Health Workforce: Addressing Low Job Satisfaction in Nursing

This report addresses the significant issue of low job satisfaction within the health workforce, specifically focusing on nursing staff. It identifies key contributing factors such as extreme workload, poor relationships, workplace discrimination, and job insecurity, highlighting their impact on staff turnover, organizational performance, and patient care quality. The report examines the arguments for and against the issue, considering constraints like limited budgets and staff availability. It proposes options like eradicating workplace discrimination and providing job security, recommending reframing organizational policies to implement a unique code of conduct. The implementation plan involves meetings with stakeholders, gathering suggestions, and reframing the policy within two months. The success of this plan is measured by increased job satisfaction, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced staff retention. A communication plan is included to describe reframed policies, emphasizing the need for awareness among employees. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of addressing this issue to improve the overall healthcare environment.

Running head: Health workforce
HEALTH WORKFORCE

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Table of Contents
Issue statement...........................................................................................................................3
Background and discussion........................................................................................................3
Options and recommendations...................................................................................................4
Implementation..........................................................................................................................6
Communication..........................................................................................................................8

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Prepared for: Low job satisfaction in nursing staff
Requested by: Low job satisfaction in nursing staff
Prepared by:
Date: 17-08-2019
Issue statement
Low job satisfaction is the issue and this issue must be solved to improve organizational
performance
Background and discussion
● This issue exists due to the presence of several factors including extreme workload,
poor relationship with coworkers, workplace discrimination, insufficient job security
and others (Pisanti et al. 2016).
● High turnover of nursing staff and declining organizational performance are two
major situations that are causing it to be elevated.
● Low job satisfaction is leading to poor organizational performance and hospitals are
being unable to ensure good quality patient care. As mentioned by Gountas &
Gountas (2016), low job satisfaction in nurses leads to a decreasing level of patient
satisfaction. Reputation of the healthcare organization can be hampered with low job
satisfaction in nursing staff.
● Patients are being impacted by lower job satisfaction in nurses. Due to high turnover
rate, healthcare organizations are not being able to provide top-quality services to
patients (Halcomb and Ashley, 2017).

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● Higher level of patient care is not being provided by the healthcare industry and low
job satisfaction in nurses is one of the main reasons behind it. Standard of local,
national and global healthcare services is declining due to this reason.
● In support of this issue, it has been found that poor organizational culture and
practices are causing low job satisfaction in nurses, on the other hand, Björn,
Lindberg & Rissén (2016) have mentioned that opposite viewpoints state that lack of
flexibility, proper knowledge and skills in nurses are preventing them to provide their
best effort in caregiving.
● Organizations have increased hiring more staff to reduce workload and effective
communication between staff is helping them to develop good relationships. As
mentioned by Feather (2015), many healthcare organizations have successfully
eradicated workplace discrimination to increase job satisfaction in nurses. Job security
is being increased by many healthcare firms. These approaches are resulting in
increasing job satisfaction in nurses,
● Corporations from all levels of staff are not available at all the time and it has become
a constraint to increase job satisfaction in nurses. Another constraint is limited budget
of organizations that are preventing them to hire more staff to reduce extreme
workload (Al Maqbali, 2015).
● If this issue is not solved by healthcare organizations, staff turnover rate will increase
and this situation will lead to poor quality of patient care. Reputation of the
organization will be hampered as well if they fail to meet the needs of patients.
Options and recommendations
● There are different options that can be proposed to improve the job satisfaction of
nurses. This includes improving eradication of workplace discrimination,

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providing job security and others. These proposed options like eradication of
workplace discrimination can help to increase engagement of nurses and the issue of
low job satisfaction can be solved. Moreover, provision of job security can help to
motivate nurses to perform better and satisfaction rate can be increased.
These options have been implemented in a workplace like recruiting permanent
nurses that provides job security but other options of job security like provision of
benefits, engaging nurses in decision making are not implemented in majority
workplaces. Moreover, removing discrimination in workplace could be made through
framing proper policies.
Adopting these options can help an organization to achieve a stable financial position
because less nurse turnover can reduce the cost of recruiting. Moreover, adopting
these options can also help to achieve precedential implications (Giles, Parker,
Mitchell & Conway, 2017). Legal guidelines regarding maintenance of equality in the
workplace can be maintained. Judicial guidelines regarding employee rights and
benefits can be maintained by adopting the option of increasing job security of nurses.
In addition, political affiliation can be achieved through implementation of options
like eradicating workplace discrimination.
● The proposed options can be achieved through an appropriate approach like
developing a sub-team. The sub-team can be guided through management of the
workplace and they will work in choosing appropriate recommendation. The team can
conduct detailed research on implications on adopting the options and its benefits.
This issue of low job satisfaction needs to be solved by this team that consists of
leaders from different departments like HR, operations and others.

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● Recommendation for solving the issue is reframing the policies of the organization
to implement a unique code of conduct, which eliminates any sorts of
discrimination.
This recommendation can help to define the rights and responsibilities of each
employee, which is a major benefit. Moreover, this solution can help to reduce the
risk of an employer’s liability for different acts of discrimination and ensure high job
satisfaction.
Application of this solution involves some risks like increasing expense of resources.
Reframing organizational policies requires both time and money, which can impact on
different operational processes of a healthcare organization.
It can be seen that code of conduct exists in all healthcare organizations for
employees. However, strong policies are required for increasing job satisfaction of
employees like nurses.
Reframing the policies can reduce wastage of resources that can occur during frequent
employee turnover. Moreover, strong policies of an organization help to maintain
legal guidelines and legal issues can be avoided, which is precedential implication of
this solution. Reframing organizational policies can help to reduce the inner politics
of the organization and interpersonal relationship can be improved.
Implementation
● A meeting must be conducted to discuss the process to reframe the company policy to
implement the code of conduct. Staff must be engaged along with the managers and
leaders in the process (Kianto, Vanhala & Heilmann, 2016). Opinion of each of the
meeting attendees must be evaluated for reframing the policy.

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● The management team of the concerned hospital will implement the solution within
the organization. It is important for nursing staff to cooperate with the implementation
process as this solution will help them to increase job satisfaction.
● Key steps are mentioned below,
- Meeting with stakeholders
- Getting suggestions from staff
- Understanding their issues
- Determining the code of conduct
- Reframing the policy
● This plan must be implemented within 2 months. Each step of the plan must be
completed within a predetermined time period. As mentioned by Aamir, Hamid,
Haider & Akhtar (2016), completion of the reframing of policy within minimum time
can help organizations to retain valuable nursing staff to provide better care to
patients.
● Increasing job satisfaction in nurses can be considered as a criterion that can define
the success of resolving this issue. Satisfaction of customers will be increased and
organizations will be able to maintain their market reputation. It will be possible to
retain talented nurses and improve the productivity of the firm. More accurate patient
care can be assured with the help of high job satisfaction in nurses. Additionally, it
can be seen that the cost of hiring may be reduced and it will be a sign of success in
resolving the issue of low job satisfaction in nurses.

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Communication
● Communication plan is essential for describing the reframned policies and code of
conduct to the target audience. A proper communication plan helps in describing
changes in an organization (Chamberlain, Hoben, Squires, & Estabrooks, 2016).
❖ Main objective of the plan is to create awareness about reframed policies
among employees.
❖ Different channels like websites, newsletters can be adopted to implement the
communication plan.
● Media and communication professionals need to with the key message of improving
acquaintance of employees with reframed policies to increase job satisfaction.
● The target audience of the organization is nurses who are involved in discrimination
and faces discrimination. The new policies can help them to follow code of conduct
and this can impact on job satisfaction.

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Reference list
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