Keeping people motivated is critical to lasting success in any organization, a concept understood well by those involved in designing, building and operating hospitals. Without an engaged staff, it would be difficult to plan and build new hospitals capable of meeting the challenges of tomorrow.
Hospital facility managers would find it nearly impossible to optimize health care campuses without relying on dedicated employees. By using ways to motivate people that go beyond traditional carrot-and-stick approaches, leaders can cultivate staff dedicated to the mission of improving the health care physical environment.
The keynote speaker at next month's International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction (PDC) will address ways to spark innovation and motivate people. Daniel H. Pink, the bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, takes a scientific approach to finding what motivates people and understanding how motivators can improve performance.
Pink argues that the secret to high performance and satisfaction is the need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Pink states that three elements — autonomy, mastery and purpose — can transform organizations and inspire improvements in performance.
Many organizations try monetary reward systems as a way to motivate employees. Pink believes that money does matter, but that the best use of money as a motivator is often to pay people enough so that the issue of money is off the table. This allows people to focus on the work being done rather than the cash.
At the PDC Summit on March 16–19, Pink will explain techniques and new systems of reward and recognition that can provide autonomy, mastery and purpose for employees. He also will explain how smart organizations are rethinking innovation and how their approaches apply to health care planning, design and construction. Pink's books as well as videos and a whiteboard animation of some of his insights can be accessed at www.danpink.com/resources.
In addition to Pink's presentation, the PDC Summit offers many other useful sessions focused on meeting changing needs and maximizing returns in the health care industry.
For instance, Richard Pollack, executive vice president for advocacy and public policy with the American Hospital Association, will give a health care update from Capitol Hill. A director with the Center for Connected Medicine will present a session on the trends, forces and technologies driving the health care shift. And the Facility Guidelines Institute will offer ways to maximize the benefits of functional programs as referenced in the 2014 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Outpatient Facilities, which can be purchased at www.fgiguidelines.org.
There is still time to register for the conference, which will be held in Orlando, Fla., and features more than 50 educational sessions. Online registration forms, the conference schedule and exhibitor information are available at www.pdcsummit.org.
By Deanna Martin, senior communications specialist for ASHE.
ASHE insight
Important monographs available
ASHE makes important resources available to members. Following are two recently released monographs that can be accessed by ASHE members as free PDFs at www.ashe.org/resources/management_monographs.
• Life Safety Code Comparison. The 2012 edition of the National Fire Protection Association's Life Safety Code offers new design and compliance options for health care facilities that didn't exist in previous editions. This ASHE monograph provides an exhaustive list of the changes in the new edition and a detailed comparison with the 2000 and 2009 editions.
• Room Ventilation and Airborne Disease. This ASHE monograph examines research on how room ventilation affects airborne-disease transmission in health care facilities. Farhad Memarzadeh, Ph.D., P.E., examines findings that consider the effects of air changes per hour on infection transmission.
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