What is it?

Staff involvement and experience are terms often used interchangeably however are slightly different areas within quality improvement.

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Staff involvement often refers to the steps taken within a QI project to engage and include organisational staff. Involvement may include the team building planning tools together, contributing change ideas and taking turns testing change ideas. Involvement tends to be both a reflective and an active process.

 
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Staff experience is the measurement and analysis of an individual’s or group’s interactions and satisfaction with a process/system. It tends to be a reflective process. A staff member gives feedback on how a current process works, including the parts that are difficult. During changes, they may measure their satisfaction with the changes and time taken. As changes progress they reflect on the impact of the changes on their work. 

Why use it?

QI is not a solo sport, within the workplace it should not be done alone. It is vital to involve staff in the QI process for a variety of benefits:

  • Staff are experts of the system they work within. Involving staff improves system diagnosis as well as generates the most effective change ideas

  • Involving staff improves investment and belief in the changes. Change ideas will be more likely to succeed and sustainable

  • Involving staff will make the work of the project lead easier in the long run

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Depending on your project, staff experience can also be a vital component. This is required to

  • Ensure that changes are an improvement, not just a change

  • Understand the impact of your changes and to mitigate negative impacts

  • Improve the chances of success for the project and change ideas

How to use it?

Staff involvement opportunities are plentiful within a QI project. It is important to give these thought before beginning the project to maximise their impact. Consider:

  • Communication: Plan your communication. Consider how, when and what you communicate. Communication has to happen more than once, presenting at a team meeting is unlikely to be enough to actively involve your team

  • Communicate the ‘why’: People are willing to change, provided they understand why and how. Without communicating why this work is important you are unlikely to engage staff. Consider communicating about adverse outcomes if you don’t change, any benefits to the individual if change occurs (e.g. time savings, less frustration, growth opportunities), patient safety opportunities or risks if change does not occur. It may be that you need to address many of these areas to encourage your team to get involved

  • Use the QI process: Get your team involved in creating planning tools (e.g. process maps, fishbone diagrams, driver diagrams), generating the change ideas and measuring the impact. If staff create the change idea they are likely to be more committed to making it work. There are many benefits to this including making the work more sustainable

  • Make the process transparent: Tying in to communication, it is important to share with your team what is happening and why. Consider using dot voting to involve your staff in the QI process. Share your successes to build a will for change, but also acknowledge when things do not go as planned so staff can see you are being realistic about the change

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Examlpe of staff experience

Staff experience opportunities exist within every project and are particularly well suited to projects with significant changes in work for team members. When thinking about staff experience measures, consider what it is specifically you would like to know.

  • Formal feedback: Consider measuring experience through qualitative or quantitative data before changes, throughout changes and as changes become sustained improvements. This can happen through formal methods such as surveys and questionnaires. The QI team can support you in developing these

  • Informal feedback: Make note of informal feedback from staff; comments in the tea room or at the end of emails. This will help to guide your understanding of staff experience and may lead you to consider more formal measures

Example:

A practice aims to improve their bowel screening response rate.

Staff involvement: The practice team collaborate on the process map. At this time, multiple members of the team generate a number of ideas to improve the response rate. One change idea is to have a screening champion – a team member primarily responsible for tracking non-responders and making contact.

Staff experience: The screening champion was asked about her experience with this work. She shared that while she enjoyed the work, she found it difficult to fit it in within her working day and was also concerned as she planned to take annual leave soon and was not sure of the process. The team agreed to test allocating a specific time frame for the work (Wednesdays 1:30-2:30), as well as training up a second champion to share the responsibility.

More information

Contact us for access to a short presentation about staff involvement

TURAS - creating the conditions for change

Staff experience in the NHS – for more information about why and how to involve and engage staff