MARKHAM, Ont. – What good is a suggestion box if most of your 7,000 employees never come to the office and are spread across the country? Saint Elizabeth Health Care is the first Canadian healthcare organization to adopt SoapBox, a social media platform that allows its employees – most of whom are mobile workers – to suggest, discuss and vote on ideas to improve the services they deliver.
“SoapBox is ideal for us,” says Shirlee Sharkey (pictured), President and CEO of Saint Elizabeth. “With more care being delivered at home every year, it’s important we hear from our front-line employees, because they have the best ideas for making things better for their patients. SoapBox allows them to share their ideas with their colleagues, many of whom they never see because of the nature of their work.”
Since its launch in early May, almost 1,000 employees have signed up and begun submitting ideas. “The adoption of SoapBox by employees at Saint Elizabeth is remarkable” says Brennan McEachran, CEO of SoapBox. “It is amazing to see how quickly employees have jumped on to share their thoughts and how well leaders have responded by taking action on the top ideas. This confirms that SoapBox is reinforcing and strengthening an already vibrant culture of innovation at Saint Elizabeth.”
SoapBox continues Saint Elizabeth’s long tradition in innovation, and more recent adoption of crowdsourcing to find the best solutions to current challenges. In a survey last year, more than 80% of Saint Elizabeth employees – well above the national average – said they feel comfortable suggesting ways to improve service. SoapBox will expedite that process.
“There’s no shortage of expert reports and commissions on how to reform healthcare,” adds Sharkey. “We thought we’d flip things on their head and ask the people who are actually out there delivering healthcare about the big – and little – things that would make a difference.”
Later this year, Saint Elizabeth plans to give its patients and the public at large access to the service, so they can submit their own ideas.
About Saint Elizabeth Health Care
Saint Elizabeth (www.saintelizabeth.com) has been a trusted name in Canadian healthcare for more than a century and is a leader in responding to client, family and system needs. As an award-winning national not-for-profit and charitable organization, Saint Elizabeth is known for its track record of social innovation and breakthrough clinical practices. Our team of more than 7,000 nurses, rehab therapists, personal support workers and crisis intervention staff deliver nearly seven million health care visits annually.
About SoapBox
SoapBox is an innovation management platform that helps organizations move insights from the front-lines to the bottom-line. As a leader in this space, SoapBox provides the tools to capture, manage, and respond to ideas in an efficient way to drive execution. We are proud to work with large enterprises including Indigo, Coca-Cola, Accenture, and GlaxoSmithKline.