When UBT members are actively involved with their team, they speak up with their best ideas about how to improve the department. They take advantage of partnership processes like consensus decision-making and interest-based problem solving to make the department a great place to work. They look at how the department is doing on key metrics—like those around service and quality—and use that information to come up with ideas for improvement.
When we speak up, good things happen.
Where there’s open communication, we have better care outcomes, fewer workplace injuries and lost work days, and more satisfied patients.
That’s why supporting a culture where people are free to speak is essential to our success at Kaiser Permanente.
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
Frontline workers, unit-based teams
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Post these inspiring words from a union worker on our #FreeToSpeak culture on your team's bulletin board or in a break room.
Words from a union worker on Kaiser Permanente's #FreeToSpeak culture.
Henrietta, the regular columnist in the LMP's quarterly magazine Hank, explains why speaking up is mission critical for worker and patient safety--especially at the frontline.
It’s not hard to figure out why people are hesitant to speak up at work. Offering a suggestion for improvement or pointing out when you think something isn’t right exposes a person to any number of possible responses—many of them unpleasant.
There’s the sarcastic retort. There’s the deafening silence. There’s the reply, pointing out exactly why you’re wrong, delivered in the nicest of tones but carrying an unmistakable edge of one-upsmanship. Who needs it? Who wants to create waves and risk a good job?
But when we don’t speak up, we put health and happiness at risk. As Doug Bonacum, Kaiser Permanente’s vice president of quality, safety and resource management, says in this issue’s cover story, speaking up “is mission critical for worker and patient safety.”
In addition to the moral imperative of protecting people from injury, there’s a strong economic incentive for speaking up. Improvement doesn’t typically come from a single person’s great idea—it comes from people sharing ideas. And we at KP have to keep improving, finding ways to deliver care as good as or better than we deliver now with fewer dollars per member. Our future depends on it.
Since we get good at what we practice, we each have to practice speaking up. Practice means starting with lots of baby steps—don’t tackle the high-stakes stuff first! And let’s practice being good listeners, too, providing the space that lets others speak up safely.
The Labor Management Partnership and unit-based teams provide the framework for transforming what Bonacum calls a “culture of fear” around speaking up. But with that framework in place, it’s still up to each and every one of us to find the courage to address the immediate, particular obstacles that keep us silent.
In this full-page comic, our superhero shares tools for having a free to speak culture and working in a safe environment.
This poster shares the slogan "Free to Speak" and has a checklist for comparison of a whiner vs. problem solver. Share it during your team meetings and help build a culture of speaking up.
How do you speak up when you're not the boss? Get advice from two union members who've done it.
Simple (but not easy!) ways managers can encourage their employees to feel safe about speaking up.
Why having a speak-up culture matters—and tips on creating one. From the Summer 2016 Hank.
What can your team do to create a culture of Speaking Up in your department? What else could your team do to ensure follow up after a safety incident?