Be the voice in creating a new culture at VCH

A message from Mary Ackenhusen, President and CEO

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the "My VCH Survey"? What's different from the VCH People First (Gallup) survey?

Unlike many other employee surveys such as Gallup, the My VCH Survey is built on an Organizational Health Index which looks at nine areas that are considered key to creating a thorough picture of how "healthy" an organization is. Some of these areas include the way a company creates alignment, executes with excellence, and adapts to changing circumstances to achieve long-term success. When all of these things are working well, generally speaking, employees feel satisfied and able to do their best work - in other words, there is a "healthy" environment in place.

And research shows that the health of an organization explains 50% of its performance. This means that organizations, like VCH, need to manage their health, as well as meet short-term performance expectations in order to sustain success over time.

Why are we doing this?

As an organization we are unable to meet the growing demand for services. We are rapidly reaching the point when our patients outnumber our providers, our acute and residential care beds are full, and we cannot provide all of the care our communities deserve. And, it isn't from lack of trying. We have our True North framework and we have identified where we want our organization to be in 3-5 years in our "Future State" goals, and we have excellent people doing their best to keep up.

But time is running out - and we know many of you are feeling run down and frustrated with immense workloads. Something has to change if we are to meet service demands AND take care of our staff and physicians. The My VCH Survey will gather your observations and experience of working at VCH. It will help us identify the areas where we can make improvements that have the potential to create a better workplace environment and in doing so, also make us a more effective organization.

What are the dates for the survey?

The survey will be open from Monday, September 25th up to and including Friday, October 6th.

When and where can I take the survey?

The survey is open for participation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week between Sep 25th and Oct 6th. The survey is only available online, but can be accessed and completed from any computer with an Internet connection. It can also be completed from your home computer or tablet. Although it is available on smartphone devices such as Blackberry, iPhone or Android phones, it is not optimized for those devices and would be best completed on a computer, laptop or tablet, like an iPad.

Why should I participate?

Sharing your honest thoughts about our organization's health will help drive real change. A confidential survey is one of the best ways we have to gather the feelings and opinions of staff from across our organization with the goal of improving the way we provide care to our patients and clients - and also how we care for each other. It is an investment in our staff to ensure we have what we need to be successful in our work. There will be contests, daily prizes and a social media campaign that everyone is encouraged to get involved in!

Is the survey voluntary?

Yes, the survey is voluntary. That said, the more people participate, the greater the end impact can be. Participating in the survey allows you to express your opinions and help make a difference in your workplace, give senior leaders real and first-person insight into your day-to-day work experiences, and will ultimately help us to improve access and quality of care for the patients, families and communities we serve. We really hope you will complete it.

What do we expect to get out of it?

The information you provide in your survey responses will help us determine where our opportunities are for improvement and what obstacles are hindering our ability to execute on our priorities. It will also help identify our strengths which we will continue to build on. So if there are systemic challenges you've always wanted to address, or workplace practices you are particularly proud of, this is the time to talk about them!

Is the survey confidential? Will my responses be identifiable?

The survey is confidential and your responses are not identifiable. Each eligible employee will receive a unique link by email to access his or her own personal survey. The unique link allows you to return to your survey if you do not finish it in one sitting. Neither your email address nor any of your personally identifiable data will be connected to your responses. The survey is being administered by McKinsey & Company, an independent consulting firm with a presence in Vancouver that specializes in these types of organization surveys. McKinsey will receive your responses directly, analyze the results, and report back to us on their findings, which we will then use to create an action plan customized to our needs and your feedback. In reporting the results, only aggregates and percentages based on the total number of responses are shared. The comments provided for any open-ended questions in the survey will be grouped together with those from all other staff and randomized.

We already run a lot of surveys-why are we running another one?

Most employee surveys focus on satisfaction and engagement in isolation. The McKinsey survey tool (the Organizational Health Index, or OHI) does not try to do this. It looks at nine elements of organizational health to create a thorough picture of how "healthy" an organization is and allows results to be benchmarked against similar institutions. The OHI provides quantitative benchmarks against a database of 1,300+ surveys of other organizations and 1,300,000+ employees. The uniqueness of OHI also comes from the research behind it - it is statically proven that "healthy" companies are more likely to outperform their industry peers.

Prizes

News

Copyright © 2017 Vancouver Coastal Health | Privacy & Terms of Use