Health and Community

Prominence understands that organisational design and effective workforce planning, together with a positive organisational culture, are integral elements in the success and sustainability of an organisation in delivering on both its strategic agenda and business as usual operations.

These elements shape the working environment and directly impact an organisation’s ability to achieve its strategic goals and adapt to changes in circumstances and the external environment.

Prominence has worked with over 100 public and private sector organisations, including in the health and community services sector, to undertake organisational reviews covering all key elements of good organisational design including structure, leadership, people, systems and processes, governance and culture, or with a specific focus on one or more of these. We have reviewed and made recommendations on more effective operating models, that are then taken forward into new or tweaked organisational designs with refined or redesigned roles, organisation- specific capability frameworks and workforce planning initiatives to help ensure the right people in the right roles at the right time.

Examples in the health and community services sector include the following.

Organisational reviews of various divisions and branches within Queensland Department of Health – ranging from clinical support to business support functions.
A review to optimise business intelligence capability for a large Hospital and Health Service to enhance corporate performance, productivity, compliance and decision making; improve clinical performance through analysis and performance monitoring to national standards, provide for greater oversight of safety and quality in clinical practice and benchmarking; improve visibility and insight regarding consumer outcomes and experiences, and provide greater clinical decision support.
Organisational review of a patient support service servicing all hospital and community based services across a large hospital and health service, including structure, leadership, governance, system and processes, roles and capabilities, to position it for the future. The desired outcome was to have the most effective and efficient operation and foster collegiate interaction and positive team dynamics to improve overall performance and staff experience.
Comprehensive review of the organisational design for a community service division within a community, aged and disability care non-government service provider. This review was driven by significant funding pressures and the need to significantly reshape the organisation while still delivering for its clients. This was part of a broader overall transformation project that Prominence was supporting. It included current and future workforce capability assessment and strategic and tactical workforce and cultural change planning to support a shift from the current to desired future state. Prominence continued to provide support with specific expertise in the areas of human resources, communications, business process and systems during the transformation implementation process over a number of years.

In all our engagements, Prominence consultants review key documentation, analyse data and undertake the appropriate level of stakeholder engagement through interviews, workshops and/or focus groups (together with targeted benchmarking and workforce supply, demand and trend analysis where required) to clearly define the current state and future state requirements to deliver on organisational and workforce objectives. Our consultants leverage various organisational design, culture, leadership and workforce planning frameworks and models, and leading-edge technology to provide organisational and workforce insights (including the ability to objectively measure psychosocial risks) to identify strengths, systemic weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. Outcomes of organisational design and workforce planning engagements generally include both strategic observations and recommendations as well as operationally oriented recommendations for implementation, and the development of roadmaps and/or implementation plans.

Prominence receives exceptional feedback on its flexibility to refine the project approach as new information becomes available or in response to client operational pressures, the team’s strength in stakeholder engagement at all levels of the organisation, including co-design approaches; the ability to share ‘hard to hear’ feedback and insights to leadership (and staff members where required) in a tactful and diplomatic way that engenders buy-in for implementation of recommendations; and our ability to develop concise, practical and prioritised recommendations and implementation plans.

Prominence has been engaged by a range of Hospital and Health Service (HHS) Boards to undertake independent reviews of board performance and to also develop governance and risk management frameworks. These engagements have all involved working directly with the Chair and board of directors, executive teams and functional leads to review the current state/ performance and identify strengths and opportunities to improve.

Prominence deploys a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, benchmarked against relevant State and Federal legislation, regulations, standards, and accepted governance models, frameworks and practices applicable to each statutory body. We tailor our approach for every engagement which often require a combination of data reviews, anonymised surveys, interviews of board members, committee members and selected members of the executive/management team, live board meeting observation, facilitated workshops and benchmarking against other organisations and jurisdictions.

We understand that our findings need to be objective and rigorous but also balanced as many organisations have pockets of good practice which need to be recognised. We also understand that recommendations need to be practical, succinct, prioritised (often based on an assessment of risk) and implemented over an agreed period of time which is commensurate with the organisation’s level of maturity, capability and capacity to implement. In all engagements, our findings and recommendations have been discussed (often through focused workshops) with the Board and executive teams to ensure that there is both agreement and ‘buy in’ to the recommendations. We have successfully provided repeat support to a number of the HHSs which has allowed us to measure and build on the organisation’s performance and increasing maturity over a period of time

Coming from leadership and executive roles across diverse industries, Prominence consultants are highly sought after to support organisations to develop their leaders and implement cultural change. We understand that leaders and workplace culture impacts every aspect of an organisation and its performance, and that aligning leadership behaviours with a positive productive culture leads to improved staff engagement, wellbeing, performance and overall outcomes.

Prominence has supported many of Queensland Health’s Hospital and Health Services (HHS) on their cultural and leadership journeys, and more specifically, the development of their cultural improvement strategies. The development of these cultural improvement strategies required in-depth assessments and diagnosis of the current state leadership governance amongst the executive leadership team (ELT) and of the workplace culture. Prominence recommended strategies and developed plans to address the cultural challenges identified and including improvement strategies in the areas of leadership, governance, process and people.

Strategies and planning were driven by data collected from ELT interviews, facilitated face-to-face cross-sectional team workshops and desktop reviews of the pertinent internal documentation supplied by the HHSs. Various strategic planning and HR-related models were referenced and implemented throughout the project, which enabled opportunities for knowledge transfer and capability development with the HHSs. Findings were analysed and opportunities for reforms in leadership, governance and processes were identified. Emphasis was placed upon the impact of the ELT’s behaviours, both on the culture of the ELT itself and on the organisation.

Final reports included culture improvement strategy/s and plans, with specific recommendations for leadership governance, people and processes, and implementation roadmaps including priorities and timeframes. Following the success of some of these engagements, Prominence was also requested to build upon the cultural strategy implementation plans with one-on-on coaching for selected senior leaders to help them understand and develop the necessary skills and behaviours to lead effectively and with impact. The strategies and the leadership coaching was reported to be highly valuable and accompanied with overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Prominence provides strategy development and strategic workshop facilitation for a wide range of clients, including across the health and community services sector.

These services range from the design and delivery of one or multi-day strategic planning workshops, through to more comprehensive processes including environmental scanning and internal and external stakeholder engagement processes in the lead up to and during the strategic planning process, and post strategy processes, including supporting operational planning cascading from the strategic plan.

We have facilitated strategy development processes for Queensland Department of Health business units, hospital and health services, innovative public sector health/ university partnerships, and non-government community health and community services organisations, working with Board’s, senior executive teams, and steering committees. Our services have included strategic plan refreshes, entirely new look and feel plans, and the development of the very first strategic plan for a public sector/ university partnership.

These engagements have all required our consultants to rapidly review key background documents and engage with key stakeholders to understand the current strategic organisational environment, collective and divergent perspective, and distil or revisit critical issues for future success, to enable the design of a process that ensures strong engagement, robust discussion and debate, and a clear and focused way forward. This at times has required complex, sensitive engagement with internal and external stakeholders.

Our engagement with stakeholders includes exploring individual and collective views on:

the most significant strategic influences and implications for the next horizon
current organisation capability strength (for leveraging) and areas for improvement
aspiration for next horizon performance and the strategic options open to our client
satisfaction with current governance, performance and culture
emerging areas of strategic risk and opportunity.

While subject to the specific needs of our client, we typically facilitate post planning workshop/s debriefs, and support further refinement and finalisation of the strategic plan document.

Key strengths consistently demonstrated in delivering of strategic planning projects include:

a structured and collaborative approach to ensure full alignment between us, our client and their stakeholders throughout the engagement
rapid knowledge acquisition of our client’s business
an effective pre-workshop process to assess collective and any divergent thinking – this allows development of a process and sufficient time for rigorous debate at the workshop/s (rather than starting with a blank page)
a highly engaging approach to interviews and workshops which ensure that views and ideas are openly shared. It also means that those involved are taken on a journey and are more likely buy in and own the end deliverable and align with the organisation in meeting its future objectives
highly engaging and energising workshops, including the effective use of new tools and techniques often unfamiliar to but also refreshingly different for the client
a strategic thinking and questioning style
ability to facilitate a room with different types of personalities and involve and engage them in the process
an ability to challenge, unpack and test stakeholder views and differences – helping with gaining alignment on the future direction and on key initiatives and strategies required to deliver on the organisations’ objectives.

We also use each engagement as an opportunity to upskill those involved in the process in terms of their ability to think and plan strategically and their ability to influence and drive positive change.

Participants consistently report that their individual ideas/ concerns had been heard as part of a reaching a collective view, which enabled effective debate and decision-making at workshops and in the post-workshop follow up processes.

The end deliverable in all our engagements is quality documents that are objective, clear and concise, approved by the client, which clearly articulates the organisations vision, purpose, values, objectives, strategic initiatives, measures of performance along with key risks and opportunities. We produce documents in our clients branded templates or if preferred, in a format best suited to enabling their internal or external designers to produce the final product.

Process improvement can seem a dry subject that is ‘down in the weeds’, however given processes are a key foundational aspect of all organisations, getting them right is critical to an organisation being able to deliver its services in the most efficient and effective way, maximise the client experience and deliver real, ongoing cost savings.

Prominence delivers Lean process improvement facilitation services to organisations and their teams to review and map key processes that they have identified as needing improvement, identify inefficiencies, and deliver more effective, efficient and streamlined processes. The outcome not only eliminates waste in all its forms; it also delivers improved internal or external client experience and service delivery time, and human resource and cost savings. It can also improve staff morale and internal staff relationships that may suffer due to inefficient, unclear and duplicative processes, or the need for frequent reworks or repetitive manual tasks.

We have worked with a range of health and community service organisations, including public sector hospital, disability, aged and residential care services, who have recognised the need to implement changes within the organisation to enhance the culture, levels of innovation, growth potential, productivity and efficiency. We have delivered Lean process improvement projects to in a range of areas including:

core HR processes such as recruitment (where it had been recognised as a process which is blocking growth and presents a significant risk to the organisation)
various types of staff rostering – in a residential division, for late cancellation and meetings and training
restricted practice reporting
invoicing
cash handling
improving the patient transition process between the Queensland Ambulance Service and a hospital emergency department, which delivered real and sustained positive impacts for both ambulance services, patients and staff.

We facilitate bespoke services which include designing an approach to suit the specific needs of our clients or using our proven FLIP (Facilitated Lean Improvement Program) approach – a simple Lean Six Sigma approach that uses a project based approach with a team of staff involved in delivering a process, to resolve issues and increase problem solving skills.

FLIP projects work involve 5 stages aligned with the Lean Six Sigma project management approach:

Define stage – sets the project for success and ensuring a common understanding of the problem
Measure stage – focuses on mapping and measuring the current state performance
Analyse stage – uncovers the root causes of the problem
Improve stage – focuses on brainstorming, choosing and building the solution
Control stage – transitions the solution to business as usual and checks that the improvement is sustained.

Our approach to delivering process improvement services has the added benefit of upskilling participants in the methods used. Participant and organisational feedback is consistently positive, resulting in new ways of thinking about how they do things that they can apply across other processes in simple but effective ways.

As a foundation for undertaking specific projects, we have worked with teams of identified ‘ambassadors’ or similar within the organisation who help facilitate and champion a range of business improvement areas, to enhance their knowledge and skills in business improvement through a combination of tailored learning and by immersing some of the Ambassadors within a ‘proof of concept’ improvement project. This has resulted in a range of improvement areas being identified and progressed, with the support of an internal staff member, and support from Prominence if required, either to assist with facilitation or provide coaching to internal resources.

Our certified Lean and Six Sigma consultants also provide coaching services where we work with one or a few staff within the organisation, where they first participate in, observe and debrief on the facilitation process, and then we coach and shadow them as they plan for, deliver and follow up on the Lean process workshops themselves.

Following the facilitation of an individual process improvement initiative, we have been re-engaged to conduct a project to upskill, using a coach the coach model, new roles within the organisation – including a Manager, Process Excellence and an Innovation Manager – to lead the continuous improvement agenda, program of work and culture development across the business and facilitate process improvement projects using Prominence’s Facilitated Lean Improvement Program (FLIP) process. We also facilitate the attainment of Green and Yellow Belt certification where an organisation or an individual considers this to be of benefit.

We have also established a licencing agreement whereby clients are able to continue to use the Prominence Facilitated Lean Improvement Project (FLIP) materials (PowerPoint presentations, Word and Excel templates and PDF documentation) to support their ongoing internal improvement projects.

Prominence is acutely aware that building the best organisation requires ensuring a positive culture underpinned by an appropriate organisational design with the right workforce and engaged culture.

Addressing any culture improvement, workforce planning or organisational design requires a strategic, collaborative and data-driven approach. Continuous evaluation and adaption are critical to ensuring long term success and alignment with an organisation’s overall strategic direction and goals.

When Prominence is engaged to review an organisation’s structure, workforce or culture, Prominence utilises relevant industry leading methodologies for data collection and analysis of governance, strategy, leadership and management, workforce responsibilities and functions, workplace culture and interpersonal relationships (including behaviours).

Stakeholder engagement through workshops, interviews and regular reporting as the project progresses through the stages of understanding, analysing, developing new structures, strategies and plans and collaborating with the relevant stakeholders is the underpinning foundation for this type of project. Prominence has helped numerous Queensland Hospital and Health Services in the areas of organisational design, workforce planning and culture review and strategy development.