Promoting your own talents pays off

It is not a prognosis, but has long since become reality: the shortage of skilled workers in the healthcare sector is increasing dramatically. Every year, there is a shortage of almost 3000 new nurses in Switzerland alone. This has serious consequences for the workload, the hospitals and the patients. The shortage of nursing staff has become a global problem. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there will be a shortage of nine million nurses and midwives worldwide by 2030.

New challenges

Today, increasing complexity and uncertainty are key conditions for a wide variety of companies. They constantly present management personnel with new challenges and demand agile behavior. This development is clearly noticeable in healthcare organizations. In addition to the shortage of skilled workers, there are trends such as economization and pressure to save money, digitalization, globalization and demographic shifts. Last but not least, an increasing questioning of classic hierarchies is also emerging in the healthcare sector.

Multi-layered developments must be answered by adequate measures. Of central importance is the improvement of the professional framework conditions. This applies in particular to increasing the attractiveness of the nursing profession. This includes family-friendly workplaces, individual working time models and making it easier to return to work after maternity leave and parental leave. This required flexibility gives employees the opportunity to shape their work in a life-oriented way. Job satisfaction is increased and the migration of skilled workers to other professional fields can be prevented in the long term.

For managers, a confident and equally agile approach to change is one of the core competencies. Competent leadership of staff through complex change processes is a demanding task.

Increasing responsibility

The professional, economic, organisational and personnel requirements for management staff in hospitals have risen sharply in recent years. As a manager, you are also responsible for the efficient and cost-effective design of processes - with the highest possible quality of patient care. The greatest challenge for a manager today is to motivate his or her own employees so that they can perform optimally under the changed conditions. In doing so, the economic requirements of the hospital management must be taken into account as well as quality management and its demands: Good employee management and the art of motivating form the basis of successful performance in patient care.

Successful leaders combine a wide range of competencies: In addition to sound specialist knowledge, these include personal and social skills, but also managerial qualities. In their training and further education, future managers learn a variety of management tools that can be directly applied in practice. They deepen their management knowledge in specific areas of healthcare and learn about the key requirements placed on managers and continuously reflect on their understanding of leadership.

Promoting and developing personnel

It does not always have to be external employees who lead an organization to success. Many companies have suitably talented staff who, with the right encouragement, can be empowered to take on new tasks and deliver the desired performance. The key terms are: Employee Development and Human Resource Development. While personnel development serves the company by ensuring that employees are ideally deployed and trained, employee development not only benefits the company, but also the employees. If employees are deployed and promoted in such a way that the field of activity corresponds to their abilities, this ensures that they are motivated and put in an above-average effort: They lead projects to success on their own responsibility and thus contribute to the success of their company.

"Can, will, may"

What are the motivational motives of the employees? If you include them in management decisions in a participatory manner, you provide yourself and your team with a qualitative increase in the aspects of transparency and acceptance. The focus here is on three aspects of performance: "can", "will" and "may":

1. A person's "skill" describes their individual skills, acquired over a lifetime based on their abilities, which enable them to perform certain work through their expertise.
2. The "may" of a person includes written and unwritten rules and norms of behavior. These are determined by the company, the position or the manager. For example, a manager may only make decisions within a defined framework that he or she is entitled to as a manager according to the job profile.
3. The "will" of a person represents his/her individual goals and motives, which he/she strives for with his/her behaviour. These are subjective goals that can be realized, for example, through further professional training in a particular area.

In corporate management, there are various methods of specifically influencing the "ability", "permission" and "desire" of an employee:

1. The "skill" can be developed through further training, personnel development measures or options of demand-oriented job-enlargement.
2. The "may" is defined by the job description and the corporate culture and is modified precisely in the form of change management measures.
3. If one wants to understand how "wanting" can be influenced, one must first know how the motivational structure of a particular person is configured. It is the result of explicit, often rational goals and implicit, predominantly emotional motives. The intersection of these is called intrinsic motivation, which can be stimulated or inhibited extrinsically.

Opportunities for Employee Development There are numerous opportunities for employee development. These include:

• Talent development: Top talents in the industry are sought after and courted in the job market. Companies that promote their own talent are one step ahead of the competition and prevent possible fluctuations. The advantage: Those who promote in-house often discover talents in employees that have previously remained hidden and unused.
• Training: All means and methods that strengthen the competencies of employees and enable them to successfully master their tasks are training. In addition to technical and management qualifications, IT and soft skills such as appearance and communication are also important components in this context. Trainings are also suitable to be carried out in groups. In-house trainings with other areas and/or professional groups offer, in addition to the contents, a better understanding of the needs of other areas and professional groups. This promotes systemic working, networking and the informal exchange of information.
• Development of management personnel: The market for management personnel in the healthcare sector is highly competitive. The same principle applies here as for talent development. Those who train and develop employees in-house can also prepare them for later management positions in their own environment. Managers who come from within the company know the employees and the work processes in the local context very well and are particularly valuable for the company.
• Job-enlargement: Job-enlargement makes employees' daily work more exciting and varied, which increases job satisfaction. Monotony is to be prevented and satisfaction increased. Both the performance and flexibility of the employees increase and free up resources for further training. The company benefits from improved personnel planning and from employees who can be deployed more flexibly.
• Project management: Project management is the key discipline for implementing rapid change. Project managers shape the future through innovative projects and thus contribute significantly to the company's success. In order to be successful here, the project environment must be analysed properly and influenced in a targeted manner. In the exchange with all project partners, one's own social competence and ability to reflect are important.

Higher job satisfaction

Managers who manage to give their employees the necessary time for core performance, further training and development will be more successful in the future. The time and money spent on employee training strengthens the company's own corporate culture and creates sustainable added value. The individual perspective of being able to develop further ensures greater satisfaction in the work process. This is reflected in productivity and is a strong motivation to remain in the company in the long term, with which one identifies oneself as a top performer.