Questions and Answers
Your workplace may have a buddy system to bond new hires with your organization. That's great for trivial questions about the lunch menu, where to park, or who handles payroll. But what about tough questions? For example:
Why do I work more weekends than other techs?
In an open environment, this question is asked to and answered by the supervisor who creates the schedule. Or (even better) a transparent process makes the answer obvious. The question may be asked at a department meeting and answered without a defensive attitude. And if there really isn't a good answer, a productive discussion follows that finds a solution.
What happens when we respond to being written up?
In a productive, quality-oriented environment, a write-up is focused on the facts of the event itself without jumping to a root-cause analysis i.e. The lab tech made a mistake. The incident report follows a consistent path to gather information from accountable parties to a point where a root cause analysis is done. Uncritical discussion without assumption of negligence follows to find a solution.
But this doesn't happen everywhere. I think it's a safe bet that in some workplaces employees are punished with the schedule and laboratories are punished with incident reports. Questions are ignored until they disappear or are replaced by easier ones. Regardless of what leaders claim for a culture, no response is a powerful answer: shut up, don't ask again, we don't care what you think, find another job if you don't like it. Employees who give voice to this silence are labeled as having "perceptions" – code for "instigator" – and leave or are marginalized. Horrible!
Answers, of course, depend on accountability. Those who are answerable not only need to give answers, they need to foster an environment that makes it possible for answers (and questions) to change, thus generating excitement and not suspicion, appreciation and not contempt, teamwork and not bullying.
Ask the tough questions, and listen for the answers. One way or the other, you'll hear them.