When Paige Thomson came to VCH in December as the new policy advisor, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I knew it was a big organization,” she says with a laugh. “I knew that VCH helps a lot of people around the province.”
And in her new role, Paige will be able to help a large number of individuals, especially VCH staff, as she starts an initiative that will review and update more than 130 regional policies and many local administrative policies across the organization.
“I’m going to help departments and subject-matter experts by providing the tools and templates needed to make our policies more current, user-friendly, and effective,” the Vancouver native says. “I’ll be there as support.”
Paige says that ideally, policies should be reviewed and updated every two to three years. In this case, there are a number of policies that haven’t been touched in more than 10 years.
“It’s a big project,” she says with a laugh, nodding her head. “But I hope overall, it’ll bring many good changes to the organization.”
The list includes large and small policies that range in scope from corporate credit card use to managing access to residential care beds.
“There’s a huge diversity,” says Paige, who has a master’s degree in public administration. “But no matter what a policy is about, all policies should be clear, concise, current, correct, and reflect our culture – for VCH, this means being People First. Those are what we call the Five C’s of policy.”
Consultation with departments will begin in February and Paige says the entire project will take around a year to complete.
“I’m looking forward to learning about the different departments and facilitating a big change in the organization is exciting,” she says.
“The backbone of VCH – and any organization – is people. The better policies that VCH has, the better we support our people. Good policies put people first.”