Transcript Work Environments and Morale: Setting Up Your Program For Success

Work Environments and Morale:
Setting Up Your Program For Success
NICHOLAS H. APOSTOLERIS, PHD MBA
HEALTH CENTER DIRECTOR
ACTION HEALTH SERVICES
VP OF BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES
COMMUNITY HEALTH CONNECTIONS, INC.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY MEDICINE AND
COMMUNITY HEALTH
UMASS MEDICAL SCHOOL
Work Environments and Morale: Goals
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Participants will:
Share experiences from their programs regarding
morale challenges
Share experiences regarding successful approaches
to improving morale
Learn the principles of Self Determination Theory as
they apply to the work place environment
Learn how to change workplace environments to
improve employee satisfaction
Work Environments and Morale
 Is morale an important issue for your program?
 What does high morale look like?
 When have you had times of high morale?
 What brings down morale?
Morale Challenges
 Mission-related
 When personnel feel they are not adhering to the mission
 Personnel-related
 In all positions
Personality
 Non-work stressors
 Others?
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 Resource-related
 On mission, but insufficient resources to do the job right
Morale improvement successes
 Any common themes from your experiences?
 Could they work without additional resources?
 Where did the good ideas come from?
 Who was listening for these ideas?
Self Determination Theory
 Developed at the University of Rochester in the past
30 years
 Focuses on better understanding why we do what we
do and on how to improve social environments
 When people are self-determined, they experience
the satisfaction of doing something that is important
to them
 To feel self-determined, fundamental psychological
needs must be met
Motivation and Morale
 Self Determination Theory poses that people have
three fundamental psychological needs
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Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
 Environments can be supportive or unsupportive of
the fulfillment of these needs
 Environments supportive of the person fulfilling
these needs will result in more intrinsically
motivated action
Fundamental Psychological Needs
 Autonomy
 The perception that we have choices and can act on those
choices
 Competence
 The perception that we can function in the world, doing what
we need to do to survive and succeed
 Relatedness
 The perception that we are related to others and ourselves in
a positive way
Motivation Orientation
 External
 Act to avoid punishment
 Act to get an external reward
 Internal/Extrinsic
 Act to avoid negative self-evaluation
 Act to obtain a positive self-evaluation
 Intrinsic
 Act for the love of the act
 Immersed in the act – sense of time can be lost
Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation
 Potential negative effects from tangible rewards
 Intrinsically motivated behaviors become extrinsically
motivated
 A lowering of intrinsic motivation for the activity
 How to avoid the negative effects of rewards
 Detach from a specific task request
 Make the tangible reward unexpected
 Verbal recognition rather than tangible rewards
Controlling Environments
 Work environments, especially when stressed, tend
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to adopt a bottom-line approach
Workplace well-being issues can be framed
exclusively in dollar terms, which can make for poor
work environments
Recruitment, retention, productivity all are related to
work environment
Tendency is to just push harder and to value
compliance and obedience of employees
Vertical hierarchies can be efficient – but at a cost
Controlling Environments
 “Control” in this context is not good
 Attempting to control the actions of others rather
than setting up the situation so that the actions are
self-determined
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Feeling ‘controlled’ versus feeling ‘self-determined’ or
‘autonomous’
 Negative consequences of controlling environments
 When people feel controlled, they act in a more oppositional,
even anti-social way
Environments that Support Basic Needs
Fulfillment of each of the basic needs can be supported
or damaged by the nature of the environment
 Autonomy-supportive environments
 Competence-supportive environments
 Relatedness-supportive environments
Autonomy-Supportive Environments
 When a person perceives that they have meaningful
choices, that is autonomy-supportive
 When a person’s point of view is valued and brought
into consideration in decision-making, that is
autonomy-supportive
 Autonomy-supportive environments tend to produce
more proactive and engaged people
Competence-Supportive Environments
 Determine areas where people perceive their own
competence to be high
 Be careful about moving people into areas where
they will have a sharp drop off in perceived
competence
 Provide trainings with adequate time to assimilate
information
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Trainings that overload with too much information too fast are
not helpful
Relatedness-Supportive Environments
 Relatedness is to one’s self and to others
 Relatedness to self
Realistic expectations
 Limiting negative self-talk
 Valuing self-care
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 Relatedness to others
Positive, appropriate connections to others
 Respect for personal boundaries
 Warmth and good will
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Where does personality fit in?
 Causality Orientations
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Autonomy Orientation
Some people will perceive environments as being more autonomysupportive than will other people
 Organize life around personally meaningful goals
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Control Orientation
Some people will perceive environments as being more controlling
than will other people
 Lots of ‘shoulds’
 Seek/need deadlines
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Impersonal Orientation
Things happen for reasons out of our control
 Do what has been done – no ability to do things differently
 Depressed about present, anxious about future
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What can we do to improve our workplace?
 Suggestions for increasing Autonomy Supportiveness
and reducing how controlling our workplace can
feel?
 Suggestions for increasing Competence
Supportiveness?
 Suggestions for increasing Relatedness-
supportiveness?
Valuing our Colleagues
 Well-being of the person as an end value
 Not solely as a means to an end
Higher productivity
 Lower recruitment costs
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Colleagues are not machines and are not disposable
They stay or go back to the community
 Improved or harmed by their work experiences
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 Strengthening communities by strengthening and
elevating our workforce
References
 Self Determination Theory
 http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/
 Interpersonal control, dehumanization, and violence. Moller & Deci.
 Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 13, 41-53.
 http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/documents/2010_MollerDeci_GPIR.pdf
 Intrinsic Need Satisfaction. Baard, Deci & Ryan
 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34, 2045-2068
 http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/documents/2004_BaardDeciRyan.pdf
 Self determination theory and work motivation. Gagne & Deci.
 Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 331-362
 http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/documents/2005_GagneDeci_JOB_SDTt
heory.pdf
Contact Information
Nicholas H. Apostoleris, Ph.D.
ACTION Health Services
Community Health Connections, Inc.
Fitchburg Family Medicine Residency Program
UMass Medical School
275 Nichols Road, Fitchburg, MA 01420
[email protected]