Innovation & Creativity Award

Recognizes organizations that have undertaken a unique initiative or program within their human resources portfolio that has inspired an exceptional level of innovation and creativity.

Finalist: St. Boniface Hospital

St. Boniface Hospital (SB H) is the second largest acute care hospital facility in Manitoba, one of Canada’s leading patient care and research facilities, and a major teaching hospital and provincial referral centre. Patient care services are provided through approximately 13,000 admissions and 115,000 outpatient activities annually.

SBH has defined employee engagement as one of its four strategic goals, developing many new initiatives for the Hospital, some of which are new to Canada. 

A few examples include: In-house workshops to address Manager engagement issues; Leadership development and role clarity workshops with a distinct level of intensity to address team and individual development needs for the entire senior management team; Directly addressing management fit issues; In-house development of unique computer systems solutions; Formal attendance support and assistance; Employee safety incident prevention programs. They developed a rapid performance feedback program, subsequently replaced by a more robust Contribution and Leadership Assessment Review program; implemented a unique Succession/Replacement planning program; Resolved milestone labour relations issues and transitioned the HR team from an enforcement and administrative entity to a more service oriented and professional consulting partnership. In 2008, they implemented lean transformation, ultimately the most promising strategy for achieving breakthrough employee engagement.

Perhaps the most important result for patient care is that engaged employees show up for work. SBH’s substantial reduction in sick occurrences and lost time due to work injury indicate SB H has realized this benefit.

People management issues are receiving the same attention and priority as the other strategic goals. Resistance to change is still evident in places but not presenting an unmovable barrier to lean transformation. The HR department is now regarded as a strategic partner across all areas of Human Resources and a service oriented unit that can be counted on to deliver results.

 2012 Sponsor: Change Innovators