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Trillium Health Centre

When Trillium Health Centre made developing a comprehensive support system for employee wellness a priority, they shrewdly modeled their program using criteria set by leaders in the business of 'best practices': the National Quality Institute (NQI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Launching a Healthy Workplace Program (HWP) in 2003, Trillium, one of Canada's largest hospitals with regional tertiary programs in cardiac, vascular, neurosciences and stroke began the journey to improve quality and employee wellness -- no small feat for a diverse organization with 4,400 employees, 700 physicians, and more than 1,000 volunteers spread out over two campuses in Mississauga and West Toronto and various off-site community programs.

"We invested in this strategic initiative to improve workplace wellness plus boost our retention and recruitment efforts in today's tight healthcare market," says Karen Jackson, Director of Knowledge Practice at Trillium.

It seems Trillium's decision not to 're-invent the wheel' but base its HWP on NQI and ISO benchmarks for quality worklife (QWL) practices was an effective one. In fact, Trillium followed the NQI's 'progressive excellence' program for quality and employee wellness and as a result achieved Level 4-Gold status in 2008.

The NQI's stringent criteria for achieving this level requires an organization to bring together environmental, physical, mental, safety and social issues into a strategic model that helps set goals and manage employee wellness programs.

To improve workplace practices and foster improved employee wellness, recruitment and retention, Trillium implemented a number of strategic elements. One of the more effective elements was the development of a flexible schedule guide to assist managers in offering different scheduling options to staff in both clinical and non-clinical areas. Another particularly popular initiative included enhancing employee learning and development opportunities.

"To improve communication and encourage healthy workplace initiatives at the unit level, Trillium also created interdisciplinary 'partnership councils' across the organization," said Jackson. "These councils offered unique opportunities for emerging leaders to facilitate input and dialogue between teams, as the councils were chaired by staff themselves, not the area manager."

Jackson credits Trillium's comprehensive approach as the key to its QWL success. Trillium's program was specifically tailored as a 'strategic people support initiative', with the intent to integrate practices within operational areas and functional units within Trillium.

"For instance, Organizational Development (OD), Human Resources (HR), and Occupational Health embedded new practices into their operating plans to support the initiative," explains Jackson. "OD managed the Healthy Workplace Survey and action planning that followed to integrate workplace health plans into area goals and objectives while HR incorporated the Healthy Workplace language into recruitment activities and HR strategies.

" According to Jackson, Trillium's Occupational Health & Safety division even changed its name to 'Employee Health Safety & Wellness' to bring a focus to employee wellness and integrate health and safety practices.

The Healthy Workplace focus on physical environment was integrated within the Environmental Management System (EMS). "The EMS followed ISO 14001 criteria," notes Jackson. "ISO is the global leader in international standardization and uses strict auditing programs to progressively improve environmental standards."

Jackson said a turning point in Trillium's QWP leading to efficiency in practice was integrating HWP goals and objectives into the organization's operating cycle. "By doing this, all managers were accountable for creating their own HWP goals with their staff, and identifying priorities to improve workplace health," she reveals. "These goals were part of the template for goals and objectives for all areas.

"Two key evaluations of Trillium's success involved monitoring sick time and turnover stats, which were consistently below the Ontario Hospital Association average. "As well, each year we conduct a self-assessment against the NQI criteria for each from Levels 1 to 4," she says. "This was followed by a verification process by NQI and an external team of auditors for each level."

To its credit, Trillium achieved Level 4 and a coveted national NQI Gold Canada Award for Excellence in quality and employee wellness, in part because Trillium's QWP could demonstrate tangible results like:

10% higher in work satisfaction than benchmark;
19% higher in quality improvement scores than benchmark;
20.5% higher for 'satisfaction with Trillium' than benchmark;
21% higher for 'Trillium is a healthy workplace than benchmark;
11% improvement in sick time; and
16% decrease in employee turnover.

Asked what advice she would give others looking to improve their organization's QWL, Jackson said "It's important to persevere, not to get impatient, as building QWL takes time." If she had to name just one thing about the importance of QWL issues in healthcare settings, she says QWL is critical because of the nature of the 24/7 shift work and it's related 'crisis component' dealing with life and death situations.

"Healthcare workers, like other service employees -- firemen, police, emergency personnel, etc. -- need a healthy work environment to sustain their specialized skills," she stresses. "The work is not easy, and the environment must be conducive to support the health of these employees."

Fortunately for Trillium staff, the organization seems to have mastered the evolution of QWL and the Centre is well on its way to setting its own standards for leading practices in the healthcare industry, for the benefit of both employees and clients alike.

For more information on Trillium Health Centre, please visit www.trilliumhealthcentre.org.