hospital impact

Slightly off topic today, but the blogosphere was recently aflame with this note from 4 employees to their boss:

For more on this employee mutiny, go to the Beyond Robson Blog. Makes me wonder - especially in healthcare, where stress, pressure, difficult people, and difficult working environments run amok, how would our employees describe us? How would they describe their job and their working environment to their friends?

More and more, I'm hearing about a new model of "human resource management." In an effort to recruit and re-recruit their employees, some hospitals have started concierge services for their employees.

And for many 21st Century organizations, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've all probably heard of the amazing perks offered to Google employees: swimming pools, pool tables, free gourmet breakfast, lunch, dinner, be-yourself offices, volleyball courts, hair stylists, playrooms/toys for kids (and young-at-hearters), spa, and the list goes on and on. More and more studies show that our multi-tasking, overly-meetinged employees can't be productive: no time to really think strategically and no "space" to really be creative.

I recently read an article about a software company, Motek, that encourages every employee to take an exotic three-week vacation every year. How do they encourage that? They give them the time off and $5,000 to do so. They also close their doors at 5PM - no accessing emails in the evening or weekends - the place literally shuts down at 5PM. Their CEO's mantra: "it's in impossible to function at maximum productivity without at least a month away."

Obviously, we couldn't apply all of this in our hospitals, but makes me wonder. When we think about lost productivity, the cost of recruitment, the cost of contingent/interim workforces, the morale drainer of being understaffed, the value of continuity & organizational knowledge, shouldn't we trying everything possible to make the hospital a great place to work? Why isn't this a more urgent issue for hospitals?