Subsequently, having a work environment assessment accords one the opportunity to take a walk around the workplace to observe and understand more on the work settings of the employees in terms of all factors that may facilitate or hinder the workers’ health.
Review of the Work Environment Assessment Template
Completing the workplace assessment score using the Clark Healthy Workplace inventory ended with 95 out of 100. This score indicates a very healthy workplace. Of the two questions, none had a score of 2(somewhat untrue) or 1(completely untrue 15 on the questions had the maximum possible score of five (completely true). The statement on there is a clear and discernable level of trust between and among formal leadership, and other members of the workplace had a score of 3(neutral), as did the statement on employees are treated fairly and respectfully.
Similarly, two statements; individual and collective achievements are celebrated and publicized equitably, and the last statement declaring that majority of the employees would recommend the organization as a good or excellent place to work to their family and friends had a score of 4 each, thus making the completed score to stand at 94. In capsule form, the inventory attributes garnering the highest score were those addressing the staff’s morale, transparency, unity, satisfaction, and wellness, amongst others.
According to Sawada et al. (2021), these attributes have a common thread linking all of them in that they constitute personal motivational factors. These researchers further note that psychosocial factors like workplace social support and the social climate are directly linkable to the employee’s mental health. The low-scoring statements touched on the shared vision that would significantly improve trust and whether close by is fair treatment amongst all workers.
The low score is attributable to the organization’s management and leadership or the facility’s structure fault and policies concerned with looking after the plight of workers (Muliira et al., 2017). Most importantly, the majority of the statements were rated highly, indicating that the unique environment of the nurses is generally reasonable.
Two Things That Were a Surprise Concerning the Results and One Idea the Nurse Believed Before Conducting the Assessment That Was Confirmed
Hafner et al. (2015) observe that the last few decades have seen accelerated technological advancement and the emergence of new forms of workplace organizations resulting in a workforce that assumes increase responsibilities while simultaneously enjoying more autonomy. The negative impact of these trends is increasing workplace stress, where unrealistic times have seen the emergence of a phenomenon called presentism.
Unlike absenteeism, presentism means the worker attends to work duties while in suboptimal health. One of the surprising results in my findings is the mismatched impact staff has on cohesiveness and civility while at work. It is a fact of life that people have different personalities, but these differences should not play out in the workplace arena.
Additionally, the nursing professional of the 21st century is expected to be emotionally intelligent not just towards their patients but also fellow nurses and other healthcare workers. The second surprising result of the just-completed assessment was the impact of monitoring systems within the selected organization. The monitoring systems have been implemented to ensure the employees work optimally while within their posts.
Due to presentism, a reduction in the workers’ effectiveness, meaning optimal conditions envisaged by Clark (2018), was not realized. Be that as it may, one must acknowledge that there are many things that most of us believed to be true before the workplace environment assessment.
Subsequently, it came as no surprise to me when the scores on trust and mentoring were ranked among the top. Within this workplace, trust is manifested in a variety of ways. These ways are like having senior professionals who entrust other workers to execute their tasks with minimal supervision. The seniors also mentor their juniors daily.
What the Results of the Assessment Suggest About the Health and Civility of the Workplace
The very healthy environment score means that most health scores are healthy and civil, with few issues generating a negative perception that is easy to identify and fix. As demonstrated by The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory tool, the healthcare workers in this organization are motivated enough to work for the common good of the facility and committed to improving patient outcomes. The contributing factors are inexhaustible, but having a productive work culture, ethical guidelines, and an efficient worker’s welfare to manage the human capital are examples.
Part 2: Reviewing the Literature
Clark’s (2018) article offers insights into the nursing profession with a bias towards the pursuit of workplace civility by conducting an empirical analysis of faculty –to- faculty incivility. As one goes through the article, one notices the emphasis the author places on civility in nursing workplace settings and the role played by leadership to foster civil behavior within an organization.
The author defines civility as genuine respect for other individuals as they require one’s time, presence, engagement, and the desire to establish a common ground. On the flipside, workplace incivility describes a host of lower intensity acts of aggression (among them failing to take action when the action is required) that may lead to other individuals involved suffering either psychological or physiological distress.
The article cautions that it is not what may constitute workplace incivility but also what fails to do. When a worker dies to speak up when warranted, ignores or fails to acknowledge or assist a fellow worker or withhold crucial information, these could degenerate into more purposeful acts of aggression. Besides incivility, other forms of workplace aggress are bullying, mobbing, rankism, and joy stealing.
The researcher utilizes a mixed-methods design to examine faculty perceptions on faculty- to- faculty incivility within nursing education using instruments like expert panel review, extensive pilot testing, inter-item coefficients, Cronbach’s alpha, and exploratory factor analysis. The participants were 588 nursing faculty drawn from 40 states whose gender were female97% and male (3%). The age range was 27 to 78 years, with a median teaching time of 10 years.
The Theory or Concept Presented In the Article Selected
The study results reported that over two-thirds of the faculty reported that workplace incivility was moderate to a serious problem. Using a qualitative approach, Clark theorized that workplace incivility could be categorized into eight themes: berating, insulting, setting up, undermining, and sabotaging. The limited scope of this essay means only three can be explained in detail.
Within this organization, power plays are evident as those in positions of authority treat their juniors without due respect. Another example of Clark’s study that mirrored my completed inventory is where some faculty members are fond of blaming and accusing others falsely of things they have not done. The victim feels powerless to prove their innocence.
Last but not least is when some seniors opt to take credit (rip-offs) of others’ work for profit without giving due credit. These workplace incivilities are what led to the low rating of the statements on the existence of a discernable of trust among the executives and the rest of the staff
How the Organization Could Apply the Theory Highlighted In Clark (2018) To Improve Organizational Health and Create Stronger Work Teams
Although Clark 2018) research took place in a nursing education setting, the effects of workplace incivility are generalizable and include low morale, increased incidences of presentism, tardiness, and outright absenteeism.
Using the study findings could see the selected organization adopt the measures that would lower incidences of workplace incivility in clinical settings through direct and transparent communication and implement policies and protocols to nurture healthy workplace environments. A case in point is where every work gets rewarded for the work they have done.
Part 3: Evidence-Based Strategies to Create High-Performance Interprofessional Teams
Two Strategies Recommended and Supported In the Literature And Two Strategies That Can Be Implemented To Bolster Successful Practices
Existing literature demonstrates that workplace incivility in nursing care settings negatively impacts teamwork, hence the need for researchers to develop evidence-based strategies to create high-performance interprofessional teams (Logan, 2016). Whichever strategy is employed, effective communication within a healthcare team is required if patient care is to improve and safety enhanced. This is because quality care is a function of specific caregivers to diagnose a pertinent problem and provide a workable solution.
Next is team leadership, as it exists in the senior management and clinical leadership. The third and last essential component of the EBP strategies to be applied is trusted if coordination and critical dimensions of teamwork are to be captured. The first recommended strategy, as expounded by Clark (2018), is positive role modeling.
For effective and successful implementation of this evidence-based strategy, the organization’s leadership is expected to raise awareness and develop organizational support. Step 2 entails measuring workplace health to identify and maximize strengths, followed by assembling and empowering a civility team within the organization as part of its culture in step three.
Step four involves formulating an evidence-based data-driven action plan and, lastly, implementing the developed action plan. The second recommended strategy is to inculcate a culture of accountability where the perpetrators of workplace incivility bear the full consequences of their untoward behavior. Likewise, the organization should create a network of support and ensure that restorative justice is accorded to the victims besides public apologies.
Since the Workplace environment assessment revealed that there are issues to do with civility in my workplace, the management should ensure that during the hiring of new staff, robust vetting occurs so that only the civil ones are recruited (Buljac-Samardzic et al., 2020). Similarly, the organization should place a confidential reporting system to enable incivility to be resolved while civility is rewarded.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this essay has established that The Clark Healthy Work-lace Inventory is a tool whose efficacy can be quantitatively used to figure out the workplace’s health. The fact that o\r organization scored 94 out of a possible 100 in the 20v statement means there is still an improvement.
The selection of Clark (2018) underscored that incivility has no place in modern healthcare settings that can be resolved if evidence-based strategies are implemented. The success of civility promoting strategies in nursing begins with every individual nurse before spreading to other healthcare workers.
References
Buljac-Samardzic, M., Doekhie, K. D., & van Wijngaarden, J. D. (2020). Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: a systematic review of the past decade. Human resources for health, 18(1), 1-42.
Clark, C. M. (2018). Empirical Analysis of Faculty-To-Faculty Incivility: Implementing Best Practices to Foster Civility and Healthy Academic Work Environments. URL: https://sigma.nursingrepository.org/bitstream/handle/10755/624116/Clark_24852.pdf?sequence=8
Hafner, M., Van Stolk, C., Saunders, C. L., Krapels, J., & Baruch, B. (2015). Health, wellbeing, and productivity in the workplace: A Britain’s Healthiest Company summary report. Rand Corporation.
Logan, T. R. (2016). Influence of Teamwork Behaviors on Workplace Incivility as It Applies to Nurses. Creighton Journal of Interdisciplinary Leadership, 2(1), 47-53.
Muliira, J. K., Natarajan, J., & Van Der Colff, J. (2017). Nursing faculty academic incivility: perceptions of nursing students and faculty. BMC medical education, 17(1), 1-10.
Sawada, U., Shimazu, A., Kawakami, N., Miyamoto, Y., Speigel, L., & Leiter, M. P. (2021). The Effects of the Civility, Respect, and Engagement in the Workplace (CREW) Program on Social Climate and Work Engagement in a Psychiatric Ward in Japan: A Pilot Study. Nursing Reports, 11(2), 320-330.
