Giving employees the ability to shape their careers is core to a morale-boosting drive by the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, says the charity’s chief people and culture officer Mariam Hares. SCHF has a range of employee benefits including personalised coaching, flexible work schedules, comprehensive mentoring, a shared online learning hub and generous funds and time off for relevant education. All these helped it win gold in the Financial Review BOSS Best Places to Work Awards in the Government, Education and Not-for-profit category.
Generated in a post-pandemic overhaul about two years ago, SCHF’s employee value program has helped increase fundraising by about 30 per cent over the past two years, Hares says, adding that the charity now raises $100 million a year.
The program, “A Career Path You Create”, took roughly 18 months to develop and introduce, she says. The core philosophy of meaningful work, flexibility, career ownership, a strong team culture and leadership development has been widely embraced by SCHF – from the board down to every staff member.
“It was very intentional that this needs to be really part of our organisational DNA,” Hares says. “We spent a lot of time talking about the themes of the values before even talking about the benefits underneath them.”
Employing about 140 staff, SCHF raises funds for Sydney’s two big children’s hospitals at Randwick and Westmead, along with Bear Cottage hospice, paediatric research and some specialised paediatric services.
The children’s hospitals are government-funded, but Hares says SCHF helps pay for certain rapidly advancing technologies, finding the money for breakthrough treatments, new research and innovation, and new models of care.
“It’s important to acknowledge that the government funds and provides excellent care at the hospitals, but philanthropy really allows us to support transformational healthcare,” she says.
Developing and introducing the employee value program was considered an important and necessary investment of the foundation’s valuable funds, she adds.
“We’re a charity, so of course we want to make sure we’re using donor funds in the most meaningful way possible,” Hares says. “Anything we’ve invested is very clearly linked to how it will raise more money for sick kids and their families who are the patients of the hospitals that we support.”
The fundamental idea is to raise as much money as possible for the cause and that means employing the best possible people and hanging on to them, she says, noting the foundation’s purpose of helping sick kids is motivational, but this motivation is not enough on its own to drive a “really high-performing” organisation.
“What really creates that strong engine to raise as much money as possible is a great workplace, where it’s centred on clarity of what you know, and what everyone needs to do in their role of trust,” she says.
To start the process of the employee value program, SCHF investigated the best ways of designing a “meaningful, flexible” workplace, Hares says, and – counterintuitively – came to understand that the organisation needed more structure to provide employees with more flexibility.
Goal setting
The program began with clear position descriptions for each employee’s role: they could then work core hours and flex according to their personal needs (such as carer responsibilities). Clear and measurable key performance indicators were locked into place.
Performance reviews and goal setting ensured employees understood exactly what was expected from them in their roles, and gave managers the ability to monitor and track performance against expectations.
A career development plan template was introduced as a tool for employees to use to clearly set out their long-term career goals, how they wanted their careers to develop, and how they could choose to use the educational funds ($1500 annually) and the time (five days) given to them by SCHF to develop their skills.
For the past two years, SCHF has run the “Great Place to Work” survey annually, and engagement has grown year on year, Hares says. Employees voluntarily submit responses, and the rate is now about 90 per cent.
About 94 per cent of respondents agreed SCHF was a “great place to work”, compared with a typical Australian organisation using the survey, which might get 60 per cent positive responses, she says.
SCHF was also determined to embed the understanding that development and growth wasn’t only about moving up the ladder.
“We see incredible value in learning other functions, in moving sideways,” Hares says, noting this lateral movement helps employees understand the functions of different facets of the organisation, and the overall picture of how it all comes together.
“That has really opened up a lot of development opportunities for our staff,” she says. “Whenever we’re recruiting, we advertise internally first, and we have a lot of internal transfers, and that greatly benefits those staff and our organisation because it creates more holistic, well-rounded, high performance.”
Winning silver and bronze in the same category were the Australian Vietnamese Women’s Association and OES (Online Education Services).