I have recently covered how local public health is inflexible and why it hurts. Here I try to cover how to incentivize flexibility.
The list of negatives is blunt and long. But I believe we can do plenty about it. It is up to the people at local public health to accept the challenge of culture change.
These incentives feel kind and professional. But it’s serious business.
Increase accountability, increase freedom. In local public health there is a lot of busy work and bureaucratic barriers. The idea here is to lift barriers of work while demanding more out of the workforce. Let the workforce use their best abilities to achieve the strategy and vision of the organization. Make them owners of important projects. And request KPIs of their work.
Local public health must find a balance. Only increasing accountability might lead to a pressured workforce that have their hands tied. And only increasing freedom might lead the workforce to be unaccountable.
No more bullying. First things first: no yelling, no belittling. No trampling over others. It quickly burns people. It makes them less efficient at work. Bullying happens. And folks tend to sugar coat it. Confrontations and bad behaviors slide. Let your workforce know that they can reach out for help.
Encourage numbers. Specially KPIs. Encourage the build of data pipelines to feed those KPIs. Abide by them and make them your guiding star. Allow the workforce to try creative ways to improve those KPIs. Remind the workforce continuously about their status. And set thresholds to know what is acceptable and what is not.
Pass the monkey. If you are in public health leadership, you are probably dealing with plenty of projects, changing priorities, and moving deadlines. And also you are probably dealing with other administrative tasks. Like time keeping. Pass tasks to your employees. Let them handle projects globally. They can feed the projects and free time for you to pursue other, bigger projects.
Discourage bureaucracy. Local public health is full of sign offs, witnesses, official communications, and other approval mechanisms. You need to get through a lot of thumbs up to make a project happen. Why do we need so many layers of approval? The way I see it, approvals are a way folks tie themselves to a process to gain relevance. Individuals win leverage but the organization loses efficiency. Approvals could instead become feedback. Making sure that everyone who gave feedback is noted. It seems better to reserve approvals for the bigger decisions.