Employee Empowerment & Psychological Safety Interviews and Analysis

To prepare:

• Choose and secure the agreement of three individuals you know well (i.e., family and friends) to be interviewed on the topics of employee empowerment, engagement, and psychological safety in the workplace. One person you interview must work in a healthcare setting.
• Access and review the document Employee Interviews: Guidelines and Questions for guidance on planning, conducting, analyzing, and comparing the interview responses.

Note: You are required to submit the signature of each person you interview to confirm the individual’s agreement to participate. Fill in Page 1 of the Employee Interviews: Guidelines and Questions document, print the page, and obtain the signatures. (There is a place for all three signatures on Page 1.) Scan and submit Page 1 as a separate Word file with your completed Assessment.

• Consider definitions of “employee empowerment,” “employee engagement,” and “psychological safety” that clarify these concepts to explain to your interview subjects in enlisting their participation and guiding responses.
• Conduct a brief (20–30 minutes) phone or in-person interview with each individual. Speak with each person separately so that you have three sets of independent views to compare. Questions to ask, including a sample script for explaining questions as needed, is provided in the Guidelines document. Note the questions are repeated in a section for each interviewee. Take notes in the document, or record the interviews with each person’s permission.
• When you have completed all three interviews, review each individual’s experiences and sense of empowerment, engagement, and psychological safety at work. Compare and contrast the responses with the goal of arriving at clear conclusions on how the degree of employee empowerment, engagement, and psychological safety influences job performance, satisfaction, and morale.
• Compare the responses of the individual who works in healthcare and your own experiences in professional practice in healthcare to the responses of your interviewees working in other areas. Consider conclusions you can make about employee empowerment, engagement, and psychological safety in healthcare compared with other professions.
• Consider quality care and safety issues in healthcare and the relationship among psychological safety, employee empowerment, and engagement as positive or negative factors.
• Consider strategies nurse executives can apply to improve or enhance employee empowerment, engagement, and psychological safety within healthcare settings.

To complete this Assessment:Based on your three interviews and drawing on current literature, and from the perspective of a nurse executive’s role in supporting employee job performance and satisfaction, write an analysis that addresses, in 4–5 pages, the following points:

• Describe the three employees you interviewed, including their industries and job titles.
• Write your working definitions of “employee empowerment” and “employee engagement” that are the basis of the interviews.
• Summarize how the interviewees characterized the culture of employee empowerment and engagement within their organizations.
• Analyze how employee empowerment and employee engagement within healthcare organizations compare with other industries. Be specific and provide examples.
• Write your working definition of “psychological safety” that is the basis of the interviews.
• Summarize how the interviewees characterized the presence, absence, and/or degree of psychological safety within their organizations.
• Analyze how psychological safety within healthcare compares with other industries. Be specific and provide examples.
• Analyze how degree of psychological safety, employee empowerment, and engagement are positive or negative factors for quality care and safety issues within healthcare.
• From the position of a nurse executive, explain at least two leadership strategies you would recommend for actions to improve or enhance psychological safety, employee empowerment, and engagement within healthcare organizations. Speak generally, or specifically, to your current healthcare organization or one where you have worked in the past.