Measuring organisational change and growth

Community Care (Northern Beaches) case study

Community Care (Northern Beaches) (CCNB) is a not-for-profit community organisation providing services in the community to the frail aged, people with disabilities, people with dementia and their carers.

The organisation provides 18 community care projects, including case management, respite, dementia care and support, information and advisory services, specific CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) and Aboriginal services, and a range of other home and community care services.

The challenge

Community Care's beginnings were small, with a handful of committed staff servicing the local community.

Over the years the organisation has rapidly grown, and in an effort to ensure staff are happy in their roles and retained, CCNB identified the need to stay in touch with the ideas, attitudes and concerns of all staff. Cultural change and growth also needed to be measured.

 Community Care Northern Beaches staff

The strategy

Each year, since 2005, CCNB has undertaken an organisational cultural survey. More than 40 staff, who work in all capacities across the organisation, complete the survey. These staff form CCNB’s core in-house team, with additional agency based staff carrying out frontline support work.

Eliza Pross, Manager of Planning and Development at CCNB, first came up with the idea for the survey after attending a conference session on organisational culture. While the survey started off at a very basic level, it has now developed into a sophisticated reviewing tool, taking 6 months to complete.

"You get so much quality information and feedback from the survey, it is well worth it," says Eliza.

The survey questions focus on organisational culture and change, policies and procedures, employment conditions, working relationships, training and professional development, job satisfaction and the well being of staff. Staff are also actively encouraged to make additional comments and many take up the opportunity

To allow for anonymity, and complete honesty by staff, the survey is completed via Survey Monkey. CCNB also find there are benefits to asking optional identifying questions so that they can pinpoint particular issues or address responses effectively. These identifiers need to be weighed up against anonymity though to ensure a true reflection of staff responses

After the survey is completed and the results collated, presentations are made to senior management and then to each team, and their manager, within CCNB. Comparisons between team results are shown and information is provided about what their particular team has surfaced in the survey. The Board of CCNB doesn’t participate in the survey but they do view and analyse the results.

The results

Often the results show powerful and telling trends within CCNB, with major organisational change being an influencing factor

"Although we more often than not see trends in the survey results and we do have certain expectations, sometimes you think you know what is going on but then there are surprises, despite us (management) thinking we have made the right decision about something," says Eliza.

One of the obvious advantages of the survey is that it gives ideas from staff an opportunity to surface; from a suggestion that a water heater be installed in the staff kitchen, to ideas about strategic and long term initiatives.

"We often get comments in the survey such as 'Thanks for the opportunity' and 'Enjoyed completing the survey'. We also get very specific comments about certain areas, which is all good feedback and shows that staff value the opportunity of being heard. It makes staff feel empowered and valued," says Eliza.

Collective responses from the survey often strongly shine through. One example was in the results of the team building section of the 2009 staff survey. Each team had been given a specific team budget the year before, so that they could each have their own team building exercise. Survey results showed that staff would have actually preferred one team building event with all staff at CCNB.

This was the only time this type of feedback had been communicated by staff about the team building exercises, which meant it was a practical and an important issue that management was able to address as a result of the survey.

Management at CCNB take action on the survey results where possible and this may include implementing simple solutions or starting a planning process for something more strategic. An organisational planning process is also conducted annually and staff are involved every step of the way.

Eliza feels that any organisation considering a similar survey should most importantly be willing to accept feedback from staff. They should also be willing to respond to and address the issues that may surface from a survey. Staff also need to have ownership and respect for the process, which needs to facilitate involvement and be transparent.

Survey questions also need to be important to the organisation and have a link to its core business, and ultimately the outcome of the survey needs to be usable by the organisation.

"Any survey that is done has to be valued by everyone involved. At CCNB our organisational survey is an important event every year. We have a strong united culture and staff are valued – we want to know what staff care about and the survey gives us that information so we can constantly progress," says Eliza.