Transforming the Mindset: Empowerment through Self-Accountability

Introduction: The cohort of nurses from the millennial generation is becoming the fastest-growing group rising into nursing leadership positions. The modern manager, however, is required to possess business or operational skills, a degree of clinical acumen, and a cadre of leadership skills to promote connection, resilience, and relationship building with staff or direct reports. Millennial managers, however, are often adept with the use of technology and using it to their advantage. The purpose of this poster is to discuss how two novice millennial managers designed, implemented, and successfully replicated the "report card" to collate and present key unit-based metrics, goals, and accountability tasks to facilitate real-time staff interfacing and engagement.

Impact: The report card required little resource of financial impact to create. Using existing time and attendance interfaces, quality data, and the electronic medical record, an electronic report is automatically generated that culls multiple data points into a single report card for easy tracking and trending and stimulating monthly conversations with staff. These conversations are two-fold: they provide a mechanism to recognize and praise high-performing staff and to make a deliberate event to counsel or address low-performing employees.

Outcomes: Both units exceeded all their unit specific goals during the year. Since managers remain engaged and connected to their employees on a regular basis, external turnover for both units remains low. Concomitantly, patient satisfaction scores for both units outperform both organization and national benchmarks.

Implications: Leadership engagement with staff is sustained using simple technology that is comfortable for the millennial leader. Staff are aware of unit-based and personal performance metrics, receive mentoring or strategies for improvement, and praise for jobs well done. Retention on the unit, and in the organization, remains high.

Application to other settings: This initiative was presented as a best practice throughout the organization, and is currently being adopted by other units. This tool can be customized to for any organization.

Lessons learned: Through staff feedback, the report cards have changed to include a focus on staff resiliency by promoting their personal goals, self-care, and patient connections in addition to the achievement of unit goals. Accountability becomes a positive interaction through effective consistent communication on a monthly basis, which fosters better relationships between staff, patients, and management.