How many of you feel allegiance to a profession, distinct from your employer, and find that your employer gets in the way of meeting professional standards?
Surely this is common. Surely, nurses would spend more time with patients than their hospital allows. Teachers want to engage students with activities the school won't fund. A documentary maker wants to show the complex details of a situation, but the cable channel wants simple sensationalism.
On the surface, this looks like an inevitable conflict in institutions. There are people who believe their job is to deliver the institution's services or products to their best ability; they nurture the profession. There are others who believe their job is to support the institition's continued success and survival; they nurture the institution.
At the place I work, a "service center" for the NPS, a manager recently explained that, to survive, we have to provide only the services that we're paid for. No more spending extra hours making a better film and charging time to the Center's overhead. Staff argue that the parks, our clients, come to HFC for the very reason that they get more than they pay for. Plus, our work wins awards.
What do you think?
Surely this is common. Surely, nurses would spend more time with patients than their hospital allows. Teachers want to engage students with activities the school won't fund. A documentary maker wants to show the complex details of a situation, but the cable channel wants simple sensationalism.
On the surface, this looks like an inevitable conflict in institutions. There are people who believe their job is to deliver the institution's services or products to their best ability; they nurture the profession. There are others who believe their job is to support the institition's continued success and survival; they nurture the institution.
At the place I work, a "service center" for the NPS, a manager recently explained that, to survive, we have to provide only the services that we're paid for. No more spending extra hours making a better film and charging time to the Center's overhead. Staff argue that the parks, our clients, come to HFC for the very reason that they get more than they pay for. Plus, our work wins awards.
What do you think?
Comments
It seems awfully hard to balance pride in one's work against time demands and diplomacy in the workplace.
In health care there are yet other players: the patient may be the person getting the service, but the insurance company functions as the client. And then there is "standard of care", a rather vague notion about "best practice" or "the right way to do it." So the client and the patient and the service provider and the health profession can all see the situation differently.
although we dont get paid extra for the effort put in, i really enjoyed the smiles i got from my customers when we went the extra mile for them or did something better than they expected. to me, it was more of a personal satisfaction. i was in the banking line before. ;)
Do you think there's anyplace in our profession where institutional needs rarely get in the way of professional standards? Or do you think this is a built-in conflict in institutions?
Post a Comment