Back October 25, 2016

Every now and then you experience a serendipitous moment where multiple needs can be met with one, perfect solution. This was the case one day in February when a conversation around the need to get client feedback and another conversation about employee engagement came together at one of our senior leadership meetings. It sparked a question; What can we do that would engage our leadership with our front line staff, our clients, and their family caregivers, while simultaneously gathering information that would feed into improving our performance? It seemed like a lot to ask, but sometimes when you ask for a lot, that’s just what you get.

Hope and Happiness Week

Spreading Hope and Happiness is key to everything we do at Saint Elizabeth – it’s why we exist. Hope and Happiness isn’t just about how we want to impact our clients (although that’s a big part of it), it’s also about how we want to live day to day, and how we connect with each other. To connect our leadership and our front line staff in a meaningful way, we decided to plan a week of home health Care visits. During the week of May 2nd to 6th, we celebrated what we called “Hope and Happiness Week” at Saint Elizabeth and Elizz.

With our annual leadership event only a few months away, we sent almost 100 leaders on home health care visits with front-line staff. We asked them to connect with the front-line staff member, our client and their family members who help care for them. One of the key challenges we faced was how to capture learning and feedback from these visits. We decided to give our leaders specific questions to ask during their visit, related to three topics: employee engagement, focus and quality of client care and the experience of family caregivers. This information was compiled, reviewed, and shared in conjunction with the leadership event, where we discussed our three key goals for the year and strategized how we would achieve them.

Results

After Hope and Happiness week had been completed, and the time had come for our May leadership event, I witnessed a wonderful thing happen. Throughout the day leaders drew from the experience they had had on their home visits. For people who spend most of their time in the office, I could tell that the experience of doing a home visit had been invigorating. The result was more ideas being shared at our leadership event – ideas from our leaders, but also our front line staff, our clients and their family caregivers. At the end of the day, I saw many leaders stand up and share the stories from their home visit experiences. Hearing about the amazing staff we have, and the stories of our clients really touched the hearts of our entire leadership, reaffirming why we do what we do.

The results from Hope and Happiness Week were better than we had expected. Our leaders loved it, our front line staff loved it, our clients were happy to be asked for their input, and we learned more about the needs of family caregivers. After the leadership event, we surveyed those who participated and found that 100% of leaders and front line staff said they found it worthwhile and would like to participate again. Based on these results, we’ve decided to make Hope and Happiness Week an annual tradition.

Not every organization can have a “Hope and Happiness Week” as we did at Saint Elizabeth and Elizz (although I would encourage you to!). However, there are some key learnings from this experience that can help you to understand all levels of your organization, empower your employees, and connect with your clients and front line staff.

Have your leaders really experience your organization

When you first start in a new organization you may get an orientation, meet with your direct colleagues, the management in your department, or other department heads. If you’re lucky you might even get to spend some time with another area of the organization and spend time with the front line (be it a retail store, a call center or, in our case, a home care visit). Fast forward a number of years and you’re a leader in the organization, making decisions based on your experiences, your connections, and your belief on what is best for the organization. Without even realizing it, we can become disconnected with the core of the business or organization. It’s important to take that time to see what the organization looks like outside of our own little bubbles, and see what the experience is like for others, especially our clients.

Make your employee’s ideas and input not only heard, but put into action

There are many venues for employee feedback, but where they often fall short is in making use of this feedback. When you’re asking for input, you need to have a venue to bring it forward, and a clear idea of how it will be used.

With the input we received from our Hope and Happiness Week, we divided the feedback into three groups and shared this information with people tasked to improve each part of our business. Our feedback from clients was provided to a committee focused on Patient and Family Centered Care, our information from family caregivers was analyzed by our Elizz Caregiving team, and our employee feedback is now in the hands of our Employee Engagement Task Force. I’m pleased to already see this feedback making a difference – in a recent employee newsletter we included an article about how the feedback was integrated into our Patient and Family Centered Care initiatives, sharing updated tips that were created based on the feedback we had received.

Talk to your clients

People interacting with clients every day will hear their thoughts and feedback, but for a leader at the organization who isn’t usually in direct contact with the front line, this feedback can go unnoticed. As leaders we will hear about major issues or major successes, but the small things are important too. That first hand feedback from a staff member or client can spark a new idea and encourage out of the box thinking at the leadership level.

It is also important to not only take input from those who reach out and provide it, but to also seek out feedback from those who might not otherwise speak up. This can help you to improve constantly, and make changes before there’s a fire that needs to be put out.

Hope and Happiness Week was a big endeavour, but the enthusiasm from our staff and the data we received were invaluable to putting us on track for reaching our goals for the year. Next year we’ll aim even bigger because we’ve learned that when you ask for a lot, you’ll get a lot in return.

Written by Victoria Larson

Head of Digital and Internal Communication at Saint Elizabeth and Elizz

Special thank you:

Saint Elizabeth Regional Directors, Service Coordinators, Supervisors and front line staff who hosted the home visits, without your support Hope and Happiness week wouldn’t have been possible!