Story – Shaping Our Future (Strategic Planning)

Shaping Our Future

More than 85 staff across St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton have signed up to be Strategy Ambassadors, a vital strategic planning communication channel between frontline staff and senior leadership. The ambassadors will help launch the new Strategic Plan and facilitate communications and feedback from staff. Watch below as four ambassadors tell us more about the program:

A vision for the future of healthcare

St. Joe’s new Strategic Plan will chart a five year vision for the organization, focusing on four strategic directions:

A remarkable place to work and learn
A University teaching hospital: Research that changes lives | Educating the world’s best
Leaders in Integrated Care
Excellent care, Every Time

A significant amount of work is underway and will continue in the next few months to develop the details of the plan. Goals and initiatives will be developed, and the exact wording of the strategic directions will be finalized.

The new plan will help us make important choices at St. Joe’s, to position us a leader in the future of healthcare. It will become the guide to achieving defined goals across the hospital and will serve all staff, patients, and members of St. Joe’s community in providing a framework for innovation and the best possible patient care.

Creating a shared strategy

Training has already begun for the ambassadors, with the first of five sessions taking place in December 2018. The ambassadors are learning more about the plan and what it means for their teams going forward, and their role as a go-between for staff and executives. They will make sure their team knows what is happening with the process and get feedback from staff.

The level of community involvement in the planning process, from Shape Our Strategy pop-ups throughout the city last summer, to the ambassador program, is a new approach to Strategic Planning. Staff and community feedback are a part of what is informing the decisions made by leadership on the Strategic Plan, and helping to shape those decisions for individual teams and units. The end result will be a comprehensive plan built in part by the community that will feel its effects the most.