What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to your chosen theme?

People need to enjoy work more. Why? Because our jobs are hard, and improving happiness at work has been shown to increase effectiveness, performance, productivity, creativity and retain staff (The pursuit of happiness, Jessica Pryce-Jones). Burnout on the other hand can reduce safety, lower quality of patient care and reduce empathy (IHI Framework for Improving Joy in Work).

How does it connect with improvement capabilities across boundaries? This quote from the IHI paper answers this perfectly:
“Since joy in work is a consequence of systems, quality improvement methods and tools have a role in its pursuit. That is to say: organizations and leaders that want to improve joy can do so using the same methods of aim setting, tests of change, and measurement that they use in the more familiar terrain of clinical and operational process improvement.”

We therefore need to test how we can improve joy in work across different sectors and understand which approaches deliver/support healthcare.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The objectives of the project are:
1) By building on current knowledge (including that from the IHI and 15sec30mins), run a Collaborative of 10 teams (from various sectors, including but not limited to healthcare, universities, voluntary sector, patient groups) based on the IHI Collaborative approach, to understand the practical steps which can be taken to increase joy in work. QI methodology will be key to this.
2) Develop an easy to use electronic Toolkit/How-To Guide which will be available to all Q members and beyond.

By achieving the objectives, anyone will be able to take this learning and test in their own organisation/team. This means that those interested will not need to ‘reinvent the wheel’, thereby saving time and reducing some of the emotional strain which implementing change can bring.

Success will be through short, medium and long-term measurement. A suite of measures will be developed to fully understand what works and which tests of change reap the most benefit and why.

How will the project be delivered?

The IHI demonstrate that using their Breakthrough Series Collaborative Model dramatic results can be achieved. View here for info: https://tinyurl.com/p9fplnx. Therefore, we anticipate, that by applying this same methodology, valuable learning will be gained.

However, assessing the benefits of collaboratives can sometimes be tricky. This can be reduced through clearly defining from the start how this Collaborative would be delivered and measured.

Interested organisations/teams will be invited to submit an expression of interest.

To run/design/troubleshoot a collaborative faculty team will be established. This faculty will be made up of a mixture of  QI experts and those who have implemented Joy in Work. Julia, Susy and Siobhan who submitted this proposal will be members of the faculty. All have extensive QI knowledge and Julia completed the IHI Joy in Work course in 2018. Julia/Susy run the Q Joy in Work SIG (membership 155) and ran an event in March. Others will be invited to join.

What and how is your project going to share learning throughout?

Learning during and on completion of this Collaborative would be through:
– regular updates on the Q ‘Improving Joy in Work’ Special Interest Group (155 members)
– regular updates to ‘Improving Joy in Work’ group for non-Q members (30 members)

In addition, a free electronic Toolkit/How-To Guide would also be developed. We would request the Toolkit/How-To Guide be placed on the Q website, and a comms campaign would be developed around this. We would encourage and welcome other website providers to include this document on their own platforms.