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CRISO Psychological Climate Continuous Improvement Program Research & Intervention Centre for Healthy Workplaces (CRISO-MUHC)

There’s a saying that if you’re really close to an issue, sometimes ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees.’ However, when it comes to promoting quality of the work environment in relation with the quality of care and services, being in the thick of the woods can offer a unique perspective on ways organizations can reap the benefits of a healthy work environment.

Such is the case for the Research and Intervention Centre for Healthy Workplaces (CRISO) that ‘lives’ inside the healthcare and social services network, thanks to its affiliation with the McGill University Health Centre.

CRISO is a group of action-researchers and senior consultants with expertise at the cutting edge work psychology.

Applying evidence-based knowledge, CRISO helps its client organizations and their leaders increase their capacity to create and sustain a healthy and performing work environment. Organizational development processes offered by CRISO has a positive impact on the health of workers, job performance organizational commitment, as well as quality of services.

“We have successfully applied these principles in over 20 diverse organizations across Quebec, including seven hospitals, a mental health centre, a geriatric institute, and near 10 community-based health and social services centres,” says Dr. Serge Gagnon, Principal Investigator, OD Consultant and Associate Director of CRISO.

According to Dr. Gagnon, the implementation of proven QWL practices is vital for healthcare and social services organizations, as they share the common challenge of being large public and professional bureaucracies in need of a ‘cultural shake-up’ to successfully fight resource shortages and consequently, issues of recruitment and retention.

Given that the quality of the workplace and organizational culture are increasingly important considerations for the new generation of employees, CRISO helps its clients rigorously assess their work climate using evidence-based tools and create an improvement plan with realistic objectives and interventions tailored to each organization’s reality.

CRISO’s action-research/organizational development approach involves three streams of activities:

A coaching and training process with senior management and management teams to help them implement the work climate improvement ’12 conditions for success’;
Scientific measurement of work climate indicators every two years to sustain climate improvement efforts; and
Ongoing translation of work climate survey results into concrete improvement targets to better the quality of the work environment, as well as regular evaluation-feedback activities to stimulate meaningful interaction between managers and employees throughout the process.

CRISO’s unique model for work climate improvement aims to help clients develop the 12 key organizational capacities behind the mastering of psychosocial and socio-technical ‘essentials’ of healthy and performing workplaces.

The CRISO model predicts that fostering these 12 capacities improves four critical QWL areas: quality of the psychological climate; balance between effort and recognition; balance between psychological demand and decision-making autonomy; as well as social support from peers and from supervisors.

“Ultimately, improvements in these areas can result in four positive individuals as well as organizational outcomes: better personal health, stronger employee commitment, improved organization efficacy and efficiency, plus higher quality of services,” explains CRISO’s Associate Director.

Clearly, CRISO is on to something, as the tool for measuring the psychological work climate passed a cross-confirmatory validation procedure in both English and French.

“CRISO’s solutions have been tested using scientific procedures and it’s one of the rare tools of this nature in Canada that has very solid psychometric qualities in terms of both validity and reliability,” says Dr. Gagnon.

“The work climate evaluation tools developed by CRISO, and the action-research/organizational development process coming with it, can be adapted to any type of organization,” he says.

Dr. Gagnon notes that psychological climate monitoring is extremely valuable to healthcare and social services organizations as it can predict important variations in employee absenteeism rates, degree of risk of the environment for the employees’ physical and mental health, medication errors and even average length of stay.

“The bottom line is that work climate is worth measuring and improving, as the scientific literature shows that work climate has a significant impact on work satisfaction, commitment, motivation and individual performance.”

For details about the scientific nature of CRISO’s tool, see the 2009 Spring edition of the Healthcare Management Forum Review for the paper by Gagnon et al. entitled “Measurement and management of work climate: Cross-validation of the CRISO Psychological Climate Questionnaire”.

For more information on CRISO, including specifics on the ‘essentials’ of healthy and performing work environment management practices, please visit www.criso.ca, or send a message directly to serge.gagnon@muhc.mcgill.ca.