Relationship of a Healthy Academic Work Environment to Employee Engagement and Student/Graduate Attitudes and Performance

There exists a multitude of definitions of what constitutes and how one creates a healthy workplace environment. Health encompasses physical and psychological symptoms and rates of physical illnesses of individual workers, which is generally the responsibility of the individual, but can be affected by the work environment. Well-being is the absence of symptoms or disease but tends to be a broader and more encompassing concept that takes into consideration the “whole person.” More broadly, health and well-being can refer to the mental, psychological, or emotional aspects of workers and include measures of life experiences (e.g., life satisfaction, happiness), and generalized job-related experiences (e.g., job satisfaction, job attachment).

Work climate or environment is the manifestation of workplace culture, which comprises the beliefs, behaviors and practices of an organization (Groenwald, 2018). Many authors have described the impact that a positive workplace climate has on job satisfaction and engagement of employees and organizational performance and outcomes both in healthcare and other industries (Bamford, Wong and Laschinger, 2012; Deal and Peterson, 2016; Dinc and Plakolovic, 2016). The literature also confirms that a caring climate can be created proactively and has positive impact on employees and students (Groenwald, 2018; Roch, Dubois, and Clarke, 2014; Sellars, 2011; Simmons and Cavanaugh, 2000).

This presentation considers the workplace a dynamic organism and conceptualizes a healthy work environment in terms of the functioning and outputs of the organization, which are affected by its workers and leaders. The presenter proposes that a healthy organization is one in which the workers are satisfied, engaged, and productive, with positive outcomes for the organization and its customers; and that leaders must play a significant role in creating and sustaining a healthy work climate. In the case of an academic institution, the climate of the institution not only has an impact on faculty and staff engagement, satisfaction and retention, but on student success in their degree program, and ultimately on the patient care delivered by students and graduate nurses. The ultimate goal of an educational institution that graduates healthcare professionals is to proactively create a climate that ultimately leads to extraordinary patient care and satisfaction.

The presenter provides a case study of a university that implemented a culture change initiative to intentionally create a healthy workplace climate as defined by caring behaviors manifested in self-care, care of colleagues and care for students. The university conceptualized caring according to Watson’s theories (1979, 1985, 1988, 1996) as a whole, enriching process operationalized with discrete behaviors. The measures of impact of the initiative included comparing the university’s results on a national study of perception of caring among faculty and staff; measuring the engagement and satisfaction of faculty and staff on a third party survey conducted annually; and faculty and employee retention. High level results included:

• On a 2015 survey of all university colleagues using the Caring Characteristics Within School of Nursing Climates (C2SNC) (McDaniel, Schlosser, and Hayne, 2014), the university’s employees rated the institution’s workplace environment significantly higher than the national sample in all four dimensions measured: teamwork/trust, support, feeling valued, and respect.

• Engagement scores on a third-party vendor administered engagement survey of all colleagues demonstrated a relationship between culture initiative activities and employee engagement; engagement scores from the beginning of the initiative in 2011 to 2018 have been at or above best in US or best in world companies (Phillips, Fillmore, O’Lynn, Bassell, Hollinger-Smith, 2018)

• Retention of faculty improved to within best-in-class rate of 15% from 2011 to 2018

• Anecdotal evidence from student and clinical partner/employer testimony infers that the caring climate of the institution led to positive student attitudes and caring behavior and the perception among employers of higher student and graduate nurse performance.

The presenter provides evidence to support the efficacy of creating a healthy workplace and suggestions for improving workplace climate. The implication for practice is that patients perceive better care delivered by healthcare professionals who demonstrate caring behaviors (Graber et al., 2012), and that a focus by educational institutions on improving workplace climate pays dividends in terms of institutional performance, positive impact of graduate nurse on workplace, and perception of improved patient care.