Amy Wrzesniewski, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior Yale School of Management, recently sent me a paper she co-authored with Jane Dutton (University of Michigan) and Gelaye Debebe (George Washington University) entitled “Caring in Constrained Contexts.” Reading it made me realize that for workers in low status positions the indifference and incivility they experience is in part why 90 percent of employees today are either disengaged or not aligning with organizational goals. Reading the comments of workers provides a technicolor view of their day-today experiences. Here are a few excerpts:
- “The doctors have a tendency to look at us like we’re not even there, like, you know, we’ll be working in the hallways, and you know, no recognition of what you are doing whatsoever.”
- “A typical day with the nurses down here would be I come in at about 4:30. I set my cart up in my area. … they do a lot of staring and gawking. I don’t know the purpose of this. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me.”
- “I was called as a favor to my supervisor to come up …and clean a room because the patient’s family was complaining that the room was filthy. It was supposed to be cleaned by the day shift and evidently the day shift has skipped over that particular room…And you have these people shouting, ‘This room is filthy,’ and this, that, and the other, and ‘I want this room cleaned now.’”
- “Doctors will do things like, you know, they’ll do an exam, take off their gloves and drop them on the floor. You know, just things like that…they don’t even think, you know, they expect housekeeping to do everything…I think there’s a difference between housekeeping and maid service and they get confused”
- “Some of them [the doctors] feel like they’re next to God. There’s a lot of doctors who feel that way too…Just in their tone and their body language. Every now and then some might, they don’t want to say it, but you know they just feel it. Say, like this. For instance I am cleaning their room or waxing. A doctor will walk right through it. Even if it is not an emergency. You can tell them. Everyone else will go around. You know, I’m saying, he will walk right through here. Now, do you think that’s kind of a sense? Just because he’s a doctor. Nurses will go around housekeepers. So that’s why you get this feeling. Who he just thinks he is….”
- “And the doctors stand in the way. And what I mean by ‘doctors that stand in the way.’ I mean literally, stand in the way. Like you’re going down the hallway to sweep it. Doctors will stand in the way. You have to ask them to move, every day, the same doctors every day. It can be the same doctors. You see them ten times a week. You have to ask them to move ten times that week.” [and later] “That’s just like they (the doctors) have no regard for whatever anyone else is doing in the hallway.”
- “Well the doctors. Okay. The doctors I tell you. They’re a little snobbish. But you’ve got to figure they’ve spent $75,000 a year to get where they’re at. You know what I mean. And they deserve respect. They’ve got a lot of responsibilities. I’ve had doctors get on elevators with me and refuse to [press the button to] get the floor I needed, and I couldn’t get the button.”
Despite the devaluing effects from indifference an incivility, these workers find meaning by connecting with and helping patients and their guests. Consider the following quotes from the aforementioned study.
- “Here, the other day, she [patient] says, ‘When you get through will you please shut the door and shut the light?’ I said, ‘Well sure’, you know. She said, ‘Well, you know, I can’t hear very well, and I’ve got to turn the TV on louder, and I don’t want to disturb.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re paying the bill.’…I mean it’s just something small, you know. Or they’ll run out of Kleenex, they can’t get out of the bed. I’ll go to the stock room, or they don’t have the bag on the side of their table for the food tray, and I’ll go get not only that, but I’ll get two or three of them, put them in the drawer for them, you know, because they don’t want, they can’t reach the trash container. So, they need little things. I can’t describe all the toilet paper, they want an extra roll on the railing. Or they can’t bend over to pick up the towel after their shower, you know, and they’ll feel bad about it. Could you do it for them, you know, or, ‘Could you get my robe, it’s on the back of the door. My visitors left and I forgot to ask them to put it on my bed for me’…you almost feel like a hotel, what would you call them, like on a cruise, you know what I’m talking about? You think that way, that’s the way you should think.”
- “Whatever they ask me, whether it be helping them find a certain place, getting them things they need such as towels, toilet paper, or sometimes they’ll ask well, could I go and get the person they came in with like their visitor, or ‘Could you go get them something to drink for me?’ Because they don’t know how to get there and they’re scared of getting lost. I’ll do that, like I said, basically whatever they ask me to do. I have no problem with that.”
- “Patients’ visitors, a lot of them they’ll enter the hospital and they are lost. This is a big place. You can tell if somebody is coming here, that they may be bewildered. A lot of older people. You feel sympathetic for them cause they can hardly get around and they like, ‘What do I do?’ And sometimes, you’ll take your time and walk them to the specific area they’re trying to get to.”
- “I’ll walk them because this hospital is a nightmare, it’s a maze, you know. I really don’t care what my supervisor tells me if I’m out of the area. This person is more important to me than what the hell he’s got to say.”
- “And moving equipment, they [nurses] were a little hesitant because I’m not supposed to handle it. But if the situation arose, where here you’ve got a 95 pound nurse trying to push a 200, 300 pound patient, on a stretcher, you know, I mean, I participate. You know…I turn to the nurse, I say, ‘Hey listen, don’t let them know I’m doing this.’ There’s a little thank you. I mean they appreciated it.”
- “A lot of times they want to hold a conversation with you. You know, they’re lonely or sick already. I try to hold a conversation. There’s a lot, all kinds of people come in here, you know, different backgrounds. Some people are interesting, they tell you about their life, their occupation, sometimes they catch your attention and you know, you listen and talk to them, you know. You may learn something. They like that. They say, ‘Hope to see you again tomorrow’ or ‘Come back and see me’.”
- “With a patient, you know, if I walk in a room with a patient and [I’ll say], ‘What can I do for you?’ they’ll say, ‘Okay’. I’ll say, ‘Well I’m your housekeeper’…I’ll strike up a conversation with them. I’ll get to feel them out. That’s the way I get along with them. Because, you know, there’s all categories of people, and when they’re ill, it’s a very touchy situation.”
- “So, mostly the patients’ visitors that come with the patients and when I’m cleaning my lobby out there they’re still sitting in there waiting for the person they came in with to come out of treatment, so I talk to them. It kind of makes…their wait a little less timed, you know, they’re not really watching the time if they’re talking about something. There’s no TV down there, so it’s not much for them to do.”
Human value is essential to maximize employee engagement and strategic alignment, a topic I wrote about with Jason Panku in an article entitled “Strengthening Human Value in Organizational Cultures.” The article was published in the Leader to Leader journal. (Later this year, Leader to Leader will be publishing another article Jason and I wrote about the need for leaders to be intentional about connecting with employees who are not higher status positions.)
