A great place for working and healing (Amended)

FOUR years ago, Tan Tock Seng Hospital kicked off a "value-based" journey to make TTSH, as the hospital is called in short, "a great place for working, healing, learning and becoming the best".

Winning Aon Hewitt's Best Employers award for a second time is an indication that it is making progress and moving in the right direction, says Eugene Soh, the CEO of Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

The move, made after consulting staff and patients on what they value, was in response to global and national challenges that include an ageing population, integrating healthcare services and, most importantly, the need to build great healthcare teams.

"As we consolidate and take stock, we will continue our journey to further engage our staff on how the work they do can fulfil their aspirations and make their work meaningful," Dr Soh says.

Engagement is a key to producing the "better people" needed to deliver the "better service", TTSH says in a submission for the Best Employers award. Among the hospital's engagement initiatives is one which encourages and makes it easy for staff to engage in value conversations at all levels.

Senior leaders, managers and supervisors are taught skills to engage their staff. TTSH also provides a guidebook offering tips to deepen understanding and practice of staff engagement.

The hospital, which has more than 7,000 staff on its payroll, anchors its people strategy on three key initiatives: A nursing-shared governance model for collaborative decision-making; a patient associate framework; and "creatively inclusive" health and well-being schemes.

Under the first initiative, nurses are given a say through their elected council members in policy recommendations and decisions on issues affecting nursing practice, education, quality and research and work-life governance.

The patient service associates play an important role in patient care by assisting the medical staff with operational procedures and are key to delivering prompt and excellent frontline services to patients."

The "creatively inclusive" health and well-being programmes present to staff a range of work-life balance initiatives and workplace health promotion schemes.

The earlier version of the story quoted Tan Tock Seng Hospital and reported it has 8,000 staff on its payroll. The hospital has clarified that is has more than 7,000. This is in paragraph 7 which has the updated figure. We have also changed the second last paragraph as requested by the hospital for greater clarity.