Project charter example: Central Community Hospital (CCH): staff wellbeing project
What are we trying to accomplish?
The objective of this project is to improve services delivered to patients of CCH, by improving the wellbeing of staff working across the hospital. Some changes will be introduced first in volunteer workgroups, while others, where appropriate, will target all staff from the start.
The project aim is:
To promote the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of staff across CCH. By March 2016 to (1) reduce staff absences from 4.64% to 4.00%, and (2) to reduce staff-related safety incidents from 140 to 100 per month.
The current level of staff absences is below the NHSScotland average of 4.76%. However, benchmarking against other community hospitals across Scotland provides a stretch aim that is essential to meet if CCH is to achieve the objectives set out in its Local Delivery Plan.
CCH staff related incidents exceed the average across comparable services; achievement of this aim will bring CCH in line with similar organisations.
Patients will benefit from improved staff wellbeing in a number of ways including:
- Reduced waiting times
- Improved quality of communications with more resilient staff
- Funds otherwise required for staff cover will be available for improving patient care
Project outcomes will be reviewed monthly, and project activities will be coordinated to ensure that changes tested and implemented successfully in one part of CCH are spread across the hospital as a whole. The project will be completed when the aim is met or exceeded and successful changes have been implemented or spread to all relevant staff groups.
How will we know that a change is an improvement?
Measures listed below are quantitative. Qualitative data will also be used, particularly as feedback collected from staff involved in early tests of change.
Outcome measures
Average staff hours lost to absence resulting from physical, mental and emotional ill health, as a percentage of contracted hours.
Average staff hours lost to absence (all causes), as a percentage of contracted hours.
Number of staff related safety incidents
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SIS: Group A Quality Improvement Introduction and Principles: Module - Project Charter
Scottish Improvement Skills /Project charter example: Central Community Hospital (CCH): staff wellbeing project
Process measures
Each change idea will generate at least one process measure. For changes related to the primary driver ‘staff engaged in health and wellbeing practices’, these will include for example:
Percentage of staff using Cycle to Work scheme
Percentage of staff who regularly cycle to and from work
Number of walking groups walking at least once a week
Sales of soft drinks in staff canteen
Sales of fruit in staff canteen
Hits on intranet wellbeing pages
Balancing measures will include
Staff absences due to cycling injuries
Cost of bike racks
Food waste from staff canteen
Historic data is available to create a baseline for the outcome measures. The stratification of data due to different reasons for absence and types of staff safety incidents will be used to finalise definition of these measures.
Data is already collected for some of the process and balancing measures, but other measures will require data collection specifically for the purposes of this project. This will be one factor in prioritising changes to be tested, to keep data collection activity to a minimum.
What changes can we make that will result in improvement?
Change ideas have been generated using a number of approaches including:
- Review of responses to the two most recent staff surveys
- Focus groups (which also prioritised using an effort/impact matrix)
- Analysis of historic data (prioritised using Pareto charts where appropriate)
Initial project activities (relating to the ‘staff engaged in health and wellbeing practices’ driver), will focus on the following change ideas:
Promote cycling to and from work
Develop walking groups
Improve staff diet at work
Hold staff health fairs
Project constraints will include: limited funds available for any direct costs relating to these change ideas; existing contract with staff canteen provider. Apart from travel to and from work, the project will not address personal health and wellbeing practices that staff engage in outside work time.
Project team
Core Project Team members will include:
Project lead: Jo Cochrane (HR Business Partner)
Executive sponsor: Samiya Haddad (OD Lead)
HR Data analyst: George Cardozo
Communications: Tony Campbell (PR and marketing officer)
Staff representative: Sarah Smith (Local Consultative Group LCG Representative)
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SIS: Group A Quality Improvement Introduction and Principles: Module - Project Charter
Scottish Improvement Skills /Project charter example: Central Community Hospital (CCH): staff wellbeing project
Activity / Jo Cochrane / Samiya Haddad / George Cardozo / Tony Campbell / Sara SmithCoordination of departmental team activities / A / I / C
Analysis of outcome data / A / R / I
Analysis of process data / I / I
Organisational communications / AC / C / R
R = ResponsibleA = AccountableC = ConsultedI = Informed
Appendix
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SIS: Group A Quality Improvement Introduction and Principles: Module - Project Charter