Competitive case analysis in the medical and pharmaceutical sector

The stories of mobbing in the public healthcare sector are a recurring sad motif in this sector. Just a couple of weeks ago, information emerged in the public domain that female doctors at the Mažeikiai Hospital were complaining about mobbing. Each time such a case comes to light, the public debates whether it is an isolated incident, just an issue within that institution, or rather indicative of systemic problems across the entire sector. And truly, it’s not easy to answer. However, the WitMind® team decided to explore what our available data says on this topic.

WitMind® data revealed a reality that is not pleasing, but on the other hand, it clearly shows that quality data can help find the key to change. Precisely, we can use data to identify which aspects of management, culture, leadership, and employee well-being in the sector contribute to the challenges in dealing with employee relations. Yes, the sector is ailing, but it has immense healing potential that can be achieved even with small steps.

What WitMind® data reveals about the healthcare sector

From various cuts of data in the WitMind Employer Competitiveness System®, we noticed particularly low indicators in themes related to emotional benefits and pride. These themes encompass highly important factors such as company culture, quality of leadership and management, employee relations, listening to employee opinions, opportunities to contribute to change, the ability to provide feedback, and many others.

In the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector competitiveness index, private healthcare institutions rise to the top, as they are better at fulfilling these emotional values than public sector companies. Removing them, i.e., leaving only public institutions, leads to a decline in the emotional value assessment index. And if we look only at the Telšiai County, where the recently spotlighted Mažeikiai Hospital is located, we will see that the indicator for public institutions is even worse – no other sector in this county is rated so poorly.

The WitMind® system also examines how much employees take pride in emotional workplace factors such as company achievements, internal culture, respect for people, leader competence, and so on. Here, too, the situation is poor: if we were to evaluate organizational culture, we would again have to state that non-private healthcare sector institutions appear to be the worst of all. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the pride index here is minimal – 0 percent.

In summary, the data from the WitMind Employer Competitiveness System® shows that:

• Overall, the competitiveness of employers in both the public and private healthcare sectors compared to other sectors is very low.
• The competitiveness of the public healthcare sector is significantly lower than that of the private sector, so the risk of losing employees remains very high.
• The key direction for the entire healthcare sector, in terms of where to invest to see quick results in increasing competitiveness, is the quality of leadership and management competencies, as well as ensuring basic well-being elements in both emotional and functional well-being themes.

When data shows specific areas that need improvement, it becomes easier to plan what changes are needed, which of them are priorities, and which will not yield results and are not worth investing in, making the change more realistic.