Question to Respond to:
Do some research and determine the four types of teams in organizations, select the one type that describes your current team and discuss the pros and cons. Note: There are more than four types of teams, so don't be worried if you see each person has different teams.
Instructions:
Identify the consequences of having dissatisfied employees and describe ways of applying the four theories of job satisfaction and how you would use them to boost job satisfaction. Discuss how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors affect job satisfaction.
96 In Practice February 2014 | Volume 36 | 96-98 Staff Management REMEMBER what they told you at business school, or perhaps that seminar you attended last year on staff management? ‘People are your greatest asset and your biggest headache.’ Well, it’s true. No matter how much you look after your team, or however much they respect you as a person, a clinician or a manager, difficulties will arise when managing a team of people. In my practice, my own greatest challenge has been getting everyone to do things consistently – to do the same thing, the right way, every time – and that is all down to communication. And it’s not just about verbal communication – you have to back that up with documentation, regular training and meetings, and provide all the relevant information in an easy to find format, which for me means on a computer system. Communication can be difficult for some vets and, in fact, it sometimes works out better if vets tell managers (I include head nurses, head receptionist, the senior vet and the practice manager in my definition of ‘managers’) and then let them tell the rest of the team. Managers are sometimes more in touch with the team’s feelings, motivations and current issues than I am. However, even when we get it right, there is a lot of information to remember: ■■ Practice news and views; ■■ New product information; ■■ Manuals – such as the reception manual; ■■ Protocols – especially clinical protocols. We find that these are best developed by all our vets in an online forum prior to publication as a finished version; ■■ Procedures – such as the banking procedure or the end of day procedure; ■■ Staff emergency contact information; ■■ Upcoming events; ■■ Induction process and relevant documents; ■■ Health and safety information; ■■ Contacts information – such as details of reps, suppliers, technical support teams, the local pharmacy; ■■ Messages to each other or to teams; ■■ Library catalogue; ■■ Useful links to web resources; ■■ Staff birthday list. How do you keep up with the stream of new stuff that hits your team each day? Think about a car salesperson – they probably have about a dozen different models and associated specifications to remember, plus a few second hand cars on the forecourt. Yet, each day, the sales manager will provide a five or 10 minute pep talk, just to remind everyone of the most important thing to remember: the car they are really trying to push, the cross-sells of insurance or finance, or the up-sells of metallic colours or alloy wheels. They might not have to remember as much as you do but they do it every day. How often do you give any pep talk to your teams or managers? Bearing in mind veterinary practice is not a nine to five job, could you even do that every day? The truth is, it is hard work, even to decide what you might say each day, but veterinary teams are usually comprised of very bright and motivated people. They want to do the right thing and provide accurate, valuable information, but the sheer quantity means that good communication and tools need to be in place to facilitate the recall of a practice’s knowledge base. Despite the fact that there is so much to think about and that each client and patient is so different, there are a few things that can be implemented to improve team communication and help everyone work more productively and professionally. Timing Group meetings There is a right and wrong time for every communication. There is little point in letting people know how much profit you made last year first thing in the morning, just as they arrive. They won’t be ready for it; such a figures-driven message will assault their senses and probably put them right off the information you are trying to convey. Equally, if you are giving your annual business review presentation, it might not be the best time to let everyone know how upset you were when you received a complaint last week. Proper communication requires planning. So the cliché ‘failure Effective team communication Jerry Crick is the owner of Hot Business Solutions, a partner in Brainy Software, business director for Boness Veterinary Enterprises and a director of the London Veterinary Forum. He has over 15 years experience in the IT and agricultural industries, 10 years in the veterinary field and specialises in business management software systems design and development. Communication in business is fundamental for proper organisation, staff moral, problem solving and information sharing. Jerry Crick shares strategies for effective team communication to increase productivity and efficiency. Jerry Crick doi:10.1136/inp.g380 Effective team communication is vital and needs to be in place to make best use of the practice’s knowledge base 97In Practice February 2014 | Volume 36 | 96-98 Staff ManagementStaff Management to plan is a plan for failure’ should be kept in mind when striving to formulate the internal communication strategy for your practice. One way of organising your communication is to break the activities related to it into logical chunks, which can then be delivered in regular sessions. For example, regular segments could be timed as follows: ■■ Annual: Team business review. This might cover business performance and how it affects things like future salary reviews; getting feedback from staff on your plans for the next year; running short workshops on a specific topic (eg, the client experience or the client journey); and providing the team with something positive to take away. ■■ Quarterly: Management team meeting. Key issues should be discussed while developing an action plan to address them. During these meeting always make sure that staff are on board with your views and plans. New responsibilities can also be discussed during these meetings; having this kind of forum about roles is much easier than just dictating new tasks and will help keep the team feeling involved and motivated. ■■ Weekly: Team meeting. The weekly ‘put to sleep’ list can be discussed. A couple of positive stories from the previous week can also be recapped. These weekly groups should provide an opportunity for vets, nurses, reception and administrative staff to bring up issues that need dealing with or remembering. The also provides a great training opportunity. ■■ Ongoing. Be encouraging, appreciative and correct behaviour by pointing out errors, but always in a positive way if possible. One-on-one discussion Of course, you cannot tackle all the personal issues or development needs just in those chunks. Some have to be one-to-one, and for most businesses, this means during the annual appraisal. However, it can also be done on a more regular basis, either by having informal, impromptu chats or by scheduling a private meeting say once a month or once a quarter. These less formal sessions should be no more than five to 10 minutes and they should for the most part be all-positive, unless an issue needs to be resolved. The most important thing to remember when dealing with some negative issue is to always deal with it as soon as possible – these things cannot be left for the annual appraisal. Record keeping For all the meetings that have so far been mentioned an agenda and minutes will definitely be needed. Most importantly, these need to be recorded for future review and published (if they do not involve private or confidential conversations). Even the short five-minute one-to-one conversations should be recorded in personnel files ready for review at the annual appraisal. For many of us it may seem like a nightmare to record and keep safe all this information and even more difficult to publish it in a central, easily readable location, such as a shared drive. However, there are easy ways to accomplish this. You could keep a Word document for meetings or for each and every member of staff in the meetings or personnel folder on your central server. Do make sure it is backed up and secured from general view. For me, a personnel document would be called something like ‘Jane Doe personnel log’ and have a complete history of everything that has taken place or been discussed, in chronological order with the most recent at the top. A fictitious example is given in Box 1. Making sure you do it is very important as these notes will then be available to you when you need to discuss progress with individuals. For instance, it can form the basis for good and positive discussion during appraisal time. They can prove incredibly vital if disciplinary issues ever crop up. In such a worst case scenario, the paper trail is essential and will be needed by you in the event of tribunals. The important thing with recording logs is to keep entries short when you can, otherwise you will slowly get put off making the effort. Meeting agendas and minutes can simply be recorded in Word documents as well, and there are low cost alternatives like OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) that provide most of the functionality of the standard Microsoft Office offerings. Publishing these documents is not difficult - you can put them on a shared drive on a server or have links to the documents on an internal web page or on a secure website which staff have access to. For this I prefer to use the PDF format since it cannot be changed after publication. Most software can save files in a PDF format and if not then there are PDF converters freely or cheaply available over the internet (www.cutepdf.com/index.htm). Or, if you prefer, you can use pages on your intranet and forums to store information in a variety of different formats. Box 1: Record keeping done right Jane Doe personnel log De cember 12, 2012 Had a quick chat with Jane about how she is getting on in her role. She mentioned needing some training on science diets. I commented that she seemed to be doing well in most areas but I would ask Laura to arrange it for her. I mentioned that it was important to recommend food to all our clients and thanked her