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Liliana Catapano Director of Human Resources West Park Healthcare Centre Human Resources Rehabilitation Toronto, Ontario liliana.catapano@westpark.org
When was your practice implemented? October 2008
Describe the issue that prompted the implementation of your practice: West Park Healthcare Centre recognizes the importance of promoting a healthier workplace for the wellbeing of their staff and the care of their patients/clients. WPHC's framework to support the promotion of a healthier workplace begins with their strategic priority to 'be a great place to work for staff, physicians and volunteers' and is supported by their core values and the Human Resources strategy that outlines one of their HR directives is to promote a healthier workplace.As an initial step, West Park conducted an employee feedback survey in 2008 that explored 22 QWL-specific indicators as well as general health and wellness indicators. The results from the survey indicated that some of the most important relationships impacting a healthy workplace are experienced within the immediate work teams, including managers, physicians and other colleagues.
Describe your practice: A strategy was created to share the results of the survey within each department/clinical program, and engage each of these teams in developing quality of worklife improvement initiatives (QWLIIs), which were specific and meaningful to their area. Using change management principles, this practice maximizes employee buy-in and empowers them to become involved in effecting change. Teams identified priorities for their area and proposed solutions. They also developed an action plan, gained their manager's commitment and together implemented and will evaluate their initiatives.
Describe how your practice was implemented and the resources required (e.g. people, time, money): The practice unfolded as follows: * A standard template was created to guide the process and maintain consistency across teams. * After presenting the overall survey results, teams received results specific to their department/unit and a change management facilitator met with each manager to establish follow-up steps. * Area-specific team dynamics were considered, such as the involvement of managers in their team's interpretation of the results. * Guidelines for respectful team discussion were provided and a facilitated process generated ideas on areas for improvement. * Teams discussed results without their managers present to encourage freedom of expression, although key themes were subsequently shared with managers to allow for full discussion when they rejoined their team. * Once the team decided on a QWLII, they established an action plan and evaluation strategy to assess impact. * QWLIIs progress reports are regularly provided to the senior team and management.
Explain the impact of your practice: Teams across the Centre have learned to become solution focused and accountable for their quality of work life. Offering the support of a change management facilitator and time to discuss their quality of work life and work to continuously improve on the short term wins has enabled staff to begin to feel empowered. Other positive impacts included better use of communication strategies to support the relationship between management and staff and better conflict resolution skills.
How did it improve quality of worklife? This practice offered the opportunity to work in their immediate teams and define quality of work life for themselves. They felt that their concerns were being heard and that their recommendations for resolution could be applied therefore enhancing their sense of control over their own work environment.
How do you know? (e.g. surveys to staff, a formal evaluation process, specific outcomes, feedback) A formal yet flexible evaluation process was developed to assess the impact of the QWLII for each unique team initiative. A customizable evaluation template (capturing unique outcome indicators) was developed to support teams in the evaluation process and some teams used focus groups to evaluate. In some cases where the initiative was more management driven, a report by the manager was used to evaluate the initiative.Of those teams that were evaluated using a customizable evaluation survey, the following are the preliminary results:* 80% were very satisfied or satisfied with their QWLII. * 78% were very satisfied or satisfied with the QWLII process
What lessons learned and issues to consider are you able to share with colleagues? The following are lessons learned: * Support from Management is essential * Skill development * Role overload, span of control* Additional resources are required to sustain an engagement process* Flexibility in the process is necessary to accommodate the culture* Re-alignment of competing priorities is necessary to keep QWL on the plate* Communicate, Communicate, Communicate * Clear, consistent and ongoing* Engagement * Consistent, face-to-face engagement with frontline staff
