Case: The Quiet Bunch

You learned during your first week on the job as the newly hired admitting supervisor that each departmental supervisor was expected to lead one of the hospitals numerous quality improvement teams. It came as no surprise that the team to which you were assigned was the team your predecessor, the former admitting supervisor, had served as leader. Your team, you soon learned, consisted of several of your departments people plus employees from a scattering of other departments.

As you held individual meetings to become acquainted with both your employees (in the admitting department) and other members of your team, you were quickly inundated with complaints and other indications of discontent from both your employees and other team members. There were vocal complaints about the way the department had been run and complaints about the useless quality improvement team. From a couple of your employees who served on the quality team, you received complaints about those who shall remain nameless who regularly carry tales to administration.

You listened to all the complaints. You detected some common themes in what you were hearing, leading you to believe that perhaps some misunderstandings could be cleared up if some of the issues could be aired openly with each concerned group. You scheduled two meetings, one for your admitting staff and one for the quality improvement team. You felt encouraged because a number of individuals had told you they would be happy to speak up at such a meeting.

Your first meeting, held with your admitting staff, was brief; nobody spoke up, even when urged to do so in the most nonthreatening way possible. Your subsequent meeting with the quality team was no better. You got zero discussion going with either group, although before and between the meetings you had been bombarded by complaints from individuals. This left you extremely frustrated because most of the complaints you heard were group issues, not individual problems.

Questions

What can you do to get either or both groups to open up in a group setting about what is bothering them?

Can you suggest what might lie in the immediate past that could have rendered these employees unwilling to speak up?

Because you have two groups (with overlapping membership) to be concerned with, where would you initially concentrate your efforts?

What might you do concerning the charges that someone is carrying tales to administration?