It's no secret that people prefer working in companies where they feel happy, satisfied, and appreciated. Nobody wants a job that makes them feel bad, and with the world being more connected (and thus workers more open to international mobility), companies are fighting harder than ever to make sure their workplace culture helps with employee satisfaction and retention.

Why, more exactly, is a positive workplace culture such a fundamental element of a successful healthcare organization? And how to build this kind of organizational culture?

Read on and find out more.

TL;DR:

• Workplace culture refers to the values, norms, and beliefs that define how employees interact with each other, their managers, and their work.
• Building a positive workplace culture takes time, persistence, and dedication.
• A healthy workplace culture is based on foundational values, effective leadership, consistent organizational practices, stable day-to-day practices, and strong community and work relationships.
• A positive workplace culture is essential for a successful healthcare organization, fostering better collaboration, solutions, and services for patients.
• A healthy corporate work environment translates into a healthy healthcare organization.
• A positive workplace culture leads to better patient outcomes by allowing healthcare staff to focus on their work rather than company policies.

What Is Workplace Culture?

In very brief terms, workplace culture is the set of values, norms, and beliefs that make up the way employees in a company interact with each other, with their managers, and so on. It's only when you understand the value of workplace culture that you may start building it right in your hospital, clinic, nursing home, or other healthcare organization.

A workplace culture cannot be enforced, nor can it be built on paper alone. Organizational cultures are as alive and as flexible as the people beyond it. Last, but definitely not least, building a workplace culture doesn't just happen overnight. It takes time, persistence, and dedication to build the kind of workplace people really appreciate and enjoy.

Key Elements of Workplace Culture

Building a workplace culture surely doesn't happen just like that, and just like in the case of building...anything, really, there are some "basics" to keep in mind. Here are the quintessential elements of a healthy (sturdy, solid, and scalable) workplace culture:

Foundational Values

Every workplace culture should be based on foundational values that are true for every single member of your organization. Whether you're part of a hospital, an insurance company, or any other kind of healthcare provider, the cultural values you build on should reflect the basic principles that make your healthcare organization tick.

Everything starts with finding out what those values are and making sure they define the way everybody does business.

Effective Leadership

You can't build a healthy organizational culture (within the healthcare industry or anywhere else) if you don't have effective leadership. Leadership is more than just managing people, after all. It's about being understood by them too. Leadership is about making sure that the path being walked upon selflessly serves the greater good of your organization simply because it's right to do so.

The best-case scenario would be if your leadership could grow with your healthcare organization - leaders who change as the organization changes, who grow as it does, and who end up being an organic part of that transformation.

Consistent Organizational Practices

If you want to have a positive work environment, you need to have consistent organizational practices. Everything from the way people communicate with each other all the way through job titles and compensation should be built upon clear, well-structured rules that are understood by everybody in your organization.

What's more important is that this consistency has to be reflected in how the employees within your organization communicate with each other. There can't be any double standards or "special cases", nor can there be processes that enable a lack of transparency between different departments.

Stable Day-To-Day Practices

While consistency is great, you shouldn't fall prey to rigidity. As your healthcare organization grows and changes (and has to adapt to new market demands), the day-to-day practices that allow it to function successfully should remain unchanged.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't be flexible; we're talking about bringing a sledgehammer to what is already working well. In other words, in order for your employee culture to be healthy, the day-to-day practices should not change too often - at least not without good reason.

Strong Community and Work Relationships

It's no secret that many of the healthcare professionals within a hospital or any other health-focused organization tend to have a rather difficult day-to-day routine. This is why it's so important to have strong community and work relationships in place - not just for those who are directly involved with patient care, but also for people in the management, service, and maintenance departments.

Why Workplace Culture Matters in Healthcare Today

Your job is to save lives. Regardless of whether you're a hospital administrator, manager, marketer working with healthcare companies, doctor, or any other member of a healthcare instutition's staff, your main goal is to help people be healthy.

Workplace culture might (understandably) not be on your list of priorities. And yet, it should be -- because healthy organizational cultures in healthcare companies foster better collaboration, better solutions, and better services for patients.

Here are two essential ideas you should keep in mind.

Healthcare Workplace Culture Is Not That Different from Corporate Workplace Culture

It really isn't. Sure, the fact that you work with people's lives might mean that there are certain things you have to keep in mind. But workplace culture is still a complex collection of shared values and beliefs - no matter what profession you're in.

In other words, healthy corporate work environments translate into healthy healthcare organizations too. The next step would be figuring out how exactly to foster the kind of healthcare workplace environment people feel comfortable growing and collaborating in.

Workplace Culture Is Important for Improving Patient Outcomes

As mentioned earlier, your main goal is to help patients. It's not to have fun at work or play ping-pong on your lunch break, obviously. But fostering the kind of healthcare workplace where people feel "at home" from a professional standpoint will, in fact, improve patient outcomes.

When your healthcare staff comes to work with a positive outlook, they can focus on putting their expertise where it's mostly needed: saving lives, instead of allowing their minds to wander about company policies that go against them, their beliefs, or the way they would like to see things done.

So, in order to make sure your hospital staff feel better and perform better, you need to promote a workplace culture that's more or less equally valued by all of them.

Factors Influencing Organizational Culture in Healthcare

Organizational culture only materializes out of thin air. Instead, it is crafted meticulously and thoughtfully over time by an array of influences that stretch inside and beyond a workplace's physical walls. That's certainly true when we talk about cultural transformation within healthcare organizations.

Leadership and its Impact on Organizational Culture

Leadership is about more than just setting strategic goals or overseeing operations. It's also about modeling behaviors, developing expected norms, and fostering trust. Leaders ignite the match that lights the flame for organizational culture in the healthcare industry.

Leaders who demonstrate empathy, accountability, and dedication spur similar attitudes among their teams. When leaders prioritize open communication, implement inclusive decision-making processes, and promote fair practices, they inherently cultivate a culture where everyone feels valued.

Role of Employees in Shaping Organizational Culture

Despite leadership's pivotal role, employees undeniably play their part in molding cultural change in healthcare settings. After all, any successful cultivation process needs gardener-like attention from those tending to everyday tasks. 

Staff attitudes - enthusiasm or disinterest - significantly impact a workplace atmosphere. Encouraging team collaborations can foster healthy relationships saturated with mutual respect, which signifies high morale within an institution – an essential ingredient for creating positive work environment.

With each employee actively involved, understanding the significance of their roles while appreciating others brings forth synergy where collective productivity actively contributes to organizational success.

External Factors Influencing Organizational Culture in Healthcare

There's a dimension of influences over organizational culture that often gets overlooked: the external elements. They range from regulatory requirements and reimbursement policies to societal health issues. These factors can dictate how healthcare organizations operate, thus inherently impacting the establishment and evolution of their culture.

Examining these external determinants is essential because they collectively define the objectives a healthcare organization aspires to. Aspiring for those objectives, enforcing particular strategies and operations that implicitly embody certain behaviors into an entity's culture.

Understanding such diverse aspects equips us with knowledge on fostering a beneficial environment and prepares us better for addressing challenges attached to cultural transformations. Let's proceed to explore them in the subsequent section.

Challenges and Obstacles in Shaping Organizational Culture in Healthcare Settings

A strong organizational culture in the healthcare industry acts as a catalyst for improved work environments, patient care, and overall progress. However, the conducive cultivation of said culture has its challenges. Here, we delve into two significant hurdles: resistance to change and entrenched practices, alongside strategizing on managing conflicts while promoting buy-in from stakeholders.

Resistance to Change and Entrenched Practices

Creating a positive organizational culture in healthcare faces a familiar obstacle: staff resistance to change. This resistance often comes from fear of the unknown, concerns about increased workload, or a stubborn attachment to everyday routines.

Human nature tends to resist changes that don't immediately benefit individuals. Unfortunately, such resistance hinders progress, creating stagnation instead of advancement. Numerous studies emphasize the importance of adaptability in ongoing transformations, making these resistances significant barriers to potential growth.

In healthcare institutions, entrenched routines present additional challenges to cultural change. Introducing new procedures or behaviors requires time-consuming procedural adjustments, especially since healthcare organizations are inherently procedure-driven.

These entrenched practices can lead to comfort zones and complacency, hindering progress. Overcoming this resistance demands patient and strategic approaches at individual and policy levels. Addressing these challenges is essential for fostering a positive healthcare culture and enabling growth and progress.

Managing Conflicts and Promoting Buy-In from Stakeholders

Overcoming conflicts and fostering positive cultural change in healthcare is challenging but crucial. Structural changes often lead to disputes, significantly when they impact power dynamics. However, these conflicts can be constructive, revealing opportunities for organizational culture improvements. Tools like mediation and negotiation techniques effectively guide healthcare institutions through such changes.

To successfully change healthcare culture, gaining support from stakeholders is vital. This involves convincing diverse stakeholders, from administrative staff to top surgeons, to embrace shared visions. Critical strategies for achieving stakeholder buy-in include:

• Transparent communication.
• Engaging in training sessions.
• Flexible implementation schedules.
• Recognizing early adopters.
• Sending powerful messages for successful transformations.

Despite the challenges, shaping a positive healthcare culture is essential for better patient satisfaction and operational efficiency in today's competitive healthcare landscape. The journey may be challenging with determination and strategic vision, but the rewards are promising.

5 Steps for Building a Positive Culture in Your Healthcare Organization

As mentioned in the beginning of the article, building a positive culture in your healthcare organization isn't something you lay down on paper and let it sink among the thousands of procedures your organization is buried in.

It's something you actively work on -- day in, and day out -- and something around which you build your entire reputation as an employer.

Here are some essential steps you should take:

Focus on Core Values

What is it your organization tries to promote? A healthy lifestyle, making sure people are aware of the dangers of certain diseases, high-quality medical care for all? Think about that - and don't hesitate to create a long list if you need to. Then, discuss it with your staff and choose the ones that fit your organization best.

Lead by Example

Start by showcasing your core values in your everyday life. Make sure you're a role model for everyone within your organization. You can't ask people to take days off if you come in every Sunday even when you don't have to. You can't ask people to be gentle with their feedback when you aren't. You simply can't ask people to follow what you write in processes and "Core Company Values"-types-of-presentations, instead of what you actually do in your day to day life.

Ensure Consistency of Organizational Practices

This one might sound like the no-brainer of the year. But it really isn't - because most organizations fail at doing this (or doing it right, at least). Your organizational practices should, of course, be flexible (just think of what happened during the first COVID-19 outbreaks and you will definitely see the value in adjusting to different situations).

However, consistency is still key. Your organizational practices shouldn't change every other week. They should grow and adapt with your healthcare service, instead of rapidly switching to 180 degrees.

Improve Daily Employee Experience

Yes, we all know this one. But it's still worth mentioning: make sure your employees feel comfortable and confident working for you. Give them the tools they need to perform their jobs well and joyfully go about their daily business. One of the clearest ways of verifying that your employees enjoy coming to work each day is by simply asking them what, more exactly, would make them happy.

You'd be surprised, but in this day and age, there are solutions for pretty much everything -- from better coffee to hybrid work for employees who don't have to be on site every day.

Encourage Trust and Collaboration

No matter how involved your organization is, make sure you provide opportunities for employees to discuss with each other. Make sure they know they can trust one another -- and especially their managers.

This will lead to not just a more positive working culture - but also better results when it comes time to deal with difficult matters within the organization, such as layoffs.

At the end of the day, building a happier, more thriving culture in your healthcare organization is about creating a better life -- for yourself, for your employees, as well as for the patients who walk into your practice or hospital hoping they will find solutions and hope.

What do you think? Is a positive workplace culture essential for a successful healthcare organization? Do you have any tips that we might not have covered here?

The Future of Organizational Culture in Healthcare

As we explore organizational culture in healthcare, there's excitement about what lies ahead. It's not just about predicting future trends but also about adopting best practices for a positive organizational culture.

Emerging Trends

A notable trend in healthcare is the intentional move towards fostering a culture of excellence. This goes beyond top-notch patient care to include leadership, employee satisfaction, innovation, and ongoing learning.

Recognizing the crucial role of staff, healthcare institutions are increasingly focusing on empowering employees at all levels. The goal is to enhance services and make employees active contributors to the overall organizational culture.

Moreover, healthcare systems integrate technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics. While these bring efficiency and precision, they also impact organizational culture by requiring a workforce that is adaptable to change and enthusiastic about continuous learning.

Best Practices

To navigate the complex process of shaping organizational culture in healthcare, here are essential best practices:

• Leadership Involvement: Leaders play a crucial role in defining culture. Active participation, setting positive examples, and endorsing cultural norms inspire transformation at all levels.
• Embrace Transparency: Open communication streamlines internal processes and builds trust with patients.
• Celebrate Diversity: Encouraging diversity brings varied perspectives to patient care, fostering innovative solutions.
• Prioritize Employee Well-being: Valued staff create a positive environment, translating into superior patient service. Regular training, rewards, and growth opportunities contribute to a positive culture.
• Commit to Continuous Learning: A culture celebrating learning is crucial in healthcare, an industry witnessing rapid evolution.

In summary, the future of healthcare organizational culture relies on integrating emerging trends and implementing successful best practices. As Peter Drucker said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," emphasizing the importance of cultural change in shaping the evolving future of healthcare.