Great culture wins state award

Our Contact Centre were recognised at state-level for their remarkable cultural transformation.

The HSS Contact Centre were winners at the WA AusContact Awards in the category of ‘Employee Experience Initiative of the Year — Engagement and Culture award.’

Established in 2020, HSS introduced the Contact Centre, offering one contact number and an easy to navigate menu to offer a more seamless customer experience.

Providing the first contact point for all WA Heath employees, the Contact Centre works closely with Payroll and Employee Services to provide a collaborative team-based response, by answering, assisting and redirecting calls, and assisting customers with forms such as leave requests. (The team process 616,000 forms each year!)

The Contact Centre was established during a period of heightened demand and uncertainty, and the impacts of COVID were felt across the team. As they worked to establish a new structure, during rapid increase in workload, the team were under pressure and disengaged.

However, the Contact Centre worked hard in their response to challenges over the years, and the transformative journey they’ve been on to get to the highly engaged culture they enjoy today.

Their challenges were strategically addressed, with changes made to leadership structure, employee support, flexible working opportunities and greater communication, the team now are not only surviving but thriving.

Peter Cottam, Contact Centre Director, has been at HSS since 2019 so has experienced this transformation firsthand. “Where we were then to where we are now is hard to put into words. The whole team drive our culture, we hold each other to account and coming to work each day is a pleasure for me, personally,” he said.

The culture transformation can be seen most starkly in the Denison Survey results. HSS as an entirety scored well in 2023 (and also won an award for culture improvement at the 2023 WA Health Excellence Awards!) but the Contact Centre’s results were additionally remarkable.

The reputation the team are building is attracting and retaining high quality candidates. Their productivity is up, and the team enjoy high rates of participation in team events. This can partly be attributed to an openness to letting people speak up and step up - an environment that breeds innovation and engagement.

Happy employees lead to happy customers too! Our Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) results show significant improvement since 2020/21, indicating we’re providing better customer service.

“I just wanted to call out that this wouldn’t have been possible without all the local support and assistance we have received from HR and Capability,” said Peter Cottam.

“We have been able to leverage much of the HSS organisation wide initiatives such as MyPerformance, flexible work agreements and training to support us. And let’s not forget the advice we get day to day from our business partners and HR consultants. We make a difference together!”

Congratulations to the Contact Centre team, who are now in the running for the national awards, held later this year. Great culture is it's own reward, but its nice to be recognised, all the same.