Improving the Employee Experience

Victoria’s healthcare workers are the backbone of our health system. That is why improving employee experience is a key focus area of the 10-year Victorian Health Workforce Strategy.

In 2022-2023 we undertook an external review to identify the key factors in engaging and retaining our healthcare workers. These factors were used to define key areas of focus to improve employee experience.

We have a bold vision for Victoria to be the first state to develop a statewide minimum Employee Value Proposition (EVP). This will be a guide and resource for the Victorian health sector. It will support a world-leading employee experience for Victoria’s healthcare workers.

Assessment and Uplift

The Department has created a suite of tools to help health services assess their maturity across the EVP domains and identify targeted actions for improvement.

Domains

To support health services to improve the employee experience, the Department will focus on four initial areas. These have been chosen based on their importance to the workforce and their outsized impact on the retention outcomes of Victoria’s healthcare workforce.

Leadership – building capability across the sector to empower employees to perform their best and prepare the next generation of healthcare leaders.

Safety and wellbeing – delivering physically, psychologically, and culturally safe workplaces.

Career development and agility – enabling workers to advance professionally, operate to top of their scope and access training and clear career pathways.

Flexibility – providing environments that enable people to balance their life and work.

Showcases

The Employee Experience showcases will be a forum for organisations, leaders, and staff to come together. They will provide an opportunity to share and explore new innovative practices. The aim is to enhance the four initial focus areas of the employee experience across the health sector.

Details will be available soon on showcase details and dates.

1. Leadership

Building capability across the sector to ensure employees are empowered to perform their best and that Victoria is preparing the next generation of healthcare leaders.

Effective leaders are an integral part of ensuring Victoria has an effective, and importantly, safe health system. Strong leadership at all levels can engage and inspire employees to perform at their full potential. It is vital to improving

• staff wellbeing
• increasing retention
• encouraging innovation
• delivering safe, quality health care services.

Leadership development influences all facets of the employee experience. This includes workplace culture, career pathways, and support for mental health and wellbeing. Targeted leadership programs in combination with existing tools and resources will equip emerging leaders with dynamic skill sets to adapt to the evolving nature of care.

Benefits

• Improved quality of patient care, safety, compassion, and the patient experience
• Reduced turnover and absenteeism
• Improved organisational financial performance
• Improved perception of leadership capability
• Improved employee retention
• Support existing leadership to improve all facets of employee experience, such as safe and inclusive workplace cultures, career pathways and mental health and wellbeing support.
• Support emerging leaders in their career development

Leading practice statements

As per the leading practice statements and assessment (Link) this includes organisational values, strategic direction, clear goals, feedback, support and recognition.

This is exemplified by:

• Strong leadership behaviours that optimise team performance
• High levels of autonomy and accountability.
• Performance expectations aligned from the frontline through to executive.
• Staff engagement and retention.

2. Safety and Wellbeing

Delivering physically, psychologically, and culturally safe workplaces.

Promoting staff wellbeing and safety is of fundamental importance across Victoria's health organisations. It is the key to cultivating a resilient and thriving workforce.

Healthcare workers have a right to feel healthy and safe at work. As we transition to new ways of working and models of care arising from the pandemic, it’s important to improve the wellbeing, safety and supports available to the health workforce.

Wellbeing needs to be considered broadly and approached from multiple angles. Organisations are required to ensure employees have safe workplaces. These environments need to foster a sense of belonging and purpose. They also need to provide staff with a degree of autonomy over their work and time.

Addressing all aspects of safety and wellbeing is necessary to enable individuals to feel competent, respected, safe and engaged in their work. And, able to balance their lives outside of work with ease.

Benefits

• Improved productivity
• Reduced absenteeism and turnover
• Improved patient care
• Positive organisational culture
• Reduced workplace injuries
• Improved employee health
• Improved employee retention

Leading practice statements

As per the leading practice statements and assessment (Link) this includes Safety (physical, psychological and cultural) including:

• occupational violence
• workload
• stress
• bullying
• discrimination

This is exemplified by:

• A strong health and wellbeing culture with a high level of staff ownership and innovation of health, safety and wellbeing practices.
• Promotion of health, safety and wellbeing as a part of everybody's job and as a shared responsibility.
• Culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Safe systems of work that reduce risks to physical, psychological and cultural safety.
• Workplace relationships that are respectful and built on trust.

3. Career development and agility

Enabling workers to advance professionally, operate to top of their scope and access training and clear career pathways.

Career progression and lifelong learning are integral to healthcare workers’ career satisfaction. They are also fundamental to ensuring contemporary skills development across the workforce. In practice for workers, this encompasses the ability to advance professionally; to operate to top of their scope; to access training; and clear career pathways to pursue career goals.

Career agility is the other aspect of this domain. This is the ability for people to change within their careers across time. To grow and utilise different skills. To practice in different domains or settings and change focus as their interests and opportunities shift.

Benefits

• Increased levels of innovation and commitment to improvement
• Greater opportunities for collaboration
• Improved outcomes from continuous learning
• Improved employee retention

Leading practice statement

As per the leading practice statements and assessment (Link) this includes learning and development, progression, career pathways, mobility and equal access.

This is exemplified by:

• A lifelong learning culture
• Staff access to development (educational and experiential)
• Clear career pathways with opportunities for advancement
• Open and facilitated role mobility
• Robust performance and talent management processes

4. Flexibility

Providing workplaces that enable people to balance their life and work.

Healthcare workers want workplaces with policies and processes that enable them to manage their life and work needs. They want to be able to do this as autonomously as possible. To enable this, workplaces must support a healthy work-life balance. This means accommodating alternative patterns beyond conventional working hours, locations or job responsibilities. It also includes supporting flexibility in rostering, learning and career development.

It's important to recognise that the concept of flexibility will vary. It will differ depending on the team, its specific function, and the nature of the work environment. A further consideration in many health workplaces will be to ensure the flexibility offered to staff complements the care requirements of the patient. As such, what works in one area may not be applicable in another. To ensure fairness in the application of flexibility it must be reinforced by consistent leadership.

Benefits

• Increased attractiveness and accessibility of healthcare roles
• Increased employee engagement
• Improved employee retention
• Improved health workforce job satisfaction
• Improved productivity
• Lower levels of workplace stress and burnout

Leading practice statements

As per the leading practice statements and assessment (Link) this includes flexibility in hours, location, role/tasks and staffing that enable a high degree of autonomy and life balance.

This is exemplified by:

• Staff that are empowered to manage when, where and how they work
• Policies and practices that enable staff to access flexibility
• An organisation that embraces flexibility and autonomy through leading programs like split shifts and phased retirement programs