3. Improve employee experience

The continued delivery of quality healthcare centres on attracting and retaining a highly skilled, engaged, and adaptable workforce and providing a consistently positive employee experience. This requires us first to establish a vision for what a world-leading health employee experience looks like.

The pandemic saw our healthcare workers face a period of sustained pressure, high workloads, and burnout.⁷ Building and maintaining a healthy and engaged workforce requires a strong sense of purpose and the underlying systems, tools, and processes that support workers’ experience and ability to fulfil their purpose.⁸

The Victorian health workforce strategy acknowledges this, and the importance of building better workplaces and experiences for our people.

Our consultations, combined with independent People Matter Survey employee experience data for public healthcare workers, identified key value propositions that are important to engaging and retaining our healthcare workers. We have a bold vision for Victoria to be the first state to develop a statewide minimum Employee Value Proposition (EVP), a systemic guide that will enable us to develop a world-leading employee experience for Victoria’s valued healthcare workers.

Kindness is essential – when dealing with ourselves, our colleagues and consumers/patients. We need a greater emphasis on kindness, sharing and caring.

Focusing on what is important to healthcare workers

Victoria’s health sector provides many challenging and fulfilling roles in the clinical and non-clinical spheres.

Our healthcare workers cite a desire to help others, a passion for health, making a worthwhile contribution and long-term job security as some of the primary drivers and benefits of working in our health system.

Despite this, approximately 4.6% of Australia’s registered medical practitioners, and 8.2% of Australia’s registered nursing and midwifery workers, are currently not practising.

We want to build a health system in which every worker feels valued, supported and inspired to fulfil their purpose.

Victoria’s healthcare workers work together in often difficult circumstances, with individuals and teams forming strong bonds and pulling together in crises, including the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.

Key factors driving the workforce

• 62% of workers believe flexible work arrangements would be the most helpful way to attract and retain employees.
• 22% of workers cited workload as the primary driver of their work-related stress.
• 54% of workers want to see better learning and development opportunities at their organisations.
• 58% of workers indicated they want to have their daily administrative tasks and processes made easier through more integrated technology.
• Workers want to see emerging leaders receive appropriate training to build innovative skill sets for the challenges of today.
• Workers identified physical amenities as an area in need of improvement across the sector to enhance the delivery of care.
• Workers want competitive remuneration packages.

Source: Victorian Health Workforce Survey 2022

The employee value proposition is a cornerstone of this 10-year strategy because we know that valuing, respecting and elevating our carers enhances the quality of care to every Victorian.

Through consultation, we identified 9 core domains.

Two of these are purpose and strong co-worker relationships, which are existing strengths that drive Victoria’s healthcare workforce to be connected and inspired.

This strategy focuses on advancing the remaining 7 domains to build this foundation.

Flexibility

Healthcare workers want work–life balance and greater flexibility in rostering.

Employee expectations of flexibility across the health sector, and the labour market more broadly, have changed.

Workers want to balance when, where and how often they work with their personal needs. This requires more flexible work arrangements and rostering practices.

Safety and wellbeing

Healthcare workers have a right to feel healthy and safe at work.

Eliminating occupational violence and aggression, bullying and harassment is essential.

As we transition to new ways of working and models of care arising from the pandemic, we also need to balance workloads and improve the supports available to prevent burnout and fatigue.

Mandatory cultural safety training will be key to ensuring culturally and psychologically safe workplaces.

Career development and agility

Career progression and lifelong learning are integral to healthcare workers’ career satisfaction and contemporary skills development.

All professionals, irrespective of location, should have the opportunity to advance their professional skills and operate at the top of their scope.

Clearer career pathways need to be developed that provide more diverse opportunities, and support mobility.

Leadership

Leadership development influences all facets of the employee experience, including workplace culture, career pathways, and support for mental health and wellbeing.

Targeted leadership programs will equip emerging leaders with dynamic skill sets to adapt to the evolving nature of care.

Workplace

Healthcare workers want modern facilities and workplaces that support them to deliver quality patient care while supporting worker wellbeing through amenities such as rest and recovery spaces.

Providing modern workplaces is integral to satisfaction at work.

Technology

As the environment around us becomes increasingly digital, healthcare workers also expect processes and services that are intuitive, integrated, and convenient.

Modern technology, and knowing how to use it, are required to encourage collaboration and innovation for workers and patients.

Benefits

Securing fair financial and non-financial benefits are key considerations for employment decisions and satisfaction. Competitive financial remuneration is also increasingly challenging for non-clinical roles in a highly competitive labour market. Enterprise Agreement negotiations provide an opportunity to review existing settings and refresh benefits.

A good workplace … where you are valued, can make meaningful changes and can grow professionally, will assist with retaining employees.

Action areas

The following activities will be delivered in the short term.

Medium term reforms

• Identify opportunities to modernise workplaces and technologies.
• Ensure workplaces promote physical, psychological, and cultural safety.
• Further develop and scale contemporary practices in flexibility, wellbeing and safety, leadership development and career development.

Long term reforms

• Revise and continuously improve the EVP underpinned by an annual review of employee experience sentiment.