Working well

It is well established that a healthy, safe and motivated health workforce is pivotal to delivering optimal patient outcomes through an efficient, sustainable and world-class health system.

Since its inception as an agency in 2020, the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health (CEIH) has recognised the importance of building a culture of workplace wellbeing across the health sector to enable a healthy, safe and thriving healthcare system. For our people to be their best and reach their full potential both personally and professionally, it is critical that our system, and the organisations within it, provide a work environment and culture that protects and promotes their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Unfortunately, the current state of workforce wellbeing is suboptimal. Globally, healthcare workers have markedly high rates of absenteeism, burnout and mental distress compared to other sectors. The South Australian health workforce is no exception, with data showing our workers experience heightened levels of stress and struggle to establish a healthy work-life balance.

Designing a safe system

Sadly, (yet unsurprisingly), there is no single ‘quick fix’. We can, however, draw a line in the sand and work together as a sector to design our health system to prioritise, protect and promote the health, safety and wellbeing of our people.

Through engaging with key stakeholders and examining international and national best practice and evidence, my team has recently published a discussion paper titled ‘Strengthening healthcare workplace wellbeing in South Australia’ to bring this agenda to the fore. This paper describes the current state of healthcare workplace wellbeing in South Australia and presents a strategic approach to guide system-level action within our current context. Our aim is to stimulate and guide future efforts in this space by building greater understanding and knowledge about the foundational elements that drive a healthy workplace culture in the South Australian healthcare context.

Where should we direct our efforts?

The CEIH believes the foundations for creating excellence in healthcare workplace wellbeing and culture lie at both sector and organisational levels. Our people must be empowered, supported and actively permitted to create innovative solutions that support their wellbeing and their ability to provide quality, efficient and effective care.

Through our analysis of the literature and evidence, together with understanding the state’s healthcare context through more than 50 key stakeholder interviews, a number of themes have emerged. These key themes are consistent across the sector and organisational level, are aligned with international workplace wellbeing best practice, and include:

• leadership commitment, governance and accountability for workforce wellbeing

• capacity and dedicated resourcing to proactively and strategically drive workplace wellbeing action

• organisational ‘wellbeing’ capabilities including leaders’ and managers’ ability to identify, prioritise and address work-related factors influencing workforce and workplace culture

• utilisation of data and application of consistent and validated metrics at both the sector and organisational levels. This informs action, benchmark and measure change, and enables stronger accountability for workforce wellbeing

• partnerships and collaborative action to tackle systemic issues affecting the wellbeing of our workforce, especially through deep engagement, participation and co-design with healthcare workers.

What can my organisation do to protect and promote workforce wellbeing?

Healthcare organisations can create a culture that ensures its workforce feels safe, supported and valued. Top-down efforts must be equally matched with strong engagement and participation from the frontline up. Establishing a sustainable and effective ‘wellbeing infrastructure’ within your organisation can ensure a culture of workplace wellbeing is driven across all levels.

To support organisations to do this, the CEIH have recently released a Building Workplace Wellbeing guide. Based on best practice, this step-by-step guide provides a road map for organisations to embed the foundational and evidence-based elements of a healthy, safe and thriving workplace culture. By building sustainable and effective structures and processes, organisations can rapidly identify workplace issues, forge pathways to accountable resolutions, and ensure people are appropriately empowered and resourced to look after themselves and each other.

To attract and retain our workforce now and into the future, we must value the protection and enhancement of healthcare worker wellbeing as a core component of an effective and safe healthcare system. I encourage you to check out the ‘Strengthening workplace wellbeing’ section of the CEIH website and trust that our resources will add value to existing efforts and help improve the quality of our healthcare system by looking after our most valuable resource – our people!