Thursday, December 12, 2019

The Corners That Matter Most

By attending to the little things, we can experience a real sense of pride in our work

When I was nine years old, I got my first summer job doing yard maintenance on my grandfather’s 10-acre hobby farm.

I loved spending time there, in part because at the end of each work day, he’d teach me how to ride a horse or drive a car—long before I turned 16. He also taught me the value of a job well done.

Before I could call it quits for the day, we’d walk the property together to inspect whether my work had been completed well. With unfailing predictability, he’d remind me it’s “the corners that matter most,” pointing out small details I’d overlooked. He was never angry, or belittling, but the job wasn’t complete until I had attended to all the small details.

In time, as I learned to expertly handle the trimmer, to remove each emerging weed, and to sweep out every corner of the garage, his inspections became less frequent. My grandfather knew that by attending to the little things well, I demonstrated I had mastered the task.

By succeeding at the little things, I was also able to experience a real sense of pride in my work.

In the near 20 years that I’ve worked as a union representative, I’ve spent countless hours observing people at work, and listening to them talk about their good and bad work experiences. I’ve learned that most people have an innate desire to take pride in a job well done because it offers them a chance to feel a sense of personal worth and meaning in their work lives.

Sadly, for thousands of workers in Ontario’s long term care system, the opportunity to take pride in a job well done has become ever more elusive. It seems that with regular occurrence, another media story shines a light on just how broken the system is. Each negative story seems to bring more government oversight and regulatory paperwork.

But these efforts to fix the system only serve to diminish the time in a day available for hands-on care. Many who have worked in the system for a long time say the work today resembles a factory production line. Workers are kept to strict regimens and are constantly at risk of discipline. Falling out of step with the pace, or making minor mistakes, quickly becomes classified by management as “resident abuse.”

Using terms like production line or warehouse may seem like a harsh indictment of Ontario’s long term care system, but it captures well the frustration front-line workers feel at not being able to offer the care and concern their residents deserve. A paper recently released by Cardus, a think tank based in Hamilton, Ontario, examines the state of long term care from the workers’ perspective. The paper demonstrates how the needs of an aging population have exploded. Workers in long term care must tend to a very different resident today than they did 20 years ago.

The staff-to-resident ratio has not improved in this time despite the increased and more complex needs of residents. Real wages (per hour rates, adjusted for inflation) have declined by as much as six percent over the last ten years. Front-line staff are not provided with adequate tools to keep up with the ever-increasing amount of paperwork and often redundant reporting required of them by the province.

As a result, it’s becoming harder and harder to attract and retain workers in this sector. Those who do remain often work short, are unable to take their breaks, and can’t get much-needed time off work.

In response, CLAC is calling on the province to establish a multistakeholder advisory panel. It’s our view that the problems underlying the staffing crisis are complex, and solutions will only be possible when insightful stakeholders from different perspectives make a real effort to work together. As the population ages, and as Ontario prepares to add 15,000 more long term care beds to the system, it will be important to first attend to the problems that make it increasingly difficult to attract and retain workers in this sector.

But it’s not enough to simply catalogue the problems in the system. For the last year, CLAC has been running a #ThankaPSW campaign in an effort to demonstrate just how valuable the work of these front-line caregivers is. Thousands have joined the Facebook campaign page, and nearly 90,000 have watched a video that highlights the incredible effort staff make to honour and dignify the people in their care. Hundreds of people have left comments about their positive experiences with PSWs—how a caregiver touched their lives when they attended to some detail, or went to extra effort to comfort someone.

From the stories and personal anecdotes posted to the page, it’s clear there are many dedicated front-line caregivers. By attending to the small details—“the corners that matter most,” as my grandfather would say—they have much reason to find pride in their work despite the obstacles they face every day.

The Corners That Matter Most

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