This text is part of the special World of Work section
The research project of professors from the School of Management Sciences of the University of Quebec at Montreal (ESG UQAM) Julie Delisle and Mariline Comeau-Vallée combines with the Balance course and focuses on the challenges of work balance and personal lives of managers and their employees in the health field. Overview of this project, which aims to bring out solutions.
Answer a client’s call during a dinner with friends, eat dinner in front of your computer, watch the kids during a Zoom meeting. We know that since the pandemic, personal and professional lives have become increasingly intertwined, which, according to Professor Julie Delisle, weakens the mental health of workers. If the difficulties of reconciling work and personal life are often similar in several areas, they are, she affirms, exacerbated in the health sector, “which is particularly affected by the labor shortage. This is the element that represents the biggest challenge in health and which makes the task of a manager who wishes to respond to employee conciliation requests complex.
Dedicated, but out of breath
Funded by the Ministry of Family, the research project of Ms. Delisle and Ms. Comeau-Vallée is being built in partnership with Marianne Burkic, founder of the company Yapouni, at the origin of the Équilibre course. A sample of eight health managers from the Montreal region initially responded to a first round of interviews. It appears that “when workers take advantage of the conciliation measures put in place, they can feel a feeling of guilt towards their colleagues,” notes Julie Delisle.
The interviews also highlight the fact that younger generations have higher expectations of conciliation, which increases the pressure felt by the researcher’s sampling managers. “I have seen managers who do a lot for their employees and who take on extra work to accommodate them,” she maintains. While some of the managers interviewed seemed in control, the feeling of overload varies over time and what we experience, and my personal opinion is that the overload is sometimes so great that it is not necessarily sustainable in the long term. . »
The managers interviewed, after the first round of interviews, followed the Balance course. A sort of “recipe for managers, the course is a structured path that leads managers and their team to co-construct their pillars of collaboration and their optimal framework to align performance and balance,” explains Marianne Burkic. Deployed at Hydro-Québec, at CHU Sainte-Justine and at Desjardins in the past, the course is structured around three main themes: concentration, recognition and emotions. Managers and their teams address these themes individually, as a team and at the organizational level.
“For the theme of concentration, for example, at Sainte-Justine, the managers realized that they worked on Sunday evening because it was their only possible moment of concentration to prepare for their week. As a team, an agreement was reached: [pas] meeting on Monday morning and, barring an emergency, employees are committed to respecting this Monday morning concentration block,” explains Ms. Burkic.
Countering the culture of urgency
This journey with managers highlighted the omnipresent culture of emergency in health. “These workers are still putting out fires. Due to lack of time, and therefore concentration, what was not a fire often becomes one! » mentions Ms. Delisle. Their distress thus comes from the feeling of not being in control and not having the time to do things well. The combination of this sense of urgency coupled with the emotional culture of guilt about taking rest is a breeding ground for mental health problems. “We therefore brought this theme during the course to revalue rest by linking it to a better quality of care and presence for patients, and by showing that rest allowed workers to return to what, initially, had brought them to work in this area,” explains Ms. Burkic.
The third stage of the project, a second round of interviews which will allow us to observe the impact of the journey and the challenges that remain, should be concluded within two months. Following this, a seminar will be offered to a larger number of managers. Until then, some solutions emerge. “Set limits for yourself, as a manager, and, if we adopt balance as a value, set an example for our employees,” emphasizes Ms. Delisle. Return to that break time that dinner represented: a time without work, a time to take a walk. “Be transparent in the conciliation measures that we offer to certain employees and propose measures that make sense to minimize frustration,” adds the professor. Finally, include the entire team in improving work-life balance so that everyone feels represented in the measures taken, and “thus call upon the responsibility of each person in improving the team culture », concludes Ms Burkic.
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2024-03-30 09:59:11
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