With the announcement of the Aged Care Royal Commission1 on 9th October 2018, organisations working in the Disability Sector have begun asking “are we next”. I have had several conversations with clients who feel strongly that perhaps the Disability Sector is next.
Whether it is or it isn’t, whether you work in Aged Care, or Banking, the Church or Children’s Institutions or any other industry, ask yourself this question….
How prepared would we be as an organisation for a Royal Commission?
An interesting point to consider is that for Aged Care2 and Banking3, there are external processes to prevent any need for a Royal Commission. Accreditation, review and oversight by external parties should give us some measure of confidence that people (and their money) are safe.
So what can the Disability sector in Australia who have a robust quality accreditation process that is mandated do to prepare itself? If we consider “The Effectiveness of the Aged Care Quality Assessment and Accreditation framework for protecting residents from abuse and poor practices, and ensuring proper clinical and medical care standards are maintained and practised” (interim report) 13 February 2018, which was published following the inquiry into incidents at the aged care facility, Oakden, comments:
"It (Oakden) is an important lesson for all involved in trying to ensure that the best care is provided, that reliance only on periodic reviews, such as accreditation, leads to a sense of comfort that may not be meritorious."
What we can learn is that organisations need to be proactive in overseeing the workings of their organisations. They need to be aware of the good, the bad and the ugly and stop making these five common mistakes:
- STOP waiting for the external auditors to be your eyes on the ground (the Senate inquiry itself says this doesn’t work)
- STOP expecting 1 EFT (the quality team) to be able to have full oversight into every area of the business
- STOP expecting unqualified staff (the internal auditors) to audit with the same rigour as a certification body
- STOP using checklists audits to tell you about the quality of service you provide
- STOP designing your internal audit system like a certification body when you don’t have the resources to undertake that many audits
If you want more than compliance and you want reassurance that your customers are safe, your staff are doing consistently high standards of work and your compliance needs are met; get an AuditMindset.
If you want to feel confident that even if there was a Royal Commission tomorrow, you would have nothing to fear then you need to have an organisation with an AuditMindset.
AuditMindset is a tool your staff and leaders and managers can use to be fully aware of the work they and the team are doing.
[Get your free AuditMindset E-Book here]
Rather than just turning up to work and going through the motions, an AuditMindset means leaders and managers critically observe what is happening around them. They are alert to inconsistency or poor practice and with an AuditMindset they are able to have difficult conversations with their staff, bringing performance back to process.
An AuditMindset means that rather than paying for and planning expensive and resource intensive internal audit systems you have an organisation continuously auditing every system at every site, all of the time and with no cost.
As an external auditor, I am paid to be actively aware of what I see when I walk into an organisation. I’m not just there to see that you have a Privacy policy, I’m there to see that it’s available, understood by staff and current. I observe that what you say in the procedure is what you do on the ground and I do this by talking to people to gauge their understanding. I look at records to see that the right form was used and that more importantly it was filled in, to a high standard.
Many leaders and managers in organisations leave this active observation to the quality team. A small sample of audits are scheduled at planned intervals and this is the time when one person or a small team of people are expected to actively observe.
When an organisation adopts an AuditMindset it’s everyone’s job to observe, evaluate and communicate what is happening to support efficiency, consistency and great outcomes.
Active observation is about being aware of risks, of great practice, what can you see, smell, hear4? What do people complain about, what are they proud of? When you hear these things who can you tell to drive improvement?
As an external auditor, I am often greeted by staff who are desperate to tell me about the risks and safety issues they are experiencing. They tell me about the broken systems that prevent them doing their work efficiently, like the "printer that doesn’t print in colour so when they are reviewing the person-centred plans and want to add photos, they have to drive to head office."
They tell me about the workarounds they have designed like creating a new folder on the desktop because the shared drive loses documents, not realising that nothing on the desktop is backed up.
They show me the procedures they have written because the organisation procedures are so out of date.
In one day of listening, I can go to a CEO with a list of issues they weren’t aware of, and they are surprised that they didn’t know.
...But I know there was no one in the organisation actively observing what is happening.
When we think about the cases of abuse in care that have led to the Royal Commission we see people talking about the years of frustration with broken systems, toxic cultures and inadequate reporting systems.
These people aren’t evil, they aren’t cowards they are victims of organisations who didn’t have systems in place to actively observe and manage poor practices. They didn’t have an AuditMindset.
Who is responsible for active observation in your organisation?
How confident are you that if you were subject to a Royal Commission you would be prepared?
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Here are a few ways I can help:
Download a free chapter of my book
Get a sample of DECIDE|DESIGN|DELEGATE the three-step guide to implementing a quality system.
Ask me about attending the quality networking program.
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Work with me
If you would like to work directly with me to build an efficient enterprise reply with #AuditMindset and we can arrange a time to have a chat about what you need.
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[1] https://agedcare.health.gov.au/royal-commission-into-aged-care-quality-and-safety
[3] https://www.australia.gov.au/information-and-services/money-and-tax/financial-regulation
[4] https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/15-steps-inpatient.pdf