Staff Satisfaction / Turnover

Nurses Relations

Published

My unit has had a large amount of turnover recently and it seems we have quite a bit of unsatisfied staff. Unfortunately, I seem to have been labeled a Negative Nancy, as I am one of the few people who have expressed my frustrations to management and apparently, I am one of the very few who has done this.

Been thinking about suggesting the unit do their own anonymous "staff satisfaction" survey. Has anyone else's facility done anything else to gauge or fix staff satisfaction ??

My hospital has a third party issue an annual satisfaction survey. The biggest problem with it for me is that nothing seems to be done after the surveys. Nobody refers to it again and no changes are made. I don't see the point of spending an hour filling it out for no return.

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Specializes in LTC Rehab Med/Surg.

I'll admit to being a cynic.

Does anybody here honestly believe the survey is because management truly values you and wants to make your work environment better?

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Specializes in Pedi.
I'll admit to being a cynic.

Does anybody here honestly believe the survey is because management truly values you and wants to make your work environment better?

The reason my hospital participates in national surveys is so that they can say "The national response rate to this survey was 71% and we got 74%, we win!" They send 14 emails a day during the time period when the survey is available harassing people to participate. And then they do nothing with the results....:uhoh3:

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Haha, we had one of those. By the time they got your gender, years as a nurse, years employed there, race, age, etc... I put all my complaints, then faked all those questions.

I tried to fill out a recent survey twice but when it got to asking me questions about whether I was a BSN or ADN, and how long I'd worked on my unit, etc. I bailed. Nothing anonymous about those questions. I was going to fake some answers too but it would have been way too many :rolleyes:.

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.

On our "anonymous" surveys it seemed a lot of people were candid about the NM and the problems she was causing. She would then call staff meetings and ask how can WE all fix our morale. Didn't want to get that she was the source of the dissatisfaction.

Also, if you identify a problem, you ARE a problem.

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Specializes in Recovery (PACU)-11 yrs, General-13yrs.

Why does management ever think that these surveys are a good idea, apart from giving them the opportunity to think they are doing something.

We have been given the second survey in about 3 months, presumably because everyone was too disgruntled to fill in the first one, or because it was filled in & then, oops, lost. I find that the questions are all skewed in such a way that they get the answers they want, and the space for extra comments is always tiny.

The people who become managers are supposed to be smart so how come they can't figure out that most of the time the responsibility for low staff morale rests with them-a work force is a reflection of the managers' attitudes & ethics, whether it's in nursing, newspapers or any other environment

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Specializes in Acute Care.

Ok sincecthe survey appears to be a bad idea, does anyone have ideas to suggest ways to increase morale?

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.
Ok sincecthe survey appears to be a bad idea, does anyone have ideas to suggest ways to increase morale?

Now you sound like my manager. After our last round of surveys, the one thing people all voted terrible down was management. So what does management do, come to us and blame us for the problem and tell us we have to fix it. That works well doesnt it.

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Specializes in Pedi.

Every single one of you could be one of my co-workers with everything you are saying. In our last survey, my hospital scored worse in every dimension than it had 2 years ago. When I questioned why they weren't concerned about it I was basically told that if people are unhappy, it's their problem and it's up to them to fix it. Then if you suggest a solution you get told you're wrong, the way we do it is fine, you just need to change your attitude.

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I tried to fill out a recent survey twice but when it got to asking me questions about whether I was a BSN or ADN, and how long I'd worked on my unit, etc. I bailed. Nothing anonymous about those questions. I was going to fake some answers too but it would have been way too many :rolleyes:.

Call me evil but when faced with those questions on a survey I looked to the most brown nosing, administration favorite, know it all, in your face, smug nurse on the unit and matched my demographics as closely to hers as I could.

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Our facility was nominated for the best workplace for working mothers award. The survey for that came the week before my employee (dis)satisfaction survey. I had no idea and was leaving anyway so I was very frank in my answers. Oh my, was there pie on my face when I received an email later in the week with a link to the employee satisfaction survey. I wonder how many people made the same mistake as me.

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Call me evil but when faced with those questions on a survey I looked to the most brown nosing, administration favorite, know it all, in your face, smug nurse on the unit and matched my demographics as closely to hers as I could.

Hehe, I actually did that too. I'd be ashamed of myself, but that nurse really bugs me! My grammar was too good in the comments to actually be that nurse, but the demographics were a dead match. :lol2:

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