Employee Engagement staff gathered on November 12 for their annual EE forum and this year’s theme EE Innovates, our adaptation of Dragons’ Den , showcased innovative ideas from star frontline employees.

Click here to watch the highlights [3 min]:

Forum highlights

The teams that were selected to present their innovative ideas at the forum only had five minutes to convince the ‘Dragons’ – a panel of judges including Kip Woodward, Board Chair, Anne Harvey, VP of Employee Engagement, Vivian Eliopoulos, COO and Glen Copping, Chief Financial Officer and VP – to sponsor their idea at VCH. While the Dragons had some suggestions to project scope, they agreed to explore the implementation of all the projects that were put forward which aim to help VCH achieve its True North goals.

EE Innovates projects

• Huddle Board – A web based learning network (with communication and information sharing tools similar to Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn) to support employee communities in sharing ideas and information on clinical practice and patient care issues important to their work and to VCH.
• EE Simulation – State of the art centre for simulation and usability labs.
• Retaining Stars – Gather and assess relevant data including exit surveys and current research or conduct a new stay survey to determine what would trigger employees to seek employment elsewhere and what it would take to retain them.
• QR Tracking – Implementation of an electronic system to register and track attendance for a variety of events such as: classroom courses, flu vaccinations, meetings, N95 fit testing, etc.
• Temporarily Yours – Electronic tool/database that will match employees requiring transitional work with short term tasks and duties based on operational needs.
• Service Excellence – Training to be delivered using innovative best practices from the private sector to provide excellent client service.
• Our Minds @ Work – A Mental Health program that focuses on enhancing mental health and takes VCH managers and employees from understanding how to recognize and respond to mental health issues in the workplace through to building their own resiliency.
• WorkAbility App – Mobile application containing information to support and increase the literacy of VCH employees about how to navigate or prevent their absence from work, and how to plan for their return to work.

Watch full webcast

Click here to watch the full webcast.

What’s next?

The Innovates teams are meeting with their Executive Sponsors to create a project charter which will be presented to the Senior Executive Team (SET) and VCH Board, who have requested regular updates on project status. Stay tuned for short videos of the individual presentations in the Up for Discussion blog in the coming weeks.

A big thank you to our guest judges for their support as our VCH ‘Dragons’ and everyone who helped contribute to a successful and engaging staff forum.