Trialling teams and new contexts

There were several motivations for providers introducing self-organising teams. All organisations wanted to shift the locus of power from management and a central office to the people being supported and workers, operating locally. It was felt person-directed service delivery would be better realised if workers were empowered to make decisions at the front line, rather than needing to seek authority centrally.

Community Living Project creates co-design partnerships between participants, families and workers to support the development of 'right' relationships; worker autonomy is a precondition for this to work well. Amicus also works on the basis of 'right' relationships and they strongly believe in working one person at a time. They, and also Parkside, saw team-based models as a potential option in rural and regional areas where  staff had less contact with head office, and sometimes felt isolated and distant. Avivo's 'Working Locally' model was motivated by their organisational purpose to support citizenship for all in their community including participants and staff. Research into and visits to organisations in Europe and the US convinced them that to deliver home-based supports responsively under the NDIS, structural and cultural changes to their organisation were needed.

In the case of Achieve and Synapse, novel residential developments (high rise independent living and an Aboriginal residential rehabilitation centre respectively) were the change instigators. Synapse had the opportunity to design in a greenfields site, as the centre had neither residents nor workers when they began. Their motivation was to realise their Social and Emotional Wellbeing philosophy in a context where all service and work practices needed to be reworked with and for their Aboriginal clients. 

Outcomes in the purpose-driven approaches projects were constrained by the short project time frames. Avivo found that worker experiences were more positive, on the whole, in regions where self-organising teams had been introduced, although they also found they needed to slow down the roll-out. By the end of the project 27 neighbourhood teams and 73 person-centred teams had been introduced, plus two back office teams. Back office staff on the whole were more challeged in adjusting to the change. Clients reported good outcomes, but for many the the long-term impact remains to be seen. Organisational sustainability was increased, with non-billable costs reduced and efficiencies achieved.

More teams were rolled out than anticipated at Amicus; at the end of the period, 96 people were being supported by 8 teams involving 55 workers. Participant and family satisfaction with the changes was high. As at Avivo, communication was reportedly improved and staff reported an increase in peer support resulting in a reduction in their feeling of isolation. Participants also reported increased service flexibility, responsiveness and self-direction. Overall staff engagement fell during the project period, but the rapid NDIS transition taking place concurrently was felt to be responsible. Sick leave, a key cost for the organisation, halved.

Parkside's project involved trialling and evaluating one rural self-organising team. Although the new team approach was seen to have benefits for staff and clients, workers decided to abandon it when their claim to have their jobs reclassified was not accepted by management.

Community Living Project's aims were to document and interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of their approach, and develop resources others could share. These results were achieved (see Report and Resources) and based on the many learnings along the way they were able to develop their model into one that better supported participants, families and staff to establish and self-manage their relationship.

The two 'new contexts' projects also generated important learnings. In Achieve's case, it became clear that the new high rise context of a large estate had consequences for workers seeking to provide active support. How staff move around the estate, negotiate security, evacuate in emergency situations, encourage ventures outside and create community connections are all issues the project addressed. 

Synapse succeeded in bedding down an effective workforce and support model for the facility that featured:

• a nearly 100% Aboriginal workforce and very high staff engagement
• trusting relationships between tenants and the support team, together with a participatory leadership strategy to encourage shared decision-making and strong cultural leadership by the team
• a mentoring program for tenants and workers 
• the development of community.

Job redesign and skills development are at the heart of these projects. The premise of the self-organising teams projects is that teams collaborate to take more responsibility for:

• facilitating the participant's independence and achievement of their plan goals
• their connections with community, and
• the team's own management in areas such as rostering, leave and backfill.

Both Avivo and Amicus trialled various models, with teams taking on fewer or more tasks and in Amicus's cases, operating with or without team leaders. As a result of their project, CLP changed the nature and role of its Coordinators by splitting it in an 'Inclusion Coach' role with a focus on coaching participants, families and staff to work as an autonomous team and a 'Support Manager' role to manage contractual and organisational obligations.

Avivo, with its ambitious plans for full roll-out, found that more foundational structures needed to be built. They reported that 'lack of agreement between area managers on how to reorganise staff ino local teams presented a significant barrier'. Leadership of the organisation was restructured to provide better support to the change process, and considerable effort was put into clarifying 'the purpose, team definitions, expected behaviours and support tools'. Small, time-limited working groups to develop policies and resources worked well, as did a range of employee engagement strategies such as large-scale 'Stop and Learn' events where staff from across the organisation met to discuss how best to (eg) 'Share to keep moving'. 

All projects recognised the importance of providing support for the teams and the change process by building worker capability. Soft skills were the priority, with tailored training in effective communication, strength-based approaches and 'whole brain thinking' among the skills development provided. The team's specific needs were carefully assessed. For example, Amicus found that their Karen-specific team (supporting Karen refugees from Myanmar), for example, needed training in IT and record-keeping which was a challenge in part because the workers were still learning English.

Community Living Project had found in the past that VET Certificate III training had been so medically focused and innappropriate to an empowered client approach that some families did not want support workers with that qualification. It was also expensive to 'reinterpret the training' in line with CLP values and practices. CLP currently places emphasis on coaching participants and families to develop workers' skills and knowledge, and the new Inclusion Coaches (see above) support this endeavour.

The appropriate job classification is an important consideration by organisations changing in the direction of self-organising teams. Parkside support workers questioned their classifications, as they had expected that expanding job roles would result in the Level 2 worker to go up to a Level 3 award classification. On NDS's advice, Parkside asked Jobs Australia to examine the workers' jobs, their new duties and the support available to them. 

The full advice can be read here [hyperlink to be added]. Jobs Australia concluded:

'A high performance model [based on self-organising teams] could be implemented in a way that does not require reclassification to Level 3. It is a matter of degree...... Even in cases where the additional duties do not entail reclassification, good management might involve a reward scheme that recognises there is still a different degree of initiative and self-organisation expected'.

The skills expected of a Level 2 worker can encompass a range of complex supports (eg clients with dementia, client medication needs, advocacy) provided there are standard procedures for a competent worker and assistance is available for non-routine issues'.

More generally, organisations found that workers who were taking more accountability for their work as a result of working collaboratively within self-organising teams can choose working hours that are contrary to award conditions. This can be addressed by strategies such as building working time rules into rostering software, and having an 'award checker' role within the team.

Achieve's project yielded interesting results relevant to working conditions. Because of the resident density in their high-rise estate, they were able to create 'better jobs with better service flexibility' because short high intensity support could be provided to several residents sequentially, without the need to pay travel time between residences. It has become more possible to offer full-time 8 hour shifts, at odds with the current disability sector trend towards shorter working hours.

The projects in this group indicate that organisations wishing to make far-reaching changes to their ways of working are more like to succeed if certain pre-conditions exist.

Unity of purpose in the executive and management teams is important since these two groups need to carefully navigate the change together, and negotiate different perspectives whilst maintaining strong relationships and a single message to stakeholders.

Clarity of the purpose and rationale for the change is needed. Avivo observed that once they started to recognise that messaging had been unclear:

'over the remaining period we keep circling back to 'the why' and restating our purpose, and have found that this helps individuals to really focus and understand what it means'.

Perhaps this example indicates another pre-condition, namely that organisations have developed within their leadership and/or workforce, a culture where self-reflection and the ability to be comfortable with and learn from failures is accepted. All projects involved several changes of strategy in response to reality turning out differently to what was planned, and all were able to adapt, realign and improvise along the way.

Synapse's key learning was that a profound commitment to co-design was needed to make any new model work.

"It was clear in the initial stages of implmentation...that the effectiveness would hinge on the depth of engagement of the staff and tenants...[r]egardless of how strong the theroetical concept underpinning the Innovative Workforce Model..."

The critical potency and value of trusted relationships between staff and sevice users was revealed by all projects in this group. The purpose-driven approaches projects learned that it is important to protect these relationships, however much restructuring the organisation is undertaking. Achieve and Synapse similarly learned that service and work practices needed to above all build trust, connection and relationships within the front line team, and between team members and tenants.