Unit-based teams can play a part in greening our environment and saving money. Involve your team in tests of change around recycling or reducing supply waste.

1. Coordinate with other departments, such as EVS, materials management or procurement and supply, on green tests of change — or “embed” a member of one of these departments in your UBT.
2. Work with your facility’s waste-hauling vendors to find out what types of materials and supplies can be recycled, and place recycling bins strategically in cafeterias and near exits.
3. Cut down on costly, wasteful single-use medical devices or supplies as part of performance improvement efforts.
4. EVS teams: Switch to environmentally friendly cleaning products and supplies.
5. Invite your teammates to shop for locally sourced, organic fruits and vegetables at the nearest KP weekly farmer’s market.
6. Host a monthly healthy salad bar, like the UBT at San Diego’s Positive Choice clinic did in its successful effort to improve attendance.
7. Replace thirsty plants for drought-tolerant alternatives, as several teams in Northern and Southern California have done.
8. Go paperless: Don’t print out agendas and documents; send them out via email or show on a projector instead.
9. Recruit a champion in your department to be on the lookout for new opportunities and coach others on greening their workplace.

Keeping the affordability point on the Value Compass in mind, unit-based teams are taking a hard look at the obstacles to collecting copayments and conducting small tests of change around proposed improvements. New practices like these are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue.

1. Educate employees about the importance of copay collection.
2. Train employees in how to ask for payment. Use role playing to help them become more comfortable with asking for payments, and create and distribute talking points or scripts.
3. Provide visual reminders for members to check in at the front desk, so a receptionist can determine if a copayment is due.
4. Post a sign with a telephone number directing patients with questions about co-payments and financial concerns to a financial counselor.
5. Call patients a week in advance of a scheduled procedure to advise them a copay will be due and, if possible, to collect it before they are admitted.
6. Add the copayment amount to patient’s outstanding balance and ask for the total amount. If balance is $100 or more, ask for payment on the account.
7. Refer patients who can’t afford to pay to facility-based financial counselors.
8. Station a full-time financial counselor in the Emergency Department.
9. Make sure financial aid applications are processed promptly by having co-workers share the load. Report workload status at weekly huddles.
10. Create a uniform note-taking system for financial forms and assign a counselor to every patient referred to financial services.

Unit-based teams encourage employees to make wise use of the National Agreement's sick-leave provisions, which help ensure that individuals have income in the event of a long-term illness or disability. Absences can also create hardship on other employees and affect member service and care. Here are some tips for improving attendance in your department: 

1. Survey your unit or department to determine if there’s confusion about the use of sick time. If needed, find ways to educate staff on sick leave, tardiness and clocking in and out.
2. Create an “attendance star” board to recognize staff members with great attendance.
3. Encourage colleagues to schedule routine appointments during off-hours or in conjunction with lunch or breaks when possible.
4. Track call-outs and use anonymous surveys to test for reasons why they are occurring.
5. Use cause-and-effect tools such as fishbone diagrams to address unforeseen circumstances, morale, physical environment, workload or personal reasons.
6. Engage staff with frequent conversations and be alert for — and respond to — indications of unhappiness or tension.
7. Recruit an attendance champion to be on the lookout for opportunities to coach others on the importance of banking sick leave.
8. Help employees track sick-leave usage by printing out and distributing the attendance calendar.
9. Use the attendance scorecard to learn about the six essentials of good attendance and to see how your team rates. Then  develop small tests of change to address the weak spots identified by the scorecard.

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!

Course description

Team Leadership for Co-leads is designed to bring labor, management and physician co-leads together to facilitate conversations about the performance of their unit-based teams. The co-leads receive information about high-performing unit-based teams at Kaiser Permanente and then review a 360 feedback tool to use with their teams after the course. Participants will learn a basic coaching model and practice role playing UBT coaching scenarios. Participants also will learn the fundamentals of how people adapt to change, review a change management model for leaders, and make agreements on how to manage change in their role with their unit-based teams. In addition, participants will learn the fundamentals of Emotional Intelligence and how to use “EQ” when leading change.

Path to Performance

Level 3, 4, 5

Duration

8 hours

Who should attend

This course is intended for participants who are experienced co-leads of unit-based teams. Job categories who should attend union, management and physician co-leads.

Course requirements

• Labor Management Partnership Orientation (LMPO)
• Co-Lead Workshop
• Labor and management co-leads attend the training together

Course description

This course recognizes emotional intelligence as a key skill to help lead teams through change and improvement. It teaches leaders specific competencies for managing their own emotions and the emotions of others, dealing with difficult conversations and facilitating difficult team issues that come with change.  

Path to Performance

Level 3, 4, 5

Duration

2 hours

Who should attend

This course is intended for unit-based team co-leads and members

Course requirements

Labor Management Partnership Orientation (LMPO)

Course description

Participants will learn core facilitation practices and will practice these skills and receive feedback from instructors. The participants will determine how facilitation skills are used when leading a UBT.

Path to Performance

Level 3, 4, 5 

Duration

2 days

Who should attend

This course is intended for anyone facilitating unit-based teams. Job categories who should attend include physician, management, labor, unit-based team consultants and union partnership representatives.

Course requirements

None