Tag Archive: morale


Morale Testing Instrument (MTI)

Filed Under: HR & Personel, Leaderhsip & Management, The NHS and Healthcare, Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
January 9, 2010

Morale is one of the most significant factors affecting organisational performance with clear links to many adverse situations:

  • High sickness & absence
  • High staff turnover
  • Poor performance
  • Poor clinical outcome
  • Low customer satisfaction ratings
  • Reduced team effectiveness
  • Conflict & obstruction
  • Increased tribunals & grievances

Medicology MTI has been developed to address two specific needs:

      a robust and sensitive measure of morale
      a differential diagnosis of the factors positively or negatively influencing it

It consists of a series of questions around known influencing factors and takes the average person around 10 minutes to complete.

Robust Measure

Medicology MTI introduces two important processes to ensure that the morale measurement returned is both sensitive and representative.

Firstly, it utilises variance to assess morale, i.e. how far above of below neutral the score for a particular factor is for that person and thus avoids the weakness found in many systems that use an arbitrary scale.

Secondly, it asks the respondent to indicate how important a factor is and this is taken into account in the overall calculation. Coupled with variance, this creates an immensely sensitive measure.

Differential Diagnosis

Medicology MTI is designed to provide detailed analysis, reporting and guidance. Your morale report will include analysis by:

  • overall score
  • individual questions
  • different staffing groups or departments

Furthermore, individual questions contribute to section morale scores, to help you identify problems in the following areas:

  • Growth & Development
  • Leadership & Management
  • Personal Factors
  • Relationships
  • Work (the work itself)
  • Workplace (the work environment)

This level of analysis and reporting allows you to not only assess morale in different staff groups but to diagnose any specific problem areas so that interventions may be applied.

Practical Information

Medicology MTI is designed to make your life easy:

  • Run morale testing from a few to thousands swiftly and effortlessly
  • Define which staff groups are most appropriate to you
  • Re-run the survey at intervals (which can be set up automatically e.g. 3 monthly intervals) to assess how it is changing over time
  • Bulk upload your staff from Microsoft Excel® or provide them to us and we’ll do it

For more information or to try out this great product for yourself see medicology mti

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Quality Nursing Revealed by New Tool

Filed Under: Healthcare News by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 7, 2009

Under a new Strategic Health Authority Initiative nurses will be able to compare the quality of patient care against other trusts in England. The initiative ‘Energise for Excellence in Care’ is designed to improve fundamental nursing care, it is hoped that the tool should be available on website for the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement after it has been adapted.

The new tool is based on the ‘acuity/dependency’ tool which was developed by the Association of UK University Hospitals, which helps to categorise patients depending on their conditions (for example ‘stable’ or ‘unstable’) which can then be used to help inform staffing levels, skill mix and workforce development needs.

It is hoped that the new tool will enable nurses to deliver evidence-based care, that will include the development of new services where appropriate. In order to improve quality patient care indicators are key according to Lord Darzi’s Next Stage Review of the NHS, which was published summer 2008. In May 2009 a list of over 200 indicators that could be used to improve services across the NHS was published by the Government.

The Chief Executive David Nicholson will take personal responsibility for the ‘quality, innovation, productivity and prevention’ (or QIPP). It is also the focus of the DH management board. The Department of Health funded initiative; “Energise for Excellence in Care” is being led by senior nurses. Although it is hoped that this initiative will help the QIPP initiative it is important to stress that it also has wider goals, such as getting the nurses to focus on the things that really matter to patients. The initiative is also designed to give nurses permission to say what needs to be done and encourage nurses to reflect on the quality of the care that they are providing.

If nurses are consistently providing high quality care it may reduce costs for the NHS as fewer mistakes will be made and morale will improve as it is well known that low morale is detrimental to productivity and in this case patients. For more information see How morale levels affect the workplace

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How morale levels affect the workplace

Filed Under: Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
December 22, 2008

Morale is a way of measuring how happy a person is in the workplace. This can be done using various methods which include questionaires or interviews. Medicology has launched a morale testing instrument, for more details see Morale Testing Instrument.

Things that can affect morale levels include:

  • Job Security
  • Levels of Pay
  • The Working Environment
  • Chance to Progress (Professionl Development)
  • The Management

Basically morale has two levels it can be high or low; if morale is high then it means that the staff are happy and productivity will be high but if it is low then staff are unhappy thus having a negative impact on productivity which can be potentially dangerous for example if a doctor has low morale then tey are more likely to make mistakes. It can also cause companies to have high rates of absence as low morale can have a detrimental effect on health as there are links between low morale and mental health problems such as depression. Please be aware that not illness is caused by low morale.

If you find morale is low first you need to identify what is causing the low morale once this has been identified there are a number of options which can applied to rectify this although everyone needs to appreciate that change will not neccessarily occur overnight although if change takes too long staff may assume that management is stalling and morale may further deteriorate therefore communication is key to improving the situation. There are lots of options which may help to rectify the failing morale these include attending training courses such as those provided by Medicology others include open negotiations with staff.

To maintain high morale it is important to recognise staff’s achievements, and offer support when you notice that they are struggling. Although it sounds obvious but most people fail to acknowledge their staff’s achievements I’m not saying that you have to spend lots of money to show your staff that they are appreciated you can use bonuses but there is nothing easier than simply saying: “well done”.

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How training can help develop your business

Filed Under: Training & Development by Kirsty — Leave a comment
August 16, 2008

Training can help develop business as it allows staff to gain new skills; this is good for several reasons for a start you wont need to spend time and money recruiting more staff. Also if staff are update with current practice and are able to work efficiently then you are likely to have a more productive business which can ultimately mean more money. In terms of the medical professions training can keep staff up to date with protocol and the latest treatments thus meaning able to save more lives and possibly even reduce waiting times for patients therefore in private practices making more money as you are seeing more patients.

Training can also keep staff motivated as they are able to develop as a person or perhaps gain promotion within the company, which can be beneficial to you as a boss as it frees up your time as you can delegate and give your staff more responsibility. Confidence can be a benefit of training as the staff gain new skills as well as reinforcing their existing knowledge, this can act as motivation; it can also be an advantage from a boss’ perspective as if you were looking to expand you can promote your existing staff as confidence is one of the factors of a good leader/manager.

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