Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) in Leadership and Management: Organizational Interventions to Reduce Stress in Healthcare Delivery

Clinician Burnout is a personal and public health issue. Most occupational stressors contributing to clinician burnout are systemic. The combination of organizational interventions along with individual interventions is necessary to make significant lasting difference in reducing burnout, improving clinician and patient satisfaction and reducing latent error in healthcare delivery. Application of Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) science in healthcare leadership and management is a gap in current training for leaders. HFE uses concepts from organizational, educational and cognitive science, systems science and industrial engineering. HFE application is especially necessary in a fast changing highly stressful healthcare environment which impacts the wellbeing of clinicians and the safety of patients under care. Practical suggestions for working with various healthcare leadership styles and organizational dynamics, while aligning wellness efforts with institutional mission are discussed. Concrete examples of decreasing extraneous mental load on clinicians to preserve their brainpower to achieve quality patient care are illustrated. Organizational interventions in combination with individual interventions to reduce and manage burnout have enormous potential to improve clinician wellbeing and satisfaction in taking care of patients, reduce costs, risk of error and create the safe working environment needed to sustainably give high quality care to patients.

Effectiveness in Group Facilitation Training in the Hospitality Industry: A Case Study

This paper aims at demonstrating that an acceptable level of performance as a group facilitator can be achieved byhospitality industry managers in a 35-hour course, to a maximum of fourteen trainees, experienced in groupleadership but not in small-group facilitation or large-group coordination. Based on a six-step model fororganizational intervention, the course was run in co-facilitation, using the effect of demonstration, modelling, andobservation to improve performance at individual level. The course represents a mix of organizational behaviourand human resources management that has proved to be effective in preparing managers to improve organizationalinnovation and accelerate change in companies. Each step produced outputs, namely three innovation projects.Participants rated the course in every item of an extensive questionnaire as Good and Very Good, except theintroduction (pre-consult), which was considered “too theoretical”. Therefore, the course model proved to beadequate for the preparation of managers as coaches for organizational innovation in the hospitality industry. As tofuture developments, they will have to do mostly with the functioning of a matrix structure in the hospitality industry,so that the whole approach may have a full impact on the company.