Communication

What’s your favorite thing to do online? Watch cat videos? Scroll through Facebook? Maybe some occasional retail therapy?

Going online can also help make your work life better and save you time. It can help your unit-based team solve problems so you can deliver the best care and service to our members and make Kaiser Permanente a great place to work. All that, after all, is what the Labor Management Partnership is all about.

This issue of Hank magazine is a whirlwind tour of the Labor Management Partnership website, a one-stop shop for everything you need to turbocharge your team’s performance. Tip sheets, videos and inspiration are always just a few clicks away. If you can’t find what you want easily, just use our vastly improved search function. As one of our biggest fans put it, “Boom — there it is!”

On LMPartnership.org, you will:

• learn from other teams — what worked, what didn’t, what sorts of roadblocks to expect and how to overcome them
• download icebreakers to build trust and help quieter team members gain the confidence to speak up
• meet the Humans of Partnership, a gallery of short, personal profiles that will make you proud to #BeKP

If you don’t sit at a computer as part of your day-to-day work, it’s easy to access LMPartnership.org on the go. Follow these instructions so we’re always at your fingertips on your smartphone. You’ll find yourself in a UBT meeting and calling up just the tool you need to help a team through a sticky situation.

You can even share resources from your phone with others who may not be as smartphone savvy. Pretty much every page has buttons that make it easy to email it to a colleague or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Here’s another handy tip: even if you don’t visit LMPartnership.org (though I hope you do), reading this issue of Hank will help you learn how and why we do the vital work we do. So read on, log on and enjoy.

Let's be real: If everything is important, nothing is important. The prize for us is providing high-quality care and service at an affordable price to our members, patients and communities we serve — and the Focus Areas section of LMPartnership.org is a tool for helping unit-based teams prioritize their work and stay grounded.

What will you find here? Let’s start with the Value Compass. The Focus Areas section has pages that go in depth on each of the four points — Quality, Service, Affordability and Best Place to Work. You also can learn more about topics that are part of the National Agreement, including Total Health and Workplace Safety, Workforce Planning and Development (Workforce of the Future), and Union and KP Growth.

And then two pages are specifically for improving your team’s culture — which will in turn improve performance (we have the stats to prove it). The Join the Team, Be the Change page has tips and tools for improving team communication and engagement, while the Free to Speak page will help you build a Speak Up culture on your team.

Join the team, be the change!

How do you get your unit-based team to be excited about the work? Why would staff members want to be involved? How do you get those quiet people — who you just know have great ideas — to speak up?

Ideas to answer these questions and many more are found on the Join the Team, Be the Change page of the website. You’ll find tips and tools for improving team communication, the first step in getting employees interested and involved.

But it doesn’t stop there. As communication improves, it’s easier for the team to pull together and solve problems — which in turn raises morale and can foster a sense of joy at work. Teams with good communication have more fun, report higher engagement, have better People Pulse scores and are rated higher on the Path to Performance.

And when employees are happy and satisfied with their jobs, our members and patients feel the difference in the care we give. Have fun with your team and make things happen!