Employees in our office are becoming increasingly irritable with
one another. We work in a very busy medical practice where every
patient visit requires that several people record information in
the chart. These entries must be detailed and timely.
Q:
Employees in our office are becoming increasingly irritable with one another. We work in a very busy medical practice where every patient visit requires that several people record information in the chart. These entries must be detailed and timely.
When information is missing or incomplete, the person with the patient has to stop everything and go find the one who handled the chart last. These interruptions occur throughout the day and waste a lot of time. They also create a great deal of frustration.
I believe this confusion is caused by employees who haven’t developed organized work habits. How can we run this office more efficiently and stop being so snippy with each other?
A:
To combat this chaos, you must first figure out whether the problem stems from the people or the process. If one employee repeatedly mishandles a required step in a well-defined workflow, that’s an individual performance issue. The solution is personal coaching and corrective action.
But if files are continually flying back and forth, with frequent erroneous entries, you may be suffering from a poorly designed work process. This is a common problem in growing organizations, where procedures randomly evolve over time with no particular strategy or plan.
To evaluate your current process, engage your co-workers in creating a diagram that illustrates every single step in handling patient information.
Once the roadblocks and inefficiencies are identified, the group should be able to outline a more effective approach. If management approves this proposal, both the charts and the relationships should soon be flowing more smoothly.
Q:
When our manager resigned, all five people in the department applied for her job. I was the one selected. After giving me the good news, my new boss said “I understand that you don’t like to be told what to do. You’ll have to work on that.” This really bothered me because it is simply not true. I believe my former manager may have discredited me while recommending someone else for the position. Although I defended myself to my boss, I’m afraid he’s going to view me negatively in the future. Should I discuss this with him again or just let time prove him wrong?
A:
No one likes personal criticism, so your feelings about this unexpected feedback are completely understandable. However, you don’t want to overreact by continuing to bring up the subject. If you keep debating the point, you will only reinforce the perception that you might be hard to manage.
If you think about it, you may realize that your boss has actually done you a favor. By sharing this information, he’s giving you a chance to correct his initial impression. If you make every effort to be a reasonable, cooperative employee, his opinion will undoubtedly change.
Finally, please remember that your boss must regard you highly, since he chose you over four other applicants for this position. If your self-esteem needs a boost, consider asking him why you were selected.
