SHARE is very excited to announce another wave of the MA apprenticeship program in conjunction with UMass Memorial and QCC. This program has been a great success in helping SHARE members to grow their career in our hospital. Read on if you’d like to learn more about applying to this earn-and-learn program . . .
UMass Memorial Caregiver Survey
On May 14, UMass Memorial launched its caregiver survey. You’ll see lots of emails about it, and SHARE wants you to chime in – please take the survey!
Things to Know:
· It’s shorter this year, probably about 10 minutes needed.
· You get work time to fill it out. If you are having trouble getting the time, talk to your manager. Contact SHARE if we can help.
· It’s confidential. Press-Ganey (the patient experience company) runs this survey. You have to use your personal link or your employee identification number to make sure that only employees fill it out, and only once each. Press-Ganey gets the results. They only send group results back to UMass Memorial, and they don’t share any results for groups smaller than 5 caregivers. SHARE can confirm that we haven’t heard about confidentiality problems.
· All managers are supposed to share the department’s survey results with the department. All teams are supposed to work on an “action plan” to improve caregivers’ experience based on the results in their department. The results should be available this summer – we’ll let you know when, and you can let us know if you want help thinking about how to use yours.
Why does UMass Memorial want to you to fill out the survey?
UMass Memorial wants employees to be happy. They know that better caregiver experience leads to better patient experience. The hospital wants caregiver feedback on how they are doing, and what they should try to improve.
Why does SHARE want you to fill out the survey?
SHARE leaders see the survey results for SHARE members. We use them to work with the hospital on improvements that SHARE members care about. We also help members use the results in their department to try to improve things for SHARE members.
NO VOTE REQUIRED FOR 2025 SHARE EXECUTIVE BOARD AND REPRESENTATIVE ELECTIONS
The nomination process for the 2025 SHARE elections is now closed. Nominees who accepted their nominations were not contested, so they automatically fill those positions. The full list of Officers, Executive Board members, and SHARE Representatives will be emailed soon.
Thank you to all of our nominees this year for being engaged in the process, and to the members who nominated your peers. Congratulations to all of the newly-elected leaders: we’re excited for the important role you perform in our community. And a particular welcome to our newest SHARE leaders!
Free Student Loan Webinar
Want help navigating recent changes to student loan programs? SHARE members are eligible to join this free webinar for guidance…
Signing Up for Union Plus
. . . is quick & simple
When selecting your union from the dropdown menu, please choose “AFSCME (State, County, and Municipal Employees)”
SHARE is also known as AFSCME Local 3900
SHARE Updates: UBT Fairs, Intro to Healthcare Careers, and More . . .
Scenes from the University UBT Fair
Roughly 800 SHARE members, executive hospital leaders, frontline managers, and other caregivers attended the University UBT Fair.
The Fair gave SHARE members an opportunity to describe how their own work better. Here, SHARE Diagnostic Radiology Technologist Jon describes to UMass Memorial CEO Eric Dickson a project they designed in X-Ray. They’ve improved their processes to keep the patients more comfortable and save the department money, while at the same time sparing time and stress for SHARE members.
SHARE Member and Lead Financial Counselor Mabelle won the WooSox ticket Raffle
hahnemann UBT Fair Wednesday!
the party don’t stop . . .
Reminder: Introduction to Healthcare Careers Program
If you or someone you know wants to grow in a new career path at UMass Memorial, and would like to better understand the options, the new, free Introduction to Healthcare Careers program offered by UMass Memorial is designed to help. Learn more about the program at one of two upcoming information sessions — May 7 and May 20.
Free Student Loan Webinar
Want to better understand recent changes to student loan policies, and what they mean for you? You can learn more through an upcoming live UnionPlus webinar, June 10th at 6pm. For more details, and to RSVP, click [[here]]
Hahnemann Campus UBT Fair: Wednesday, May 7, noon-1pm
Our celebration of Unit Based Teams continues . . . with the first-ever UBT Fair at Hahnemann!
Reminder: University UBT Fair WEDNESDAY!
We look forward to celebrating at tomorrow’s UBT Fair! Come learn more about the successes of SHARE members in improving their work and workplaces. Grab a free sandwich, mix, mingle, and enjoy!
See you at the Faculty Conference Room of UMass Chan Medical School. Drop in on your lunch break, any time from 11:30a-1:30p.
University UBT Fair: this Wednesday, April 23
Please join us for lunch at the 3rd Annual UBT Fairs!
Beginning this Wednesday, the Labor Management Partnership Office, together with the SHARE union, will be hosting the 3rd Annual UBT (Unit-Based Team) Fairs!
These drop-in events are open to all caregivers.
Come grab lunch provided by SHARE, enter a raffle, and see how your fellow caregivers have improved their own work through the UBT projects they designed and implemented.
2025 UBT Fair Locations
University campus: Wednesday, April 23rd 11:30-1:30 in the Faculty Conference Room in the Medical School
Hahnemann campus: Wednesday, May 7th 12:00-1:00 in the Hallway leading to the Cafeteria
Memorial campus: Thursday, May 22nd 11:30-1:30 in Knowles Hall in the Jaquith Building
Featuring: Lunch, raffles, SHARE and other organizational leaders, friends, and fun!
Sponsored by the Labor Management Partnership Office & the SHARE union.
Please feel free to reach out to alaina.anderson@umassmemorial.org with any questions!
click the above or below poster for a printer-friendly version to post in your department
2025 Rep & EBoard Nominations Announcement
Official SHARE Union Representative and Executive Board nomination and election notices are being sent by US mail to all SHARE members. A copy is included below, too. The nominations period opens on April 16.
Also below are brief descriptions of the roles of Union Reps and Executive Board Members. A more detailed description can be found here. If you want to talk about what it would be like to be a SHARE Rep or to be on the Executive Board, or if you have other questions, please call the SHARE office at 508-929-4020, or talk to someone you know who is involved with SHARE.
SHARE Reps: There is at least one Union Rep for every 25-50 SHARE members. A Rep is a contact person for their area. Union Reps get training from SHARE to move information between co-workers and union leadership. They can also get training in helping co-workers solve problems (for example, with discipline or work schedules) if they want to. Reps are elected for a 1-year term.
SHARE Executive Board Members: Executive Board members have responsibility for the whole union, and in particular for their region (several hundred people). They make decisions about the direction of our union and participate in contract negotiations. They serve for 2-year terms. There are 13 positions on the SHARE Executive Board:
4 Officers: A Co-President from University-connected locations and a Co-President from Memorial- connected locations; a Secretary and a Treasurer elected at large (by all SHARE members).
9 Regional Executive Board Members: based on what department they are in.
For a printer-friendly version of the below elections notice with active hyperlinks, [[click here]]
Exciting New Program: Introduction to Healthcare Careers
Do you want to develop a new career path at UMass Memorial? Do you have questions about what’s out there and how to get started? Or do you know someone at UMass Memorial who does? SHARE wants to help get the word out about this course offered by UMass Memorial.
SHARE members often say that they want to grow in their healthcare career, and we’re glad to see our hospital piloting this project to address that interest. As you may know, SHARE has worked with UMass Memorial to develop apprenticeship programs for specific jobs, including Patient Care Associates, Medical Assistants, and Surgical Technicians. We’re excited now to help promote this new kind of training, in which participants complete the learning on their own time, in virtual modules, as described in this program flyer.
To complete the interest form, please use this link: https://forms.office.com/r/avtN1dKLLL
SHARE Updates: Hot Tips and News from a Growing Union
SHARE News, Near & Far
. . . well, not that far. But! We are excited to celebrate the newest addition to the SHARE family: SHARE-CHA! Physician Assistants, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and Physicians at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) have successfully organized a new SHARE union for their network of hospitals in Eastern Mass. Additionally, SHARE at Marlborough Hospital recently settled a new contract agreement, and NIH funding cuts threaten to have major impacts at research institutions, including our closest sister union at UMass Chan Medical School. Get an overview of some of the biggest developments regarding our unions [[here]].
SHARE Members Caught Off-Guard: Know Your HIPAA Responsibilities
SHARE has seen a recent spike in the number of disciplinary cases related to privacy issues. UMass Memorial treats patient confidentiality very seriously, and the result of a violation typically involves strong consequences, even when a caregiver’s intentions may be good. “I had no idea leaving my login open for others to use could have such an impact on my career,” said one SHARE member in a recent disciplinary meeting. Multiple SHARE members have even lost their jobs in recent weeks.
Our union values privacy. And we hate seeing SHARE members get in trouble. We encourage you to avoid these situations by understanding UMass Memorial’s confidentiality policies, and using only that Protected Health Information necessary to do your job. For example, you cannot look up information for your co-workers, even if they ask you, or even if you just want to get their address to send them a birthday card. “I just wanted to visit a friend in the hospital. I didn’t think about what a dumb mistake it was to look them up in EPIC until I was already in trouble,” said another.
You can also no longer use Epic or other hospital systems to access the account of someone else in your family, even if you have previously signed a waiver that permitted it; that information should be obtained by using MyChart. Make sure, also, to keep Protected Health Information secure, locking your computer login when you’re not using it.
SHARE Rep & Executive Board Elections Coming Soon
Are you looking for ways to make a bigger impact in our community, learn more about how our union and our hospital work, and help your co-workers? SHARE Rep and Executive elections are coming up soon. Elected SHARE Representatives pay a pivotal role in keeping our union connected. To better understand the different ways you can make a difference as a SHARE Rep, read more [[here]], talk with the SHARE Organizer for your area, or drop us a line at the SHARE office and we can set up a time to speak with you.
Beware Phishing! A New Scam
If you have clicked on any links in an email with the subject line "Payment Agreement Proposal” or “AFSCME.Pay Proposal,” please change your password asap. This a phishing scam. If you receive this email, delete it immediately.
Looking for a New Podcast?
The I AM STORY Podcast follows the history of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike as told by those who experienced it first-hand. You may remember that the strike led to a significant moment in the Civil Rights Movement, culminating in Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. It was a time when important threads intertwined between organized labor, black history, and even our very own union.
The I AM STORY Podcast builds a narrative that envelops listeners, transporting them back to the streets of Memphis, the sanctuary of Mason Temple, the homes of the workers and the union hall where these American heroes decided to take a stand against injustice.
SHARE News Near & Far
Our SHARE Union is growing. SHARE at UMass Memorial Healthcare has long been the largest union at the largest employer in central Massachusetts. And our bargaining unit is now the largest it’s ever been, with over 3700 individuals. Over 97% in that group are dues-paying SHARE members, and our union has never been stronger.
The New SHARE: Cambridge Health Alliance
Meanwhile, SHARE’s reputation — and our footprint — is growing, too. When physician assistants, psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians at Cambridge Health Alliance (a hospital network with sites in Cambridge, Everett, Malden, and Somerville) learned of SHARE’s unique union model, they created their own organizing drive with a SHARE spirit. Their union has now been recognized by the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations.
SHARE-CHA focuses on making sure every person’s voice is heard in their institution, on collaboration with their co-workers and community, and on participation in designing processes to deliver the best possible patient care. Caregivers there voted overwhelmingly to form SHARE-CHA. Their union will soon begin negotiating their first contract and work to forge partnership with hospital system leaders there. We’re excited to share with SHARE-CHA what we’ve learned over the years about developing a strong union, and to learn ideas from their perspective about improving healthcare at the front lines.
SHARE at Marlborough Hospital
At the same time, our sister SHARE union at Marlborough Hospital just reached a contract agreement with UMass Memorial. Employees at Marlborough started their own SHARE union in 2018. Marlborough Hospital recently came under the UMass Medical Center umbrella, which brings our unions even closer together. Their two-year contract agreement includes a new partnership agreement with Unit Based Teams, as well as good raises each year.
SHARE at UMass Chan Medical School
There are many challenges coming in the fields of healthcare and health research, and our unions be looking to one another for strength. Our sister SHARE union at UMass Chan Medical School is currently entering contract negotiations with their employer at a particularly hard time. You may have heard in the news recently that, in response to the deep cuts to NIH funding, UMass Chan has already rescinded offers to incoming PhD students, and announced a hiring and spending freeze. You can listen to a brief interview with SHARE Organizer Elisabeth Szanto about the situation in this news broadcast from NBC Boston.
Harvard University, which is supported by many members in our sister union at the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), is also deeply affected: this article lists Harvard’s School of Public Health as the second-largest recipient of NIH grants nationally within the category of schools of public health.
Beware: New Phishing Scam
SHARE has received the following message from our parent organization, AFSCME International:
A MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT SAUNDERS
We want to inform you that our entire union is receiving phishing emails with the subject line "Payment Agreement Proposal” and “AFSCME.Pay Proposal.” If you receive this email, please delete it immediately.
If you have clicked on any links in these emails, please change your password immediately.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
2025 Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO Scholarship
If you have children or grandchildren who will graduate from high school and attend college next year, please be aware of the Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO Scholarship. In recent years, SHARE families have consistently benefitted from this award, and we are glad to be able to announce this scholarship is being offered again. The SHARE office received this year’s annual notice, below, from Joe Carlson, President of the Central Massachusetts AFL/CIO.
TIPS FOR APPLYING
Please note that the union affiliation should be identified as AFSCME/SHARE. Members at UMass Memorial (including Marlboro Hospital) are in Local Union Number 3900. Applications should NOT be sent to the SHARE office.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
Keep your eye on the SHARE blog for more #scholarships. For additional educational opportunities, check out posts tagged #education.
Unit Based Teams Newsletter, Winter 2025
SHARE Updates: Earn & Learn, UBTs, Housing Help, and More
Hearts and chocolate everywhere today? Looks like a SHARE event!
Alas, it’s just Valentine’s Day.
But seriously, it is a holiday weekend, thankfully, and here are some things to know . . .
Last Call to Apply to the Next PCA Pathway Program
Does someone you know want to begin a career at UMass Memorial working on the nursing floors and in clinics? The Patient Care Associate Program is now open to friends and family of SHARE members! Earn while you learn. Find out more about the PCA Pathway program here. Recruitment ends February 17th.
Buying or Renting?
Get Help with Housing Costs
Did you know that you and your family can take advantage of exclusive benefits when financing your home with Wells Fargo through the Union Plus® Mortgage program? Their dedicated team is ready to work with you to verify eligibility and explore all your options.
Additionally, the UMassFive Credit Union makes available a Rental Assistance Loan exclusively for SHARE members. The loan can be used to cover those hefty up-front costs: first- and last-month’s rent, plus security deposit. You can borrow up to $4000 and pay it back easily through paycheck deduction. Learn more about the Rental Assistance Loan — and apply — here.
What’s Happening with Unit Based Teams?
SHARE Members in UBTs have been doing a lot to make their work better. And, there’s more good stuff on the way, including the 2025 UBT Fairs. Dates have just been announced for those. (Remember last year? The 1,200 sandwiches? And chocolate?) Check out this UBT Newsletter for more . . .
TIP! Do you Know How to Search the SHARE Contract (and Everything Else)?
You probably know that the SHARE-UMass Memorial Contract Agreement can be found on our website. Finding what you need there can be really quick and easy . . . especially if you know how to use the search function in your web browser.
For example, in Google Chrome, click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner (see green arrow in the image below) and click “Find and Edit” (orange arrow). When the text-box pops up, just enter the word(s) you want to search for, such as holiday, or staff meetings, or personal emergency days.
That function can be found in most internet browsers in a very similar way. You can also just press the CTRL + F keys as a shortcut.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Give SHARE a call at 508-929-4020, or email share.comment@theshareunion.org.
SHARE Digest: All Kinds of Help . . . AND, Union Plus College Scholarships
Making the Most of Your Union Experience: Finding the help you need
In a healthcare union of 3500 people, members and their friends can face almost every kind of challenge. But we don’t all face the same challenges at the same time, and we’re here to support each other. SHARE Reps and Staff Organizers consult with members daily about many different questions and concerns. You should always feel welcome to call or email the SHARE office for help. But do you know about all of the resources organized on the SHARE website? Here are some of the most useful and commonly used:
The SHARE Contract is the complete document of our union’s agreement with UMass Memorial about policies, wages, partnership, and more.
Problem Solving & Disciplinary Meeting Support describes how SHARE Organizers and Reps can support you in meetings with management in your work area
CommunityHELP, developed in partnership with UMass Memorial, provides a searchable database of services centered in Central Massachusetts. Search for free or reduced cost services related to food, job training, transportation and more.
Union Plus provides a variety of services and perks to union members, including legal help, mortgage assistance, medical bill negotiating assistance, educational programs, and more.
That’s just scratching the surface. Check out the Getting Help section of the website or the lists of Frequently Asked Questions for more resources.
How to Sign Up for Union Plus
To take advantage of most Union Plus Benefits, you’ll need to register with Union Plus. Note that “SHARE” is not listed as a registration option . . . our union is also identified as AFSCME Local 3900.
To sign up, you’ll need to select our parent union, “AFSCME, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees,” in the dropdown menu.
Union Plus College Scholarships: Application Deadline Soon!
If you are a SHARE member, then you’re also eligible to take advantage of the nation-wide Union Plus program, which offers a broad range of perks and benefits to union members, including the Union Plus College Scholarships, which have a rapidly-approaching deadline of January 31, 2025.
Current and retired members of participating unions, their spouses and their dependent children are eligible for these competitive scholarships. Amounts range from $500 to $4,000. These one-time cash awards are for study beginning in the Fall of 2025. Students may re-apply each year.
Since 1991, the Union Plus Scholarship Program has awarded more than $5.6 million to students of working families who want to begin or continue their post-secondary education. More than 4,000 families have benefited from Union Plus’s commitment to higher education.
SHARE Updates: MLK, The Pavilion, Earn-and-Learn Opportunities, and More
SHARE Honors Dr. Martin Luther King
On the Martin Luther King Day holiday, as every day, SHARE values the work and life of Dr. King, and the model that he provided us for addressing social inequities in healthcare and labor.
SHARE Members Make UMass Memorial Pavilion Opening a Success
UMass Memorial’s new North Pavilion provides new (and much-needed) inpatient beds. Opening an entire new building like this one is no small task, especially as patients are transitioned into their new rooms, and caregivers familiarize themselves with the new workspace and work-flows.
Thank you to those seasoned and new SHARE members who are bringing their expertise to helping make the transition a success. We’re all rooting for you as you work through all the kinks and challenges to get everything running smoothly. SHARE is here to support you, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. If questions or concerns arise, please contact your SHARE organizer, or contact the SHARE office directly by phone (508-929-4020) or email (share.comment@theshareunion.org)
PCA Pathway Program
Does someone you know want to begin a career at UMass Memorial working on the nursing floors and in clinics? The Patient Care Associate Program is now open to friends and family of SHARE members! Learn more about the PCA Pathway program here.
Remembering Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2025
SHARE honors Dr. King’s approach to the truths and paradoxes of our complex reality, and his influential ideas about love, nonviolence, and justice.
MLK AND HEALTHCARE
Dr. King recognized the stark disparities in health outcomes and access to care among diverse communities. His advocacy underscored the fundamental right of every individual to access quality healthcare, regardless of socioeconomic status, race or background. Dr. King championed specific changes in programs and policies to reduce racial inequity in social determinants of health.
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”
MLK AND ORGANIZED LABOR
During the Civil Rights era, hospital and healthcare workers were left out of labor laws. Our work was not considered “real work” by politicians in Congress. Dr. King, together with Corretta Scott King, campaigned for years to ensure that hospital workers won the same right to form a union. After Dr. King’s death, Coretta served as the national chairwoman of the hospital workers organizing committee with 1199 SEIU, which successfully changed the law in 1976 to cover hospital and healthcare workers.
“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
REALIZING THE DREAM
This story is not over, however. The arc of history is long. Harsh inequalities still persist in our workplace. SHARE CHA recognizes these disparities and our obligation to continue the tradition of nonviolent social change. We are grateful to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s model as we foster our relationships with each other, and work to take care of those around us.
“We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts.”
OUR FUTURES ARE INTERTWINED
We have succeeded in organizing, and we will ultimately win our union. With our union, we provide ourselves with an independent source of power, the right to negotiate, and a collective voice. Our success as clinicians is closely linked with our broader community and with the success of our hospital. We form our union not only for us, but for our patients. We work together to bring about social change and address injustices in healthcare.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”
2024 IHI Conference Presentation: Unit Based Teams
Ever wonder exactly what’s getting said outside our hospital about the work you do? Continuous Improvement Coach Will Erickson had the following to say to healthcare leaders from around the country in a talk that he gave at the recent Institute of Healthcare Improvement Conference in Orlando, Florida . . .
IHI 12/10/24
Will Erickson presenting at IHI in his trademark red sweater. To see the slides from his presentation, [[[click here]]]
I’m Will Erickson, I work as an organizer and continuous improvement coach with the Labor Management Partnership Office at UMass Memorial Health in Worcester, MA. I’ve attended the Forum several times over the years but this is my first time presenting, and I’m so grateful that my friends Amar and Becka invited me to join them.
Ok, so now I’m going to tell you about how we’re improving how people feel about coming to work every day through our Unit Based Team program at UMass Memorial, in partnership with our largest union.
First, a little bit about our system: we’re a mid-size academic medical center and safety net with a bunch of community hospitals and practices in Central Mass. We’re the largest provider and largest employer in our region, so the quality of our jobs, and our care, really matters to our community. Unless I’m misjudging this audience, I’ll bet a lot of you work in places like this one.
To understand this story you also need to know about the SHARE union, which makes up the other half of our labor management partnership. It’s the largest union because it represents a lot of different job titles, like nursing assistants, medical assistants, rad techs, respiratory therapists and billers. We organized our union around the values of solidarity and voice: taking good care of each other and being able to participate in decisions about what happened to us. I say us because I come out of this union as an organizer. The lead organizer of that union, Janet Wilder, is in the audience this morning.
Coming into 2016, SHARE leaders had achieved a lot in terms of making their jobs better, but they felt that they hadn’t made a lot of progress making these jobs feel better – in a lot of ways, the work felt harder and more draining than it had. Together with UMass Memorial, we found ourselves facing a shared set of problems; a disengaged workforce that resisted changes they perceived as being done to them – no one wants to feel process improved. We suffered from unreliable processes and variable outcomes, pretty bad patient experience scores, and strained labor relations. And that’s a picture of a much younger me manning an informational picket line in front of one of our hospitals, just to prove my labor bonafides.
We looked around for alternatives, and found the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership, which is still in place today and the most important labor management partnership in place in US healthcare right now, maybe in any industry in the US. With support from Kaiser and its unions, from our own hospital’s leadership which was a couple years into a Lean journey, and drawing inspiration from a couple trips to the IHI Forum, we did something brave and formed our own labor management partnership, one that was built on those central pillars of voice and solidarity, participation and mutual respect and support.
Following the lead of our friends at Kaiser, our Unit Based Teams are built on the foundation of this labor management partnership. These are department-level process improvement teams create to help us establish a more invigorating work culture, to make labor management partnership an actual, real thing at the frontline between staff and their managers and not just for the leaders at the top. This is our effort to organize a bottom up social movement for safer, smoother, better processes.
This is a picture of one of our UBT Fairs from last Spring, when we got several hundred of people together to share out posters of their favorite improvement project from the last year. One of the great things about rooting our movement for process improvement in the labor movement is that in the labor movement its still cool to belt out songs together, its one of our proudest traditions. So at these UBT Fairs we actually pass out adapted lyrics to pop songs and get several hundred people to sing together about their love for process improvement.
We now have 70 or so UBTs working on projects to reduce falls, to improve patient experience, to reduce no shows, to improve copay collection, to improve throughput. But the UBTs don’t exist for the purpose of solving those problems. The primary purpose of a UBT is to change how our caregivers feel about coming to work everyday. But the big theory of change that animates this whole program for us is that the best way to change how our people feel about their work isn’t pizza parties, or ropes courses, or trust falls, or meditation apps (we’re not against those things) but to involve our frontline people in identifying and then working to solve the process issues that are driving them the most bananas.
Each UBT has a committee of staff, providers and managers. Each is co-led by a labor co-lead and a management co-lead, and each team, in addition to having an improvement coach like me, is co-sponsored by a union leader and a management leader, usually the manager’s boss.
Most of our UBTs meet for 30 minutes every other week, and each works on 2-3 projects at a time. We encourage them to work on big issues, but to scope their project such that it can be completed in less than 100 days – I think that 100 day rule is one we brought back from one of these forums. The co-leads facilitate the meetings and prep for those meetings together beforehand. Our co-leads are really the axle around which the UBT turns, so we give them lots of training and support – we view UBTs as a vehicle for developing frontline leaders and upskilling our managers, not just for process improvement. Projects are chosen by the committee, and decisions are made by consensus. We test for consensus by asking three specific questions: has everyone been heard? Can everyone live with this decision, even if it wasn’t your first or second or third choice – will you try it? And finally, will everyone here support this decision outside this room – are we together in this? We want our improvements to stick.
So that’s the concept, but are they actually making a difference? There are several different ways to answer that question. First, our UBTs are making big, substantive impacts with their projects. One of our CT departments, for example, created a patient staging area and reduced wait times by 20% despite an increase in volume. If the management team had gone to the staff and demanded an increase in volume, the techs would have spit the bit – what stressed the techs out more than anything else was how late they were running pulling in outpatients in the afternoons – the techs wanted to see a decrease in outpatient slots. After setting up the staging area, our techs’ reported stress levels were 40% lower. Happier patients and smoother process made happy techs.
Our managers are also reporting general improvements in productivity and good feeling as a result of their UBT work – a kind of generalized halo effect. I love this quote from one of the NPs in Vascular Surgery – this department started out meeting every other week for 30 minutes, then increased that to every week for 30 minutes, and then they extended the time to a full hour because they felt like they were getting so much out of the time together.
And we’re seeing an effect in our caregiver experience survey results as well. In a recent survey departments with a UBT showed twice the improvement in engagement as our entire system, and four times the improvement in the bundle of questions that basically get at what people think of their boss. And the questions with the biggest gap between departments with UBTs and those without one were “I am involved in decisions that affect my work” and “this organization treats employees with respect”. Remember that we built our partnership on the pillars of increasing participation and improving the culture – I just love that.
Our joint improvement work is also gaining notice in the labor relations universe. Here we are with US Secretary of Labor Julie Su. She’s unfortunately only got a few more weeks in the job.
And of course the best evidence that we’re making an impact is what our caregivers are saying about how UBTs have changed them, and how they feel about coming to work. We’re not going to have time to show you this compilation, but we’ll give you the QR code at the end so that you can watch on your phone – I really hope you will.
So to wrap up, what’s different about these UBTs? First, ownership is truly shared. This is not a top down management thing, but its not just a union initiative either. That’s made it easier to leverage multiple leadership networks, especially our often unsung, informal frontline leaders, and sometimes even those grouches in the department who’ve historically been skeptical of any change. We also think we’ve created a structure that makes it easier to talk about hard things – partnership doesn’t mean that we just act nicey-nice to each other. We don’t tiptoe around the hard stuff. We lean into the process issues that are causing conflict, because we want to solve those things. And finally, with every project, every meeting, we’re teaching our people how to work together better and to solve bigger challenges. We’re doing it in a way that refreshes the manager role, positioning them as mentors and leaders, not just command and control authoritarians. And we’re challenging union reps to not just complain that management hasn’t fixed something yet, but to jump in and organize their coworkers to come up with a better way. And we’re doing it in a way that strengthens psychological safety and combats against of the real power imbalances that can make working in a team so hard.
