The generational differences: Health systems leaders need to modernize the workplace and workforce practices to reflect the values of younger health care workers.

Why new generations workers are leaving from healthcare sector?

Many younger workers cite toxic cultural dynamics, such as micromanagement, hierarchical structures, and lack of support from leadership, as significant contributors to dissatisfaction and burnout.

Younger health care workers (physicians, nurses, social care, data managers, economists, lawyers....,),  have different values than older health care workers like:

1. Work-Life Balance: Many new workers prioritize flexibility and mental health, yet the rigid schedules and high stress of healthcare roles often clash with these values.
2. Communication Challenges: New employees increasingly seek purpose-driven careers, and closing the loop on communication is crucial. Are new employees instructed on how to communicate?. The practice of medicine is based on human interaction and communication, as well as science. Balancing patient needs inside an environment of mutual respect is the goal. The deskless workforce in healthcare is high-touch, with patient and co-worker interaction at the center of service delivery. Knowing how to build trust and collaborate is key, across all generations.
3. Conflict with Traditional Structures: Many younger employees feel out of sync with the hierarchical and rigid structures common in healthcare organizations, preferring collaborative and innovative environments.

Health system leaders and administrators should consider new strategies to modernize the workplace and workforce practices to reflect the values of younger health care workers.

• Create an environment to report instances of discrimination, inequalities, and racism quickly and anonymously.
• Develop equity-centered hiring and retention practices. Including (DEI) practice: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Employees want to work at organizations that prioritize DEI practices.
• Design a healthy environment that prioritizes employee wellness. Early-career health care workers who began working during the COVID-19 pandemic endured unprecedented stress and pressure that likely influenced their outlook. Both early-career and longtime health care workers increasingly report feeling burnt out; health care leaders need to create work environments that support overall wellbeing and make workers feel heard and valued. 
• Promote empathy among the managers and leaders to understand the concerns, feelings, and thoughts of their teams.
• Provide employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
• Create a specific mentoring programms to increase awareness regarding gender, young and old, diversity, equity, and inclusion in an organization.
• Support its employees at every step in their career and promote also the accountability at every step: “Accountability breeds response-ability.”― Stephen R. Covey.

Source: 

1. Morenike Ayo-Vaughan and Laurie Zephyrin, “Young Health Care Workers See More Discrimination in the Workplace, Leading to Added Stress and Burnout,” To the Point (blog), Commonwealth Fund, May 29, 2024. Blog

2. Forbes 2024

Photo Jordi Soldevila. Seqüència Xostakòvitx. Quartet número núm  8,

 ______________________________________________________________________

Managers in health care sector

Key ideas:

• The necessary skills of healthcare managers involve planning, organizing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluation skills.
• Management skills are focused on the use of organizational resources but they also have to center on the mobilization of the members of the organization.
• The good healthcare manager provides trust and confidence to staff and appreciates staff efforts.
• Communication and critical thinking skills, relational and organizations skills for healthcare management, were seen as essential competencies for development.
• Additional skills to manage subordinates and coordinate with top-level managers is necessary: like self-awareness, change management, and conflict resolution.
• Clarity on the roles and responsibilities of existing and new professionals working in healthcare is necessary.
• Interprofessional healthcare management can resolve the issue of superiority and inferiority among healthcare professions – medicine, nursing, allied health including laboratory and pharmacy, among others. It reinforces humility and teamwork while acknowledging the importance of each profession for the improvement of health.
• If a healthcare manager knows how to lead himself, it then becomes easier for him/her to familiarize and knowing more both the members and the organization well.
• Well-managed staff can lead to well-managed patients.
• Management skills can impact positively on patients’ health outcomes.
• Healthcare management is a profession

Bayot ML, Varacallo MA. Management Skills. [Updated 2023 Sep 4]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-. 

Article

Photo Jordi Soldevila. Màcula de la “L” de l’espai Serrahima

_______________________________________________________________________

Research on Integrated Care Systems: workforce

Integrated care systems (ICSs) were given statutory powers and new legal responsibilities for the first time in July 2022 in UK. 

These changes were intended to increase collaboration in the health and social care sector and to enable the NHS, local authorities and other partners to take collective responsibility for improving health outcomes, reducing inequalities, delivering better value for money, and driving local social and economic development. 

This research examines the development of ICSs by assessing their efforts to develop system-wide approaches to the recruitment, training and retention of staff. Workforce issues such as these are currently some of the biggest challenges facing the health and care sector, and require a co-ordinated response from multiple organisations of the kind that ICSs were designed to enable. 

Leading system-wide transformation is slow and the work is hard, but there are clear signs that progress is being made. 

The research identified six distinctive ways in which ICSs are adding value: ◦ organising around a shared purpose ◦ building system leadership ◦ encouraging system-focused behaviours ◦ scaling and spreading success ◦ using resources more effectively ◦ managing complexity. The degree which this is happening varies across systems. 

Despite signs of progress, there is a clear risk of ICSs going ‘off track’ as a result of pressures on services, intense political scrutiny, and extremely difficult economic circumstances – and the effect these conditions are having on the behaviours of leaders locally, regionally and nationally. There is widespread concern that ICSs may not achieve their full potential unless more is done to create an environment conducive to their success. 

The research suggests that success relies primarily on supporting people to think, plan and act in ‘system-focused’ ways. If this is to happen, different behaviours are needed at all levels of the system. National bodies need to create a more enabling environment and ensure that accountability and funding mechanisms support system working. Local leaders need to model system working in their relationships with partners across the system. 

There is considerable interest in how ICSs are performing and there is a danger that attention focuses on the things that are easier to measure. The research suggests that the less visible work of supporting people to work together differently is critical for success and must not be undervalued. The ability to do this well is one of the key factors that will determine whether ICSs succeed in delivering better population health and more joined-up care for people using services.

Kingsfund report ICS, 2024

Photo Jordi Soldevila. Iteració de les portes tancades

_______________________________________________________________________