Once you have identified your objectives and outcomes, it is important to understand the current state on the ground. This will allow the Project Team to develop a deep understanding of the processes, interactions and decisions that inform service delivery. This is also an opportunity to understand the common pain points faced by Support Care staff that need to be addressed.
Depending on the amount of time and resources available, there are 3 approaches the Project Team can take – Basic, Intermediate and Advanced – to gather information about the current state:
Gather employee sentiments
- To gather a high-level understanding of employee sentiments on current jobs, aspirations, and common pain points
- To gather insights from a large group in a short amount of time
- Insights can be used to identify the solutions that are most relevant to your talent pool
- Insights may contribute to the development of a tailored plan for communicating the new roles to employees
- If you would like to gather deeper insights from your employees, consider holding Focus Group Discussions
1. Gather employee sentiments
- To gather a high-level understanding of employee sentiments on current jobs, aspirations, and common pain points
- To gather insights from a large group in a short amount of time
- Insights can be used to identify the solutions that are most relevant to your talent pool
- Insights may contribute to the development of a tailored plan for communicating the new roles to employees
- If you would like to gather deeper insights from your employees, consider holding Focus Group Discussions
2. Conduct an operations scan
- To understand overall work processes, interactions with other teams, and handovers which may be affected when implementing the new roles
- To identify current state processes which are inefficient and would require a business process review (BPR)
- To identify change management and communication required for key stakeholders
- To determine data to be collected during a subsequent time-task study
1. Gather employee sentiments
- To gather a high-level understanding of employee sentiments on current jobs, aspirations, and common pain points
- To gather insights from a large group in a short amount of time
- Insights can be used to identify the solutions that are most relevant to your talent pool
- Insights may contribute to the development of a tailored plan for communicating the new roles to employees
- If you would like to gather deeper insights from your employees, consider holding Focus Group Discussions
2. Conduct an operations scan
- To understand overall work processes, interactions with other teams, and handovers which may be affected when implementing the new roles
- To identify current state processes which are inefficient and would require a business process review (BPR)
- To identify change management and communication required for key stakeholders
- To determine data to be collected during a subsequent time-task study
3. Conduct a time-task study
- To collect baseline data on time taken on specific groups of activities
- Insights gathered indicate where solutions may be most impactful, and can act as a baseline for measuring the change and benefits following the redesign
- If you would like to dive deeper, consider conducting a Job Shadow exercise to learn more about operations on the ground
Gather Employee Sentiments
Develop a set of questions covering sentiments on current jobs, aspirations and common pain points.
Identify the number of job holders you would like to gather insights from:
For a size of more than 30, you may consider launching an online Employee Sentiment Survey.
- Identify a survey platform that is accessible to employees (e.g. Google Forms, Survey Monkey).
- Disseminate surveys through easily accessible means (e.g. QR codes, share survey links through work chats).
For a size less than 30, you may consider solely conducting several Focus Group Discussions (FGDs)
- Keep each session to a group of not more than 8 employees, to ensure it is a safe space for sharing and discussion.
- FGDs provide an opportunity for the Project Team to gain deeper insights from existing employees and share information on why the organisation is embarking on Job Redesign.
- FGDs also enable preliminary identification of potential employees for the new role.
Quick Tip:
Including quantitative questions provides an easier way for the Project Team to analyse a large number of sentiments – this can include questions where employees are required to rate their experience or have a structured list of options to select from.
Conduct an Operations Scan
- Spend time onsite to identify broad flows of activities across selected roles and to understand how the job holders interact with other teams.
- Identify technology and equipment that are used on a daily basis, understanding their functionality and integration with other systems (if any).
- Ask job holders and collaborators (e.g. Nursing and Therapy team members) about operational challenges and common pain points that they face.
To understand the types of data you may want to collect, take a look at the Operations Scan Data Collection Template.
Quick Tip:
Operation scans should cover core activities of the job holder and be conducted during peak periods where interactions with clients and other departments are most prevalent (e.g. Nursing and Therapy).
Conduct a Time-Task Study
Record the time taken for a job holder to complete each task. You may collect this data using either of these methods:
Self-reported time-task study
- Have existing job holders log and report the time spent on each activity using this Self-Reported Time-Task Form.
- The Project Team may pre-populate the template with tasks already observed and understood from prior data collection.
- A briefing with role holders on how to populate the template may be needed to clarify any questions.
- Job holders should also have the option to list additional tasks to gather more insights.
Job Shadow
- Have an observer shadow a job holder and note the time taken for each task using this Job Shadow Note-Taking and Analysis Template.
- The data collected should be representative of a full-day of operations.
- For the Nursing Home setting, this would be a 24-hour log.
- Consider forming a team to work in shifts.
After data is collected, group tasks completed by job holders into categories, as found in the templates provided. The Project Team can then assess which areas they want to focus on as part of the Job Redesign to improve employee experience.
Quick Tip:
Select a suitable candidate to perform the time-task study (based on their experience level) to ensure the data captured is representative of standard performance. Do also consider a job holder who is more open to sharing insights.
