Employee Unrest

DiBurns

Our facility has about 325 employees, mostly nursing assistants, dietary aides, housekeepers, laundry, maintenance. We hired a new Administrator a year ago and the staff are constantly going around her to us at the corporate office about the pettiest little things (which I realize are probably symptoms of bigger problems.) We are trying to show support for the Administrator who is trying to make changes (that are necessary and that we support) in a very tough financial environment, but the volume of the complaints is alarming. We are non-union and want to stay that way, so I know we need to listen, yet I don't want to reinforce the 'end runs' around the site managers. How have others successfully handled these type of situations?

Down_the_Middle

Having been in healthcare for many years and previously at a corp office, my simple suggestion is for corp to encourage the employees to submit their issues at the facility level. While this is sometimes difficult for corp staff to do, you're really submarining the success of the Administrator by enabling employees to come to you for minor issues. Be certain there is a mechanism in place at the facility level to handle the employee issues-----something or someone may not be listening and employees feel there's no recourse. Helping the employees to understand that the Adminstrator is there to handle these day-to-day concerns and using corp staff as a middle person only aggravates the solution. Permitting the pipeline to corporate to continue will expose you to searching for another Administrator; expose the corporation to addressing local managerial issues and might even lead to union cards being presented to the corporate office vs. the local administrator.

jimlegal

Don't buy in! Ask the employee what the administrator said concerning the situation. If the employee has no answer, then send them back to the administrator. You apparently have a chain of authority your company has put in place. It is up to corporate to reinforce that chain, thus reinforcing the administrator. Possibly consider the policy of corporate will not routinely consider matters that have not been presented to the administrator. As with anything their will be exceptions for certain matters which employees should always be able to access any level of authority. i.e. violence, sexual harrassment, threats, etc. That's my two cents...