Partnership Resource Centre
Learning by Example: A Case Study of Partnership Resource Centre Practices - The Aubert Home of Compassion
3. Associate Practices
The Partnership Resource Centre (PRC) provides a range of support services to organisations wanting to develop workplace partnerships. To help do this, the PRC engages a group of Associates - independent consultants with wide knowledge and experience in industrial relations and organisational development. The PRC provided two Associates to work with Aubert and the unions on this project.
The practices used by the Associates followed a typical action-learning cycle and can be broadly classified into three categories: planning and scoping, implementation and reflection.
Planning and scoping
It was helpful that both the Associates were already familiar with the issues affecting the aged care sector. They anticipated that the workforce would be divisive, demoralised, reluctant to speak openly and highly sceptical about any change process. Over three days, the Associates insisted upon talking with all staff, including managers, Board members and union representatives.
The discussions that followed were fairly unstructured, allowing individuals to raise key issues without prejudice or constraint. Individuals were asked to talk freely about what they were doing, what they loved about what they did, and their experiences and feelings about Aubert. This inclusive approach was critical in gaining the parties' trust and commitment to a process from the outset.
The scoping questions enabled the Associates to identify the underlying causes of workplace conflict, its impact and the likely opportunities and challenges in developing a partnership. More importantly, these discussions enabled the Associates to gauge the parties' willingness to change and to participate in a change process. In particular, they were interested in the parties recognising themselves (not the Associates) as being the key players in creating positive workplace relationships.
Following reflection on the visit, the Associates devised a plan and the strategies they would use to support the parties in a partnership development process over the next 12-18 months.
Implementation
Typically, PRC Associates draw upon a variety of techniques and tools to help parties develop a workplace partnership, blending their use as necessary. Associates in the Aubert project were no exception and used an extensive range of techniques. For the participants, the following exercises stood out and contributed significantly to a positive change in Aubert's workplace culture.
The four "Fish!" principles
Associates introduced the parties to four key concepts known as the Fish! principles[2]. These principles emerged out of the workplace experience of a fish market in Seattle and, in essence, capture the underlying aspects of a successful business and workplace practice in a straightforward and non-threatening way. In summary, they are:
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Play |
Finding ways to have fun while accomplishing serious goals. |
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Be There |
Being fully and genuinely engaged in the tasks you take on at any point. |
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Choose Your Attitude |
Recognising that personal attitudes shape actions and that each person can make a choice to view things positively if they want to influence and support positive outcomes for themselves and others. |
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Make Their Day |
Recognising that no matter how small, gestures of care and kindness transform people's emotional well-being and are an easy and rewarding way of gaining job satisfaction. |
The Associates saw these principles as perfectly applicable to Aubert's desire to realign the culture of the workplace with its spiritual and community focused values. The principles themselves were also a way to energise and lift the dispirited and tired workforce. The Associates ran workshops with different representative groups, which included videos and discussion about how the Fish! principles could be applied in their workplace.
While there was a degree of scepticism, overall, the majority of staff were motivated and open to the key messages inherent in these principles.
The horseshoe exercise
During a large collective workshop organised by the Associates, participants were asked to form themselves into a horseshoe shape with the newest and longest serving staff at opposite ends. This exercise served to place everyone on an equal footing, breaking down the multiple divisions and hierarchical structures, and instead recognising the considerable length of service Aubert staff have - both individually and collectively.
Generating a shared appreciation of staff loyalty and commitment helped focus participants on Aubert's core purpose: caring for vulnerable and fragile members of society.
Interest-based negotiation training
A year after the project began, there was a need to renegotiate Aubert's collective agreements. Union organisers, delegates and Aubert management were concerned that their past difficulties could resurface in the negotiation process, compromising their ability to continue applying partnership principles in their workplace relationships.
While acknowledging their concern, the Associates saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the value of partnership principles. The Associates designed a series of exercises and supporting guidelines to enable the parties to approach the negotiation process from an interest-based problem-solving perspective. This involved revisiting the partnership goals of the project and exploring the two contrasting styles of negotiation: adversarial and interest-based. By working through scenarios, Associates were able to challenge the parties' behaviours and help them embed an interest-based approach.
The power of this approach was consistently described by participants as one of the most significant points in the project; it represented the moment when they began to translate their understanding of partnership into observable partnership attitudes and behaviours.
Reflection
A fourth strategy that contributed to the project's success was critical reflection. As noted earlier, reflection is one of the three broad practices that make up PRC Associates' typical action-learning approach.
Critical reflection
Critical reflection is the process of analysing, reconsidering and questioning experiences within a broader context with a view to learning from past experiences and using this to plan the approach for the future. The process can take a number of forms, from observations, to asking questions, to using theory to help make sense of what is going on. It can occur at different levels within a change process, for instance, visibly and explicitly when working "in the moment" with participants (for example, while working through scenarios), or retrospectively, such as when Associates are professionally reviewing their actions.
The majority of reflection done in the Aubert project was visible "in the moment" interaction with groups and individuals. The Associates' skills were clear to the participants as they responded to issues raised and the various relationship dynamics that emerged. If anything came out of left field, the Associates knew how to make sense of it.
[2] Lundin, S. Paul, H. and Christensen, J. Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results. Hodder & Stoughton. London, 2001.