Introduction
The role of workplace culture cannot be underestimated nowadays, especially knowing that the diversity of employees continues to increase. The influence of different factors on employee performance and patient outcomes cannot be ignored either, as these may be linked to safety, health, and wellbeing (Rider et al., 2018). Therefore, a healthcare organization where only a poor workplace culture is in place will be subject to worse working conditions and reduced employee satisfaction. In order to address this problem, many healthcare managers engage in improvement programs but to no avail because there are additional issues associated with employee satisfaction and motivation. In a sense, one cannot predict all the potential influences of poor workplace culture on a healthcare organization. According to Calciolari et al. (2018), it is essential to deploy relevant enhancements and develop strategies that are going to reflect employees’ and patients’ inherent needs. Thus, a better understanding of the magnitude of workplace issues is required if the team expects to achieve positive outcomes for everyone.
The current research project offers a detailed outlook on the essential outcomes that could affect a healthcare organization as a result of a poor workplace culture being in place. Research articles and books on quality management and healthcare leadership were reviewed to investigate the broadest gaps in evidence on the subject. With the aid of this research, the author intends to validate the importance of workplace culture and define the key areas that could be affected by the lack of workplace culture or its inherent poorness. Several outcomes will be reviewed in detail in order to provide the audience with insight into how workplace culture affects patient and worker outcomes. Thus, the current paper provides a unique outlook on the fundamental value held by workplace culture in healthcare organizations.
Essential Outcomes of Poor Workplace Culture in Healthcare Organizations
Damaged Safety Climate
The concept of safety climate has to be included in the discussion on the topic of poor workplace culture because there are numerous shared perceptions that could be affected. The administration does not always control the outcomes of interactions between healthcare workers, which creates implications for the development of issues related to the safety of both staff and patients (Alsalem et al., 2018). When a workplace culture is relatively poor, executive employees will be significantly less likely to display commitment and share safety performance feedback with other staff members. On a long terms scale, this is a negative concept that is going to affect everyone to an unknown extent since coworkers will not have access to relevant insights concerning workplace safety. In line with Rider et al. (2018), it is a crucial limitation because it is going to force employees to continue using unsafe practices and behaviors and fail to reduce injuries and accidents as a result.
In order to overcome a damaged safety climate in the workplace, the team would have to adopt more educational efforts in an attempt to showcase the benefits of possessing relevant knowledge. Thus, poor workplace culture is a predictor of a flawed safety climate within a healthcare organization due to the influence that all staff members have on each other (Alsalem et al., 2018). In a sense, patient and employee safety remains dependent on workplace culture because the efforts exerted by the staff will be nullified by the lack of motivation and problems with accepting the need for change. Thus, the majority of issues related to safety could be resolved if the team addressed workplace culture and ensured that no employees were looking for retribution (Calciolari et al., 2018). Timely feedback could be utilized to improve the safety culture even further and take care of obsolete values and beliefs that might be shared by the most reluctant employees.
Burnout and Job-Related Stress
Job-related stress and employee burnout are the two of the most common outcomes of a strong workplace culture being absent from healthcare organizations. The increasing occupational strain cannot be overcome by employees, making them generate inadequate responses to their interactions with other staff members and patients (Lee & Jang, 2020). The frequency of communicating with other healthcare actors defines the quickness of a person being exposed to burdening emotional exhaustion, leading to a worker’s burnout being reported. One of the biggest outcomes of burnout is depersonalization, as it inherently forces the individual to distance themselves from other people, including the given employee’s family members and not just colleagues or patients. This feeling is going to affect the worker’s organizational performance and diminish their sense of personal accomplishment (De Simone et al., 2021). The increasing variance of stress is a tough task to resolve that cannot be ignored across the healthcare environment due to limited support from the managers and coworkers.
A healthcare worker experiencing burnout will be significantly less likely to be in full control of their job responsibilities and decision-making. One’s ability to use professional skills is going to be diminished significantly, with the only rewards being accessible being stronger reinforcements deployed by the management (Tawfik et al., 2019). In a sense, stress and burnout tend to go hand in hand because these two variables are often interchangeable. The ambiguity of one’s role within a healthcare organization could become another source of stress for an inexperienced employee. With a strong workplace culture, the team might provide that worker with relevant assistance and reduce their exposure to constant stress. In the absence of a relevant organizational culture, the team would have to experience constant shifts in workload and employee rotations (Hofmann, 2018). Accordingly, the lack of support is the most likely factor to result in job burnout in healthcare workers that display poor coping responses.
Another problem that arises when a healthcare organization gets exposed to the lack of proper workplace culture is the reduced level of job satisfaction displayed by employees. Even though reduced job satisfaction is relatively harmless during the beginning phase, it could lead to a significantly higher turnover over time, causing even the best employees to reconsider their role in the organization (Lee & Jang, 2020). Flawed organizational commitment stems from the lack of support and represents an issue that cannot be overlooked since many employees begin worrying too much about their performance. This irrational idea drives them toward unregulated working hours and a quicker pathway toward burnout. In order to avoid these negative outcomes, the team should ensure that employees report their concerns in a timely manner. Nevertheless, higher levels of perceived stress would make it almost impossible for workers to share their attitudes (Rider et al., 2018). This is why improved workplace culture is so important for all actors involved in care.
Accordingly, the idea for the team is to follow the workload and embed employee-friendly concepts in the organization’s culture in order to prevent medical errors and negative patient attitudes. The number of tasks that one has to complete should be reduced to an acceptable minimum, and constant staff member feedback should be collected to show relevant peer support and motivate workers to report the majority of challenges they have to endure (De Simone et al., 2021). At the same time, job-related stress could become one of the essential contributors to healthcare workers becoming less motivated, especially in the absence of a stronger workplace culture aimed at employee wellbeing. It is not a rare occasion that healthcare employees experience depression and enhanced emotional sensitivity when they are on the verge of emotional exhaustion (Tawfik et al., 2019). Adequately allocated workplace demands should be limited to a certain extent so as to make it possible to avoid negative health outcomes for both care providers and patients.
Reduced Performance and Flawed Teamwork
The biggest flaws of the lack of a stronger workplace culture can be witnessed when assessing the impact of teamwork on the overall organizational performance. For example, there is a rather popular opinion that stress and negative attitudes could accumulate and cause healthcare workers to commit more mistakes than expected by the management (Sabuhari et al., 2020). This situation is mostly met in organizations where the culture is too weak and does not promote discipline and fair treatment of all workers. Thus, the goal for the organization would be to mitigate the effects of overlooking the least impactful variables and focus on quality improvement instead. From patient safety to influence on workers, stronger organizational culture could reduce the number of vulnerabilities that affected the team in the past and lead to the absence of effective teamwork (Berberoglu, 2018). This suggestion is also based on the idea that interdisciplinary teams experience even higher levels of stress due to prolonged exposure to new responsibilities.
When an organization is effective in terms of performance and human resource management, it focuses on the opportunities related to how communication between team members could be improved. This is an essential element of workplace culture that has to be addressed in order to prevent the team from being affected by crucial threats, such as poor performance (Sabuhari et al., 2020). Accordingly, the occurrence of medical errors has to be reduced by the management, but the responsible care agent cannot do it because of the absence of proper teamwork and adequate reporting measures. On a long-term scale, reduced performance could translate into care delays and heavy staff demoralization (Berberoglu, 2018). The problem is that patient outcomes can be associated with employee performance and poor workplace culture, leaving the management responsible for eradicating all the flaws.
Poor Staffing Mix and Negative Patient Outcomes
Poor workplace culture is also expected to affect the organization’s staffing mix to an extent where the presence of high-quality staff members cannot be a predictor of high-quality services. Thus, licensed practical nurses and various registered nurses might not become a factor contributing to organizational change due to the lack of administrative efforts to unite all employees under one flag (Curry et al., 2018). For the process of staffing, this means that teamwork cannot be achieved even if all employees possess significant experience in the field. According to Calciolari et al. (2018), the lack of consistent staffing would lead to a more common occurrence of medication errors and patient falls. This type of evidence makes it safe to hypothesize that workplace culture might suffer from inconsistency to an extent where patients could be exposed to negative health outcomes regardless of the care provider’s experience and available technology and knowledge.
Based on the evidence above, it can be stated that the number of employees does not serve as a relevant predictor of the quality of care and the strength of workplace culture. In addition, it can be concluded that a poorly thought-out staffing mix is a crucial predictor of errors and inconsistencies that damage patients instead of only concerning staff members (Curry et al., 2018). With this information in mind, healthcare organizations have to go beyond the nurse-to-patient ratio and start applying systems thinking to see how the quality of care could be improved. The focus on the number of staff members should become an obsolete quality indicator, as patient mortality does not depend on the number of employees available to the organization either (Rider et al., 2018). The administration will have to address workplace culture in an attempt to implement more patient-focused care models and look for vital signs of considering the quality of care superior to the number of workers that can provide care to individual patients.
Worker Dissatisfaction and Missed Quality Improvement Opportunities
One more problem that has to be addressed when discussing poor workplace culture is the huge impact of the inability to deploy quality improvement measures with a focus on employee motivation and satisfaction. The lack of awareness regarding the need to introduce and cultivate change could destroy the team’s spirit and devaluate the need for collaboration (Lee & Jang, 2020). The principles of quality improvement are rarely followed within a poor workplace culture. This shows how workplace culture connects employees to the management and vice versa. With no proper quality improvement initiatives in place, the team could struggle with financial operations and care cost definitions that would attract more clients. In line with Sabuhari et al. (2020), in the conditions of inadequate workplace culture, the healthcare organization will be expected to go through periods of discouragement and limited access to data. The lack of evidence-based practices would contribute to the gap between patients and providers while also making it harder for staff members to find opportunities for collaboration.
When looking at worker dissatisfaction through the prism of poor workplace culture, one should consider the limitations of quality improvement efforts as well. For the majority of healthcare organizations where poor workplace culture is in place, most of such efforts are going to result in narrow-focused patient care being deployed (Calciolari et al., 2018). This aspect of care cannot be ignored because quality improvement efforts are mostly designed to help team members find the most effective means of providing cost-efficient care to all patients. Nevertheless, an inappropriate workplace culture might create premises for an organizational environment where administrative goals take too much space and resources to be considered achievable (Lee & Jang, 2020). On a long-term scale, these findings are important because they show how the work-life balance cannot be achieved when the quality of services is unreasonably low compared to other healthcare organizations. A workplace culture that does not motivate employees to participate and set goals can be considered hopeless.
Flaws Related to the Physical Environment
Another reason to consider workplace culture a significant factor in healthcare organizations is the lack of transformations that are imposed on the physical healthcare environment over time. For instance, demotivated employees may not be heavily involved in sharing their insights into facility design and the effectiveness of the building as a service provision furnace (Wei et al., 2018). Even though staff members are not expected to possess extensive knowledge of design solutions or architecture, their theoretical contribution could be utilized to alter the physical environment and make the latter friendlier and more comfortable. From the point of workplace culture, this kind of engagement could increase the cost-effectiveness of hospital operations and help the team review the fundamental functions that the physical environment serves (Gruppen et al., 2019). Increased comfort will be met with enthusiasm by patients who would appreciate the willingness of the healthcare organization to consider their personal needs before anything else. Thus, the “built” environment could be deemed unchangeable by the administration, dooming staff members to misunderstandings and reduced quality of services.
The fact that patient outcomes could be altered through the interface of physical environment alterations can be utilized to show employees the importance of collaboration and feedback. Continuous reinforcement of a positive workplace culture is going to affect design choices, with more workers becoming keen on transforming the care environment to an extent where it would appeal to both staff members and patients in different care settings (Wei et al., 2018). The lack of an emotional connection between employees would translate into a physical disconnect, where staff members would overlook the convenience and comfort of their patients for the sake of pursuing their personal objectives. From the point of long-term care outcomes, poor workplace culture becomes a damaging factor because it discourages connections between healthcare workers and patients (Gruppen et al., 2019). This is a nearly irreversible challenge that is directly associated with proper consideration of impairments and physical conditions, such as cleanliness and lighting. Thus, workplace culture has to be mentioned when discussing patient perceptions of the safety and effectiveness of the given physical care provision environment.
Discontinued Practices and Weak Delivery Systems
The key problem with poor workplace culture is that it contributes to the establishment and support of disorganized delivery systems where the majority of staff members do not recognize their roles within the organization. In turn, it becomes harder for them to manage responsibilities and build strategic partnerships with other care providers and patients when trying to establish collaboration across the organization (Shanafelt et al., 2019). From insurers to physicians, team members have to gain insight into the most efficient delivery systems, but they are unable to do so due to the lack of motivation and support from the administration. This dysfunctional internal relationship between the executive unit and other staff members translates into the lack of integration opportunities that could help care workers generate positive patient outcomes. According to Rider et al. (2018), delivery practices are essentially important because they predict care coordination and make it possible to address employee productivity through workplace culture.
The key problem that can be linked to weak delivery systems is the existence of poor workplace culture. This factor can be directly interconnected to organizational performance and the issue of failing to provide employment security and high-quality management (Calciolari et al., 2018). Many healthcare organizations suffering from improper workplace culture are exposed to staff mixes that do not engage in self-management, share knowledge, or display a positive attitude toward training. Trust and credibility cannot be achieved within such workplace environments because of the absence of common goals that would be achieved by all staff members simultaneously. Shanafelt et al. (2019) state that organizational performance can be expected to decrease within an environment where obsolete methods and strategies are still employed in the actual care provision practice. Thus, an inconsistent cash flow and reduced worker productivity are going to diminish the value of leadership and quality management.
Conclusion
When looking at workplace culture, it is essential to gain more insight into how the team plans its activities and defines quality measurement and improvement initiatives. For healthcare organizations, this makes a lot of sense because the majority of care provision facilities are engaged in deep-rooted collaborations that have to be nurtured and respected. Without timely assessments, the organization would struggle under the weight of responsibilities that were not respected in regard to safety and quality of patient care. Looking back at all the evidence that had been presented within the framework of the current paper, it has to be noted that the influence of many workplace culture-related concepts is overlooked by staff members. Nevertheless, patients often tend to witness the issues related to the organization’s approaches to care and patient-centered services. Workplace culture cannot be ignored because it mediates the relationship between the management unit and other staff members.
The evidence that was presented throughout this research project concerns the quality of patient care under the influence of numerous factors that discourage motivation, performance, and feedback. Safety climate and employee burnout stand for the two biggest elements that predict positive patient outcomes or the lack thereof on a long-term scale. This is an important reminder to healthcare managers that have to recognize that employee performance depends on a decent work-life balance, rational staffing decisions, and the reason behind quality improvement processes. If a rapport was developed between the team and the management, the majority of the issues discussed within the framework of the current paper would not be met at all. Nevertheless, all the aforementioned evidence hints at the fact that patient outcomes and patient attitudes represent two semi-controllable variables that could affect both healthcare employees and the organization at the same time. This is why the incidence of medical errors should serve as one of the signs of incorrect management and weak leadership, which lead to poor workplace culture and negative patient outcomes as a result.
Overall, it has to be concluded that regardless of the given healthcare setting, staff members will always be expected to run into issues related to motivation and organizational performance. The task of the organization’s management should be to establish a stronger workplace culture where employee and patient outcomes are equally important. Future improvements are only going to be achieved under the condition that employees’ knowledge and skills are maximized to improve responses to various patient health issues. The significance of these findings for improved organizational outcomes can be validated by means of long-term positive patient attitudes created with the aid of employees’ efforts. Former worker and patient outcomes should become the source of baseline data for health managers in order to help the team focus on the effectiveness of evidence-based decisions and possible recommendations. The expectations shared by employees, patients, and managers should be combined in a reasonable way in order to keep everyone motivated and outcome-focused.
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