IN THIS ISSUE:

News You Can Use: How to improve your organization’s volunteer program

Employees Matter: Developing your sense of compassion

Communication Corner: How to handle mistakes

Just for Fun: Work vs. prison

Jump-Starting Your Volunteer Program

Volunteers can make considerable contributions to healthcare facilities. By donating their time, skills, effort, and compassion, volunteers not only help the healthcare organization itself, but they also help make a positive impact on staff and patients. However, getting the perfect volunteers to come to your organization is a lot easier said than done. Increased demand for volunteers, coupled with decreased resources for these programs, have combined to make volunteer recruitment a challenge for many organizations.

Revving up your volunteer program isn’t as hard as you may think. It just takes a little research and dedication. If your healthcare organization would like to re-focus on its volunteer program, take note of the tips below.

Look before you leap. There's a lot you need to know about your organization before you begin the recruitment process. Among other things, you need to understand your organization's history of volunteer involvement. How have volunteers been used in the past? Has your organization collaborated with any other groups or companies? Which staff members have been involved with the organization's volunteer program?

Get in tune with public perception. What sort of publicity— good or bad— has your organization received that might impact your recruitment effort? If your organization has received bad press, you’ll need to understand the issues involved, and be prepared to provide a constructive response.

Go on a mission. Prospective volunteers will want to know what your organization is all about. That being said, you must be able to speak to your organization's mission. Memorize your organization’s mission, and be able to explain how volunteers will contribute to that mission.

Don’t be a victim of culture shock. Many prospective volunteers will want to know about your work environment. So, you’ll want to have a good handle on your organization’s culture. For example, is the general office demeanor serious or is humor widely employed? Your organization's culture greatly influences the type of volunteer positions you will develop and the type of individuals you recruit. If your organization is hierarchical, for example, you will want to recruit individuals who are comfortable following policies and procedures. If your organization is loosely organized and values entrepreneurial ideas, you will want to recruit individuals who are self-starters and comfortable working with less structure and supervision.

Lastly, before you begin your recruitment efforts, remember this simple, yet often overlooked task: Make sure that everyone in the office is aware of the program and knows which employees serve as volunteer management staff. Employees who answer the phones should be prepared to transfer calls from prospective volunteers. If a prospective volunteer can’t get in touch with someone who knows about the program, they probably won’t call back.

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
—Confucius

A Call for Compassion: How to be More Kind & Respectful at Work

There’s almost no excep­tion: just about everyone in life is looking for love and accept­ance. And the need for this love and acceptance doesn’t cease when people leave home and come to work. Indeed, we spend the majority of our waking hours with our co-workers. So, it’s no surprise that many employees seek friendship and acceptance at the workplace.

When employees feel a sense of kindness and compassion from their co-workers and superiors, they are more likely to display a good attitude, and they’ll probably enjoy coming into work everyday. Furthermore, being compassionate not only helps co-workers, but it can also help you. How so? Being compassionate can give you peace of mind and keep you grounded, even when you are treated unkindly. A compassionate mindset can also help you think outside of yourself, and lead you to the best solution when things are hectic. Simply put, when you’re compassionate, everybody wins.

To further develop your compassionate side, take note of the tips below.

• Take time for simple acts of kindness. Even small things like smiling, holding a door open, or giving someone a compliment can do wonders to develop your sense of compassion.
• Get involved in community service. Donating your time and talents for the benefit of others is what compassion is all about.
• Create a list with the following questions*:
  1. What does compassion look like? How does a compassionate person behave?
  2. What does compassion sound like? What words do compassionate people use? What words and phrases do they stay away from?
  3. What does compassion feel like? Do you feel better about yourself? Do you find it difficult to be compassionate?

*Remember, there are no right or wrong answers when you complete this list. It’s just a way to help you explore and further develop compassion.

• Listen with a loving heart to someone who is suffering or in pain. As a healthcare professional, you have ample opportunity to do this.
• Take care of yourself. Take time for reflection, solitude, stillness, prayer, meditation, etc.
• Try to surround yourself with compassionate people. Attitudes are contagious.

Being compassionate isn’t always easy, so don’t feel bad if you can’t automatically turn a compassionate ear toward a co-worker who is screaming at you or is being nasty. Just keep the above tips in mind, and do the best you can.

“When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.”

—Betty Bender

Managing Mistakes: A Three-Step Plan

It’s true: you want your staff to make as few mistakes as possible. No one wants a mistake-ridden office—especially in healthcare. But this is the real world, and guess what? People make mis­takes, and you’re going to have to deal with the issue.

Don’t Turn a Mistake into a Disaster

There are several ways to approach your staffs’ mistakes. You can yell at people. You can punish people by taking them off important assignments. You can publicly humiliate workers and try to make the experience so painful that they dare don’t repeat it. You can be passive aggressive, and act like it doesn’t bother you, but then send an irate e-mail asking them how they could have let such a thing happen.

However, none of these approaches will make you popular, or decrease the likeliness of the person repeating the mistake in the future. On the contrary, these methods can enrage employees so much that they go out of their way to ignore the situation, and make it even worse.

Indeed, anger or snide remarks aren’t going to help the matter. Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do that will. Execute this simple three-step plan the next time an employee makes a blunder:

1. Assess the severity of the mistake. Was it made out of carelessness? Or is the employee usually accurate, and just happened to make an honest mistake? If the mishap appears to be an anomaly, and it didn’t cause a major disruption, it’s probably best not to make a big deal about it. Leave room for simple human error.

2. Address the mistake as a learning opportunity. Workers need to know when they make serious mis­takes so that they can learn and grow in the workplace. Take the employee aside (try to make the conversation as private as possible) and let him/her know what has hap­pened. Explain the consequences of the mistake and how it has affected everyone else. Allow the employee to offer their own suggestions for correcting and preventing the situation. If their proposed solutions aren’t adequate, explain why, and offer your own advice to rectify the situation.

3. Be consistent. If certain employees are consistently making careless mistakes, you need to be consistent with how you address the problem. Let the employee know careless mistakes will not be overlooked, and if they continue the behavior, there will be severe consequences.

While you can’t always control mistakes, you can control how you handle them. By following the simple three-step plan above, you will help create a workplace where employees learn and improve from their mistakes.

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

—Maya Angelou

Work vs. Prison

Prison is very obviously a bad place that no one wants to be. However, some of these comparisons may make us think twice!

• In prison, you get three meals per day. At work, you get just one break for a meal—and you have to pay for it.
• In prison, you get time off for good behavior. At work, you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.
• In prison, a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. At work, you must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors yourself.
• In prison, you can watch TV and play games. At work, you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
• In prison, you get your own toilet. At work, you have to share.
• In prison, your friends and relatives are allowed to visit you. At work, you can get in trouble for even speaking to your friends or family on the phone.
• In prison, all expenses are paid by taxpayers with no work required. At work, you get to pay all the expens­es, and then you get to have taxes deducted from your paycheck (some of which go to pay the prison­ers’ expenses).
• In prison, you spend most of your time looking through bars from the inside wanting to get out. At work, you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.