Beginning May 11, City of Hope leadership will ask employees for feedback on improvement efforts stemming from last year’s organization-wide survey.
The aims of the follow-up survey include:
- Getting an update on how all who work at City of Hope now view patient safety, rewards and recognition and other topics;
- Maintaining channels for staff to provide feedback and offer ideas on how to improve City of Hope; and
- Finding out if staff received the results from last year’s survey and the resulting action plans.
The follow-up survey is shorter than last year’s organizational survey and will include between 19 and 26 questions for most staff.
All faculty and staff will receive instructions for completing the survey via e-mail.
 Patient safety ranked high among staff priorities in a recent survey. (Vanessa Preziose Photography 2007) |
Two key areas of focus emerged from last year’s organizational survey: patient safety and employee rewards and recognition.
“Both of these areas ranked high among employee concerns,” said Michael A. Friedman, M.D., City of Hope president and chief executive officer. “This feedback provided us with the opportunity to develop several initiatives to address those concerns and improve our organization.”
Among other activities, medical center leaders began patient safety leadership training, launched a patient safety newsletter dubbed Safe Choices and joined the California Patient Safety Action Coalition, a group of more than 20 public and private health-care organizations that aims to enhance patient safety.
Staff received training to discuss safety with patients, and written materials such as posters and flyers have helped educate patients about their responsibilities. Improved access to safety documentation also was made available to staff.
Survey feedback led to improvements in the area of rewards and recognition, as well.
Scientist of the Year and Administrative Professional of the Year awards paved the way for peer-based recognition, and more programs are under development, according to Boris Rashkovsky, Ph.D., senior organizational development consultant who leads the survey efforts. In addition, the organization encouraged grass roots efforts to recognize and reward performance at the departmental level with celebration lunches, special parking spots, valet service and other incentives.
“We’ve also developed a training program to help leadership in their efforts to reward deserving employees,” said Rashkovsky. A pilot of the program, which officially launches later this spring, took place April 22, and a formal rewards and recognition program is under development and will launch later this year.
Last year’s survey also spawned efforts to improve grants administration, and efforts are under way to address those concerns, as well, he added.
For more information on the upcoming follow-up survey, visit www.coh.org/survey.
