by Mary Wilson Trider
Almonte General Hospital’s vision is “to be recognized as the preferred centre of primary health, obstetrical care and long-term care, providing a continuum of excellent, efficient, integrated services and improving the health and quality of life of those we serve.”
This vision statement also describes the characteristics of a preferred centre, one of which is “The workplace of choice for medical, health-care and support staff.”
Almonte General Hospital’s Board of Directors and leadership team understand that a component of providing high-quality care for patients and residents is a high-quality workplace for our staff.
In fact, improving staff work life is one of the objectives of the organization’s publicly posted 2013-14 Quality Improvement Plan.
In the same way that it is important to hear from patients and residents about what we do well and where we can improve, quality improvement opportunities in the workplace are identified by feedback from the people who work at Almonte General Hospital, Fairview Manor and Lanark County Ambulance Service.
Earlier this year, all employees were invited to participate in a staff engagement survey.
A company called Talent Map administered the survey, which brought three valuable elements to the process: first, experience in developing and administering staff surveys; second, the ability for staff to respond anonymously, and; third, a database of other health care organizations against which we could benchmark our results to understand how we compare to others.
Overall, we were pleased to see strong scores, both in absolute numbers and relative to the health care benchmark, for pride, personal accomplishment, optimism about the future and commitment to doing high-quality work.
Positive responses to a question about whether people would recommend our organization as a great place to work were nearly 140 per cent higher than the benchmark.
We also heard from our staff that they see opportunities for improvement in our approach to learning and professional growth, communication and individual performance feedback.
Teams have been formed in each division/department to develop action plans to address opportunities unique to each area.
A corporate team, with staff and managers from across the organization, will develop a plan to address organization-wide improvements.
The Board of Directors will be monitoring progress against these plans as part of its commitment to a high-quality workplace for our employees.
Mary Wilson Trider is the President and CEO of Almonte General Hospital
