Article: Am I Proud to Work at KFSH&RC

Mohammad M. Douh , Bsc. EHS, Msc. HC Mgt.

Director, Clinical Services Division

KFSH&RC is a world-renowned facility. In local and international professional circles, the organization’s name is recognized and well-respected. Many of us in the organization mention where we work with a sense of pride, and notice the reaction of acceptance and respect in the faces of those to whom we are talking. So why is it that we have nothing but complaints about our organization when we speak with each other?

Lend your ear to any private conversation among any group of hospital employees (not that I advocate eavesdropping!) and you will find one story after the other about how bad people feel and about the latest horrible thing that happened to so-and-so.

What happened? To answer this simple question, we need to take a long and serious look internally at ourselves. Before you roll your eyes and start looking for a lighter with which to burn this issue, think with me for a second. I accept that many external forces pressure us as a workforce and in some occasions force a dark cloud to form over our heads. The infamous new pay scale is the latest “meteorite” that could destroy life at KFSH&RC.

Nevertheless, job satisfaction is usually linked to internal factors, not external pressures. We, as a group, fell prey to the vicious cycle of reacting to outside pressures and crises management internally and we forgot our strongest asset: our staff. Instead of promoting staff initiatives to empower and engage our staff, we bury them in a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy.

With time, KFSH&RC staff has changed from a professional community to nothing but a workforce, and we are moving dangerously close to becoming simply workers. Even worse, we have moved from being a melting pot for a very interesting and unique multicultural community, to competing and alienating factions.

It is almost impossible to talk on behalf of the staff of KFSH&RC as a unit. And “us and them” has become the new norm. It is frustrating to keep hearing about how many times we have requested one thing or another, and it hasn’t happened yet; or how management needs us to work together to be a center of excellence in everything we provide, yet the majority of the staff is concerned about housing challenges, visa process, and the next due date for the loan payments that we all have to make. Did I get your attention? Good, because the coming part is the interesting one.

A friend once told me, “Nothing is given. If you want something…go and get it!” Sorry folks, there is no magic pill. We must go and get what we want. The one million Riyal question is: How? Well, I’ll tell you how.

First, we should take care of our own. We should rebuild the KFSH&RC community. It is not acceptable to have staff take their dependents to private health centers and pay for them because they are below a certain grade. We as staff should be able to negotiate acceptable insurance for all staff dependents not eligible for care in KFSH&RC. We should be able to find representatives from the front lines of patient care to drive for solutions for operations improvements so that we can be empowered and satisfied with what we feel most passionate about: caring for our patients. We should look into taking advantage of the features of KFSH&RC centers. Employees should be able to move more freely even on a temporary basis between Riyadh and Jeddah, including the usage of housing facilities.

Second, new ways to communicate must be developed and supported. We should have a virtual community that provides the environment for staff to discuss issues and learn from each other. The old management model of telling the staff what to do and how to do it is too restricting and lacks the appeal needed to win staff’s engagement. Staffers should start communicating with each other on shared issues of concern or lessons learned to meet the demands of our stakeholders. Management should encourage staff dialog and monitor these discussions to get a sense of the important issues from the staff’s point of view, and communicate their vision and strategic goals and how they relate to what’s happening all around us.

Third, we need to rebuild the KFSH&RC social community. Saudi staff should arrange for cultural exposure for non-Saudi staff and vice versa, and non-Saudi staff should help Saudi staffers who are interested in visiting their countries of origin, through guidance and advice. The social club should arrange for trips to the desert compound for any hospital group interested in knowing each other outside the work environment. Recognition days should highlight the staff’s achievements in getting us closer to being a community and a cohesive group that shares the same values. A staff committee responsible for advocating staff’s needs and initiatives should be formed and have a direct channel to management.

World-renowned companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple were able to achieve group status after they created an employee community that had an accepted identity and shared values. A paradigm shift from a highly managed workforce to a responsible self-driven professional community must be achieved before we can expect to hear stories about individual and organizational success when we eavesdrop on staff’s private conversations (not that I advocate eavesdropping!).