How Many Managers?
The other day at a department head meeting when a person used the phrase, "...
the 35 of you," it got me thinking. How many managers do we need?
I work in a critical access hospital with 25 beds.
We have one laboratory, one pharmacy and one plant manager. But there are one-person departments with a manager (guess who that would be!), two-person departments with a manager, small departments with a manager and an assistant, "shift" managers, and almost as many nursing managers as the rest of us combined. And there are probably 10 managers that don't come to department head meetings.
I've seen this everywhere I've worked.
Does a hospital need senior directors, directors, managers, assistant managers, coordinators, coaches, super-coaches, supervisors, supervising consultants, advisers, team leaders and whatever else Roget suggests? If a "manager" has two "administrative" days a month to manage, is that person just someone who fills out the payroll? Are these people leading those performing the day-to-day work generating revenue, or each other? And is all this "management" just an excuse not to involve employees in decision-making?
Perhaps these are questions line staff should ask, since they do the work.
"What is the difference, again, between the Managing Director of Inpatient Resources, and the Assistant Inpatient Managing Coordinator?" I can hear it now--that deafening glare of Get back to work.
"Line staff" aren't bees in a hive. They make decisions each day amounting to managing resources, staffing, care plans, complaints and team building. They are constantly looking for new, cheaper and easier ways to do everyday work. Line staff is talented, experienced and innovative. The only thing standing in their way is--you guessed it--management. Good thing managers spend so much time in meetings, or nothing would get done.
I could ask the questions. But I would get at least 35 different answers.