Best Place to Work

Help Video

How to Find UBT Basics on the LMP Website

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LMP Website Overview

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How to Find How-To Guides

This short animated video explains how to find and use our powerful how-to guides

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How to Find and Use Team-Tested Practices

Does your team want to improve service? Or clinical quality? If you don't know where to start, check out the team-tested practices on the LMP website. This short video shows you how. 

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How to Use the Search Function on the LMP Website

Having trouble using the search function? Check out this short video to help you search like a pro!

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How to Find the Tools on the LMP Website

Need to find a checklist, template or puzzle? Don't know where to start? Check out this short video to find the tools you need on the LMP website with just a few clicks. 

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Meet Your National Agreement: Sick Leave HRA Rewards Good Attendance

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If you're covered by one of the national agreements between Kaiser Permanente and the Partnership unions, you may be eligible to convert your unused banked sick leave to a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) when you retire from Kaiser Permanente. You can use the Sick Leave HRA to help pay for eligible out-of-pocket medical, dental, vision and hearing care expenses on a tax-free basis.    

The Sick Leave HRA gives you a strong incentive to bank your unused sick time and helps ensure that you will have sick time when you need it. This benefit is separate from and in addition to the Retiree Medical HRA established as part of the retiree medical benefits package in the 2021 Alliance National Agreement and the 2019 Coalition National Agreement.  

See the Retirement Programs section of your Summary Plan Description on MyHR for details:

  • Select your region.
  • When the Benefits by Employee Group page opens, click on View under Summary Plan Description.
  • Once the file opens, click on Retirement Programs from the menu on the left.
  • Look for details for the Sick Leave Health Reimbursement Account.

If that benefit is not included in your Summary Plan Description, you are not covered by the benefit.

Tips for Managing in Partnership

Deck: 
Managers who engage their teams get better results

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Managing in partnership is different from traditional management. You still have responsibility for managing employees’ performance, but when it comes to your department’s performance, the whole team plays a role in making the department a great place to work and to receive care. Frontline employees know where the problems are and have great ideas for solutions. Research shows that managers who engage their teams get better results, and team members are more enthusiastic about implementing the solution because they helped come up with it.

  1. Be knowledgeable about the National Agreement. Download the National Agreement or get from your local human resources representative.
  2. Get trained on the Labor Management Partnership. See your local learning and development website or our list of regional training contacts.
  3. Proactively develop relationships with your union partners. Get to know your shop steward, union representative and other local labor leaders. Check in with them on a regular basis to share information and get their ideas.
  4. Model partnership with your union partner. Treat each other with mutual respect. Attend LMP trainings together. Jointly develop meeting agendas and share meeting facilitation responsibilities. Share information, identify problems and develop possible solutions in collaboration.
  5. Be accessible to staff. Spend time visiting with people on the front lines. Roam the department on a regular basis. Eat in the lunch room. Implement an “open door” policy for staff members who come by and want to talk.
  6. Be open to the ideas of all employees. Encourage people to share ideas and have input on procedures or work flow. Create an environment in which people feel comfortable speaking up. And be open to trying new ways of doing things.
  7. Create a structure for dialogue and engagement. Make sure time is set aside for partnership meetings, huddles and training.
  8. Tell it like it is. Be open and honest in your communication and transparent with information. Share your department’s budget with team members to get their ideas on reducing costs.
  9. Recognize and value employees’ contributions. Go out of your way to acknowledge someone who comes up with or implements an idea that has made the department a better place to work and provide care.
  10. Develop employees to become department leaders. If union partners or other team members want to help the department succeed by polishing their problem-solving, meeting management or other skills, encourage and support them in their efforts.

 

12 Tips for Building Your Team

Deck: 
Take one action for every month of the year

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Want to take your team to the next level? Make good things happen for yourself, your co-workers and your members and patients? Collaboration is one of the four critical skills needed to meet future challenges with ease. Use these 12 team-building tips to make every month count.

1. Par-tay

Celebrate your team’s successes and acknowledge — even celebrate — failures. Failures are great opportunities for learning if you focus on where the process (not the person) needs improvement. After each test of change, recognize and reward contributing team members at huddles and meetings. Use small wins to keep the momentum going.

2. In and out

Help employees track their sick days and time off by printing out and distributing our colorful, always popular attendance calendar.

3. Follow the money

Learn your department’s budget as a team and get everyone’s ideas on how to reduce costs. Sign up for a business literacy training. 

4. Track it in tracker

Document your team’s work regularly, accurately and concisely in UBT Tracker. It will let others see and learn from your team’s accomplishments.

5. Stop the line

Ask for help or call a stop to the work when you see an imminent danger or need help to safely complete a task. Then look for system improvements and root causes of problems — ask not just what happened, but why.

6. Grow leaders

Rotate responsibilities for leading meetings and managing improvement projects among all team members. This will build your team’s skills and strengths.

7. Two words

Huddle daily. It works. Watch the video “Huddle Power” and use the tools there to get you started huddling with your team.

8. Clean up your act

Become supply savvy. Make a full assessment of supplies — track inventory, tidy up storage areas and streamline ordering. Simple changes can save thousands of dollars. Download our 6S tool to make this work a snap. 

9. Take a (waste) walk on the wild side

Perform a waste walk. Impartially observe a work area or work process to identify waste or inefficiency. Get walking with our online Waste Walk toolkit

10. Save a tree

Go paperless. Don’t print out agendas and documents. Send them out via email or use a projector instead.

11. Get online

Help patients sign up on kp.org. Remind them they can securely view their medical records and most lab results, email their doctors, schedule appointments and refill prescriptions online. Bonus tip: Encourage tech-savvy members to download the kp.org app so they can access these features on their phones. Check out how one team got 90 percent of its patients signed up.

12. Spread and borrow

Did something work for your team? Spread the word to others. Need inspiration for your next improvement project? Look for other teams that have succeeded. Work with your UBT consultant or union partnership representative to spread your successes. Visit our Team-Tested Practices section to get ideas you can try with your team!

TOOLS

Certificate of Appreciation—Version 2

Format:
Word document (color and black and white)

Size:
One 8.5" x 11" page

Intended audience:
UBT co-leads and sponsors

Best used:
Customize this certificate to reward and recognize individuals and teams who've improved performance. Celebrating and recognizing achievement builds morale and inspires your team.

Related tools:

Videos

A Model for Today

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Our Labor Management Partnership—the largest and longest-running partnership of its kind. It is "a shining example—and the best example—of how you bring labor and management together to produce results," says Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

Here's why.

Meet Your National Agreement: Settle Disputes With Issue Resolution

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Do people working in partnership always agree? People don’t.

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Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions resolve most differences involving our Labor Management Partnership through interest-based problem solving or interest-based bargaining. 

But when the process bogs down, the 2015 National Agreement provides a way for managers, physicians, union leaders and frontline workers represented by a coalition union to move it forward: issue resolution. 

Section 1 of the National Agreement covers a number of topics: how the partnership operates, unit-based teams, and such programs as Total Health and Workplace Safety. The most common disputes encountered are covered by this section. A new issue resolution process, one of three related provisions in the agreement, covers such disputes.

The process starts at the level at which an issue arises; so, for example: 

  • When disagreements arise at the facility level, the parties directly involved meet and use interest-based problem solving to try to resolve the issue themselves.
  • If they cannot do that within 30 days, the issue may be referred to the local LMP Council.
  • If there’s still no resolution, the next step is the Regional Council, and then national LMP leadership. Each body has 30 days to resolve the issue, using interest-based problem solving.
  • If no solution can be reached, the question may be decided by a joint panel that includes a neutral designee.

This process is an alternative to, but does not replace, existing grievance procedures. It offers another approach to problem solving. 

“It’s easy for people to get dug into their own place on an issue,” says Denise Duncan, president of UNAC/UHCP. “Partnership and the National Agreement commit us to spending the time to figure out jointly how to resolve problems and do the work.”

New Book Spotlights Partnership Success

Deck: 
After 20 years, Labor Management Partnership still draws followers from health care and beyond

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When the leaders of Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions shook hands on their Labor Management Partnership 20 years ago, they weren’t sure where it would take them. Today, it is the largest, longest-running partnership of its kind. It is also the most studied by university researchers.

A new book published by the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) and Cornell University Press shows that the partnership remains a model for workplace innovation. “The Evolving Healthcare Landscape: How Employees, Organizations, and Institutions are Adapting and Innovating” devotes three chapters to LMP’s history, accomplishments and challenges.

Lessons for others

Adrienne Eaton and Rebecca Givan, professors at Rutgers University, and Peter Lazes, a director and researcher at The City University of New York, studied six health care partnerships, including LMP. They were struck by:

“…the extent to which unions have been proactive in driving [all] these efforts....Another development in health care partnerships has been a significant deepening of the role of labor relations staff in operational matters.

“It is [also] important to note that the cases described here have influenced one another because the key stakeholders have directly learned from each other....[For example,] union and management stakeholders in Los Angeles [Department of Health Services and SEIU Local 721] as well as union leaders from the University of Vermont Medical Center have looked to Kaiser for answers.”

Another chapter, by Jody Gittell of Brandeis University and KP Northwest staff members Joan Resnick, Sarah Lax and Eliana Temkin, reports on regional efforts to promote collaboration across work teams. KP was selected for the study in part for what the authors call its “record of leadership and innovation [including] in patient care delivery, health information systems and labor-management relations.” Several strategies, including “living room huddles”—an informal, building-wide get-together—and job shadowing across departments led to higher employee engagement and patient satisfaction scores.

An inside look

The chapter “Leading Change Together” by Jim Pruitt, vice president of labor relations for the Permanente Federation, and Paul Cohen, LMP senior business consultant, explains the conditions that gave rise to the partnership, the need to implement it consistently across the organization and the way it achieves results:

“By bringing together diverse points of view and providing a framework for joint problem solving, the Labor Management Partnership has helped Kaiser Permanente tackle difficult issues....The partnership formed because conditions demanded change. It has endured because it has achieved measurable results. And it continues to flex and grow because we follow a few key principles and practices [including] self-directed work teams, interest-based problem solving and honest conversations.”

All of which explains why outside experts continue to take an interest in the joint efforts of KP and the union coalition. Pruitt and Cohen quote Thomas Kochan, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, who put it this way in a 2013 study:

“Kaiser Permanente is now one of the nation’s leaders in the use of frontline teams to improve health care delivery....The Labor Management Partnership continues to serve…as a model for health care delivery and improvement.”

TOOLS

Leading Change Together

Format:
PDF

Size:
12 pages, 8.5" x 11"

Intended audience:
All workers, managers, physicians or others interested in the Labor Management Partnership

Best used:
This chapter from a Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) book on workforce innovation highlights the history and results of the Labor Management Partnership.

Related tools:

Pages

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