Swae helped LifeLabs to solve a costly industry-wide talent retention and attraction challenge in 30 days
CASE STUDY
Lifelabs
USE CASE
Employee-Driven Ideation for Healthcard Recruitment & Retention
LOCATION
Canada
INDUSTRY
Healthcare & Laboratory Services
WEBSITE
CUSTOMER SINCE
2020
The solution sourced through Swae could help retain up to 10 Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists per year, helping solve a particularly challenging industry-wide retention issue.
The
Problem
In November 2020, Swae announced our partnership and pilot with LifeLabs to help crowdsource COVID-19 business and operation solutions directly from employees.
While remaining in full operation during COVID-19, LifeLabs had to continuously adapt to the ever-changing landscape with the health and safety of their customers and employees at top of mind. The team reacted swiftly by streamlining operational procedures, modifying their business model and services, and updating policies to remain agile and consistent. With great and persistent change comes the challenge of keeping everyone aligned. To support employees, the LifeLabs leadership team wanted to ensure they were hearing internal feedback quickly, addressing complex challenges collaboratively, and keeping an ear open for insightful ideas for improving the organization, all at the same pace of the changes required.
Swae was engaged to help them achieve these goals with a pilot program, formally launched in January 2021. The program was intended to help the LifeLabs team focus on the ‘Future of Work’ and understand how they could adapt processes at their labs and collection centers in a post-pandemic world.
The Swae pilot was initially sponsored by the company’s Lab Operations division. When it began, 28 leaders were invited to join a session to brainstorm, suggest, and collaboratively prioritize the most pressing problems and areas of concern while identifying potential solutions.
Given the circumstances [of Covid-19] that we couldn’t get together as one team physically, Swae gave us the necessary tools to bring all of our teams together in one place to generate ideas, improve ideas collaboratively, and vote on the best ideas, to put forward some tangible and actionable outcomes from the process.
Haleh Bahrami
VP of Operations
Activity
The top priority that surfaced through their efforts with Swae was the issue of attracting and retaining highly skilled Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists. This industry-wide challenge came from increased competition for these roles stemming from the global pandemic and existing long-term trends of increased scarcity for these roles that had been impacting the industry.
The concern of attracting and retaining trained Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists is not unique to LifeLabs. This is a challenge affecting the entire healthcare industry.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the medical industry has an aging workforce that is retiring earlier than expected. Referencing a Statistics Canada study, they found that as baby boomers move towards retirement, the supply of medical staff has not kept pace with the retirement rate. The study found that the average retirement age for Canadians employed in health and social services between 1976 and 1980 was almost 65 years, but 10 to 15 years later the average dropped to approximately 62 years. This 3-year reduction and deficit significantly impacts the availability of Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists and other specialized medical staff to fill critical roles.
A recent study on the Fastest Growing Industries and Professions in Health Care by the Skilled Immigrant Infocentre also identified that Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists are among the highest in-demand professions across the country. In British Columbia alone, they estimate 1,520 new job openings by 2025. While there is significant demand for these professionals, the supply of Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists has not kept pace.
When Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists first join LifeLabs, they receive an investment in training and development within the first eight weeks of their employment. For LifeLabs to consistently compete and continuously improve as an organization, it was imperative that they continue to retain their in-demand and highly-trained employees.
Given the uncertainties in the market, this challenge proved very difficult to solve with simple solutions.
Swae gave us a place to put our ideas forward in a democratic way, so people could vote, see what the top ideas were, have a debate about it and write down why they felt that idea should be the one to go through to the next steps.
As a result of this, a few of the ideas were put forward, one in particular got a lot more traction, so for us as an organization, now we had a few things to take to the next level as well as the one with the top accolade.
Haleh Bahrami
VP of Operations
Opportunity
When in doubt, innovate!
This became LifeLabs’ motto as they addressed each organizational challenge head on.
By using Swae’s platform, the discovery and brainstorming process uncovered several brilliant ideas from participants to effectively address the various problems they faced. The group’s biggest area of focus was around talent retention and attraction. The idea that gained the most engagement and traction included offering a retention bonus and student loan subsidy or reimbursement to help newly-trained Technician students pay back a portion of their student loans if they remain employed at LifeLabs for a period of up to two years. This idea can be a major incentive at any point of a person’s career, but is a definite advantage during times of great uncertainty. In addition, they thought this idea could help LifeLabs improve the incentives for retaining talent while also attracting new applicants.
Over the 30-day pilot, this specific idea gained over 50% engagement from the entire cohort, had an average vote of 82% from 14 managers, and allowed colleagues to collectively raise potential risks and easily discuss all facets of this potential solution in a constructive manner.
This idea graduated into an official management review by the Vice President of Operations and Human Resources leaders. Together, leadership from across the organization conducted a feasibility study to stress-test the idea and they now have plans to turn it into official company-wide policy.
50%
Engagement from all pilot users
82%
Average vote received on this proposal
14
Managers who voted on the proposal
This idea graduated into an official management review by the Vice President of Operations and Human Resources leaders. Together, leadership from across the organization conducted a feasibility study to stress-test the idea and they now have plans to turn it into official company-wide policy.
Swae is a tool I have been hoping to see developed for many years. It dispels many of the implicit and explicit biases often seen in brainstorming exercises.
Jamie Lepard
Business Continuity Programme Manager
Swae exceeded our expectations and helped us gather the right information, and provided that opportunity nationally for us.
Haleh Bahrami
VP of Operations
RESULTS
44
proposals were crowdsourced and generated across the 4 Missions
22
of these proposals achieved the success metrics and engagement to graduate for a management review
95%
of the pilot participants used Swae at least once during the pilot
78%
of the pilot participants used Swae at least once per month, if not more.
8
On average, each pilot participant voted on at least 8 unique proposals throughout the duration of the pilot
3
On average, each pilot participant made at least 3 unique comments, suggestions or risks on proposals
13%
of the pilot participants used Swae on at least once per day
“Once implemented, the idea could help retain up to 10 Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists per year, helping solve a particularly challenging industry-wide retention issue.”
CONCLUSION
Once implemented, the idea could help retain up to 10 Medical Laboratory Technicians and Technologists per year, helping solve a particularly challenging industry-wide retention issue.
This in turn could help LifeLabs repurpose scarce resources and re-investment in other areas to continue growing their business.
This potential solution could be a major win for the organization and will be closely monitored throughout the implementation of the policy to fully understand the overall impact more accurately and attribute any positive outcomes back to the Swae pilot.
The Swae team was amazing in terms of supporting us and providing us feedback for how we can use the platform better and guided us through the whole process.
Haleh Bahrami
VP of Operations
Testimonials
Lifelabs partnered with Swae to help solve an industry wide talent retention and attraction issue
“Swae is a tool I have been hoping to see developed for many years. It dispels many of the implicit and explicit biases often seen in brainstorming exercises.”
Jamie Lepard
Lifelabs
Business Continuity Program Manager
How 
can help your Organization
Gaining insights and experience from past pilots has shown that when leaders implement Swae, they discover problems they didn’t even know existed within their own organization.
This allows is creativity to be unleashed and allows more of their own people to come together in bigger ways to solve the organization’s challenges, come up with cool ideas to innovate, and so much more.
Swae’s platform helps drive workplace improvement and innovation strategy which can transform the way leaders include others to prioritize challenges and source potential solutions from people that haven‘t had the opportunity to share their voice.
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