Dear Crucial Skills,
As a nurse manager, how do I tell a master’s-prepared registered nurse that sleeping at their workstation is unprofessional? In many of my previous management jobs, finding an employee sleeping at their workstation was a fire-able offense. In this environment, the employee appears to see no difference between sleeping in a designated break room and sleeping at their workstation.
Signed,
Tiptoeing
Dear Tiptoeing,
You describe a classic gap situation: there is a gap between what you are expecting and what you are observing. It can be helpful to think of accountability conversations in terms of the gap because framing it this way can often take the temperature down a notch in an otherwise frustrating situation.
When I ask people what feeling comes to mind when I use the phrases “talk about a problem” or “address an issue,” the most common response is “ugh,” which isn’t really an emotion, but you probably get the idea. So, first tip: recognize this as a simple gap between what you were expecting and what you are observing. Your job as their manager is to describe the gap and partner with the person to close it. Here are three suggestions for how.
Master Your Story
I confess, I told myself a story about your story. My story is that you have drawn a negative conclusion about this person. The telling detail seems to be that this is a “master’s-prepared” nurse. My imagination quickly inserted a “tsk, tsk, they should know better!”
You will be far more effective at holding this conversation if you can suspend judgement. Even if you believe everyone should know that sleeping at the workstation is unprofessional, hold open the possibility that maybe this person was trained or taught differently. Or maybe, just maybe, they slept at their workstation all through school and no one ever got up the courage to give them feedback about it. After all, it is easy to mistake silence for approval.
Catch It Early
You don’t indicate how often this is happening. My hope is it has only happened once, maybe twice, because that is the right time to talk about it. Imagine how easy it would be, the first time a new employee falls asleep at their workstation, to gently shake them awake and kindly say, “We want all our nurses to sleep in the breakroom, not their station. Let me show you where it is.” When you catch it early, you are kindly onboarding a new employee and making sure they know what they need to be successful.
When you let the poor behavior go on for a while without addressing it, two things happen. First, your own irritation likely builds, fueling your negative story. Second, you make the issue bigger. Now it is not just once or twice that this has happened but months’ worth of bad behavior. When you make the issue bigger through delay, you are more likely to create embarrassment and subsequent defensiveness in the other person.
Have and Share a Good Intent
If you use the first two tips it will be much easier to use the third one. Before any gap conversation, stop and ask yourself: what do I really want for this person? For them, not from them. Asking and answering this question will require you to flip your perspective 180 degrees. After all, we step up to gap conversations because the gap is causing a pain or problem for us. We are acutely aware of how their behavior is impacting us. The question you have to ask is: how is it impacting them?
What do you want for them and how will sharing this help? It can be as simple as, “I want you to be successful here and that is why I want to talk to you about this.”
When you care about someone, and they know you care about them, gap conversations become about improvement not reproof.
Emily
Love this answer- it is spot on! I heard the judgment in the tone and content of the nurse-manager’s message, and appreciate you noticing and naming it, then providing the better more influencing approach. Namely of approaching this as a gap between expectations and behavior, with an eye toward how the other can be successful. Well-done!
First, the nurses’ level of education is immaterial and shades the initial question make the ‘story’ slanted. Should someone without a Masters be any less accountable for professionalism? The examples given are helpful but how about the most important one? Why is this person falling asleep at work?! Are they too busy making sure their children are taken care of to get adequate sleep when not at work? Do they need supportive counseling or childcare resources? Are they ill or otherwise overwhelmed with someone else’s illness that they fall asleep simply because they have stopped moving—I’ve definitely been there! What can you, as a manger, do to help them find a way to make it thru a shift? Take on a project, not busy work by any means, research a quality initiative with deliverables that can improve patient care, etc. Problem solving isn’t a one-sided issue…
Hospital managers – please be aware and have this conversation with your nurses and aides. There is no excuse for sleeping on the job AT A NURSES’ STATION when patient care COULD BE PERCEIVED as being at risk by the loved ones who bear part of the burden of care even in the hospital.
Speaking from experience…
Four: Change the Expectation
Not necessarily appropriate for all situations, but always an option.
We realized in our main call center that we really had only a few employees who were not following what was best for the work environment. Together we met with some employees who were doing well, except they were late an awful lot. We found out that an employee who was late for work in the winter was not paying attention to the weather and temperature and needed to check her car doors to make sure they were not frozen in the early morning. Once she realized that as an issue, she was not late when she worked in the early . D
what does she mean by falling asleep. That could be interpreted differently as well. Did the eyes just close briefly or for a minute while staring at a computer screen ? Or is she saying arms across the desk and face in the arms head down? Those are very different situations.
Think about this alternate twist to the situation. What if you have a manager who is not enforcing the rules and you are working with this individual. Maybe you gently mentioned it previously and they shrugged it off and you mention it to your boss and they don’t do anything about it. Maybe it is affecting you and you have to cover for this individual. In this case, if the nurse’s manager notices it, they are empowered to authoritatively take action. Sometimes we struggle when we are on the periphery, maybe on the outside of a group who cover for each other but if you did the same, they would try to get you in trouble. Sometimes we are in backstabbing environments that are difficult to work in on a daily basis. So you think about leaving, but maybe there are no real alternatives, and you need your job, your current income level, but it adds to your stress and maybe your home situation is already beyond stressful. Maybe you are going through a divorce, fighting a custody battle, single parenting, or dealing with health issues or have parents or other loved ones you are caring for in addition to your own struggles. Sometimes, you feel like you are stretched beyond what you think you can manage and finding it difficult to go on. You read these articles because you are trying to put words to be able to describe your situations and you might not understand it yet, but trying to find out how to put up boundaries that will help you protect yourself and manage your life and be able to handle the stress. Just reading this brought back feelings of a toxic work environment I was in and worked there for many years. Keep seeking and you will find. Reach out for help and look for support systems if you do not have any. It may be against your nature to ask for help, but it is important to learn. Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but it came to my mind, although it was years ago and it is no longer a trigger, but oftentimes our work issues tend to bleed into our personal lives and there are more than just the basic issues present. Maybe the person who asked the question had some other issues that they did not think were even related to this situation but they are. It helps to identify what else is triggering us that may be making it more emotional than just the objective facts that we put into our description of the cause for our concern.
My only additional thought is that if this is a conversation that should have happened a while ago, the nurse manager needs to take some responsibility during the conversation when it comes to not addressing it quickly. It seems like this may have been discussed before but it’s unclear by the statement “the employee appears to see no difference between sleeping in a designated break room and sleeping at their workstation.” Maybe appreciating that they may need to take a rest during a long shift and explaining the importance of not resting in a work area to better instill confidence in patients and their loved ones would be an approach that is both compassionate and informative.