How Do You Know It’s True?
By
Leonard Zwelling
One of my readers sent me the following email from one Lindsey Wohlford, MS, RD, LD (and I am supposed to know what an RD and LD are? I looked it up. I think she’s a dietician) that received wide distribution throughout MD Anderson on July 14. Ms. Wohlford is identified as the Program Manager of HR Workforce Wellness.
The text of the email is as follows:
Our employees are our greatest resource. Prioritizing their health and well-being supports our core value of stewardship and is vital to our success as an institution. Many of our leaders support their teams through targeted programming, building open communication and trust, and recognizing the needs and challenges of their employees.
HR Workforce Wellness will be hosting our second panel discussion in a series where we explore the many ways leaders at MD Anderson are working to create a culture of wellness and model compassionate leadership to strengthen their teams. We will feature three MD Anderson leaders who have successfully incorporated wellness into the culture of their teams. Join us to hear what motivated the shift, changes they implemented and the resulting positive outcomes.
If you missed our first panel discussion, you can view it here.
Many Thanks,
Lindsey
What could possibly be my problem with the email announcing what sounds like a beneficial panel discussion for the workers of MD Anderson?
Simple. How many of the statements in the email are actually true and how many, if any, apply to the faculty? Let us see.
Our employees are our greatest resource. I’m good with this sentence. The two greatest assets of MD Anderson are its name and its faculty who are, in fact, employees. Sort of. That’s where my problem starts.
Prioritizing their health and well-being supports our core value of stewardship and is vital to our success as an institution. I’m OK with this as well although I have no idea what stewardship means in this context and how it applies to faculty. Who’s stewarding whom? What does a good steward look like? What does a faculty steward do? Name one.
Many of our leaders support their teams through targeted programming, building open communication and trust, and recognizing the needs and challenges of their employees. How does Ms. Wohlford know any of this is true? Have these teams had their work evaluated by a validated instrument and the benefits confirmed? Trust seems to me to be in short supply between the faculty and the administration right now. What faculty needs are being addressed and how well have those needs been met? How do you measure that?
HR Workforce Wellness will be hosting our second panel discussion in a series where we explore the many ways leaders at MD Anderson are working to create a culture of wellness and model compassionate leadership to strengthen their teams. Again, will validated data be presented that substantiate this claim or is this another Pisters feelgood concept emanating from the Harvard Business School?
We will feature three MD Anderson leaders who have successfully incorporated wellness into the culture of their teams. How has this success been measured and do those being managed agree that their current leadership is successful? Are the faculty even included?
Join us to hear what motivated the shift, changes they implemented and the resulting positive outcomes. I hope this includes data. I hope this includes faculty. If not, a separate panel discussion on faculty wellness might be called for.
One of the tricks of modern management and modern politics for that matter is vehemently asserting that something is true without validating that truth with real data. Think Trump and the Big Lie about who won the 2020 election.
I surely hope this latest attempt at securing faculty and staff “wellness” is both effective and proven. I’ll be surprised because these things are hard to measure and I suspect HR has not really measured them in these cases.
But, hey, I could be wrong. You all should attend the panel discussion and ask for the data and see if faculty data are included. But if there are no faculty data—leave.
