Successful process improvement projects are driven by confident and engaged employees. An easy way to build confidence, generate momentum and combat fatigue during long-term process improvement efforts is through small wins and offering quick rewards. As Forbes describes, quick wins have a visible benefit, take a short time period to achieve, and should be associated with a larger goal. 

• Visible benefit aids team leaders in gaining support by showing employees the potential value and benefits of the project
• Quick wins also need to have a narrow scope in order to be achievable in a short period of time 
• Being visibly connected to a larger initiative also demonstrates the value of achieving small wins 

Quick wins allow employees to see the benefits of completing smaller projects and gain momentum for next steps. Each win provides an opportunity for employees to gain confidence through new skills and their ability to adapt to change. Breaking projects into parts and identifying simple, achievable goals is necessary to maintain focus and energy during long-term projects.

Many of the challenges that healthcare teams face can be large and daunting, making the importance of small and quick wins significant. Collecting and analyzing data from employees can help identify what interventions would be easy or difficult to implement. WMTY is a low-cost tool that can identify low hanging fruit and easy wins through asking open-ended questions focused on a person’s values, opinions, or needs. 

It can seem scary to ask your teams what changes they might have for the workplace. In reality, most requests that staff have are not overly complex. goShadow performed analysis of responses to open-ended questions related to employee satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand requests of those on the front line. A little over 50% of responses fell into the category of “Collaboration Required, but Doable” and nearly 30% of responses fell into the category of “Simple and Meaningful.” This means that most of the actions that leaders can take to honor staff requests are relatively simple, and at most require increased collaboration. Keep this in mind as you prepare for your first WMTY conversation and know that the majority of requests will not be extremely complicated and hard to complete - making it easy to get those quick wins early.

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Team leaders can use WMTY to facilitate workplace conversations and elicit feedback from employees. Listening to employees is necessary to pinpoint solutions and easy wins that can help sustain team energy for long-term projects.

If you want access to toolkits to get started, or need more help, reach out to info@goshadow.org or check out goshadow.org.