Redesigning the Attendance & Wellness Promotion program: Still time to have your say

Thank you very much for the tremendous participation in the Attendance & Wellness Promotion (AWP) program redesign and for sharing your experiences and great ideas for how to make it better. Your input is so valuable and is directly informing our next steps.

As you are aware, the AWP program was put on hold December 14, 2017 in response to your feedback in the My VCH survey. Dr. Stacy Sprague, Executive Director of Employee Wellness, is leading the revamp of the program and directly involving frontline employees. Through focus groups, research and data review, surveys and a working group that includes frontline staff, the redesign is now well underway and getting great participation.

Provide your feedback online by February 8

There are still six days to complete the AWP Program Redesign survey. If you have not had a chance to complete the survey, please take a few minutes and let us hear your suggestions before the survey closes on February 8.

Your input is vital

As key partners in driving this change, we want to ensure you are kept up to date on our progress. Here are the key activities and themes we have seen that are informing our next steps:

• As of January 31st, close to 400 VCH staff have either attended an AWP focus group session or provided written feedback online.
• We have held 10 focus groups with representation from each community of care, as well as HR staff, union stewards, frontline employees and managers.
• Four more focus groups are scheduled to take place between now and February 8 (sessions are full but the AWP survey is still open)
• A working group of key stakeholders, frontline staff and union representatives meets regularly to review all feedback and best practices and will be providing recommendations on the future of the program.
• Themes we have seen emerge to date include:
  • The desire to create a program that starts from a place of caring and has a more individualized, timely and wellness-focused approach.
  • The need to increase the amount of wellness resources available to employees and to separate them from attendance management.
  • The need to design a better process to identify the nature of employees’ absences and how to connect them with appropriate programs and support sooner.

What’s next?

The goal is to develop and pilot an improved program, informed by your feedback, by April 2018. Stay tuned for a summary of final AWP findings by the end of February.

Questions

We welcome your questions and feedback. Please email them to Eliza Wong, Employee Wellness Analyst/Executive Assistant, at eliza.wong@employee-wellness.ca.

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