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Enhanced healthcare services with iConnect@NHG
How the National Healthcare Group empowered its employees to enhance patient services
National Healthcare Group (NHG) is a leader in public healthcare in Singapore recognised for delivering high value patient care through an integrated system of primary care polyclinics, acute care tertiary hospitals, community hospitals, national specialty centres, and community-based ambulatory care centres. As the Regional Health Manager for 1.5 million residents in Central and North Singapore and more than 20,000 healthcare professionals, NHG collaborates with private general practices, public and community health and social care providers to keep residents well and healthy.
NHG was preparing to refresh its human resource information system (HRIS) technology while mitigating the potential global shortfall (link resides outside of ibm.com) of 10 million health care workers by 2030. The HRIS was transaction based, making it difficult to curate data for decision-making. The system also lacked mobile integration, which hampered access to key information for employees on the move.
Redesigning the HIRS employee experience to make it available anywhere and at any time was vital for the NHG to build a future-ready and digitally enabled workforce. The transformation would also lay the foundation for the NHG to strengthen its organizational capabilities and improve the quality of collaboration between functions.
The team reimagined new ways of working by leveraging IBM Process Taxonomy with end-to-end process maps to drive harmonization across entities and challenge the NHG status quo. The taxonomy consists of 150+ process maps that are organized into function areas containing leading practices and embedded with SAP SuccessFactors Steps.
IBM worked with SAP and Synapxe to execute the HR transformation, dubbed iConnect@NHG, in two phases. The first phase, launched in January 2023, was focused on establishing a robust HR infrastructure to streamline processes and improve data accuracy using SAP SuccessFactors. The program succeeded with a 95% login rate from employees within the first two weeks.
In the first phase, the team aligned the HR vision for transformation through the lens of Envision Studio–an IBM methodology intended to drive alignment across leadership and key stakeholders—and set the guiding principle for the project from the beginning. This led to the set-up of an end-to-end simplified and harmonized process across all NHG institutions to elevate employee experience. To test drive the program, a change management office, consisting of 755 change champions, was empowered to activate new ways of working.
The centralized platform with self-service capabilities from SAP Workzone (link resides outside of ibm.com) and modules from SuccessFactors enabled the NHG employees to personalize workspaces tailored to individual employees’ and managers’ needs. The platform also allowed employees to gain access to data for decision-making, retrieve forms, submit claims, and track skills for career progression. By streamlining and optimizing the NHG core HR processes on the cloud-based architecture of SuccessFactors also enhanced data accuracy and reduced administrative overheads. The seamless integration of SuccessFactors across the NHG made it the single source of truth.
Phase 2, which went live progressively from November 2023, was focused on integrating advanced functionalities and analytics tools to augment the NHG HR ecosystem with advanced data analytics and comprehensive talent management functionalities. The inclusion of a dashboard for leaders provided deeper insights for better decision-making. The second phase continued to improve the NHG employee experience, but they weren’t the only ones to benefit from the transformation.
Using SuccessFactors for strategic workforce management, the NHG was able to improve employee experiences with a 98% favourable rating in the go-live campaign. As a result, this enabled employees to deliver better patient care. The streamlined HR processes reduced administrative overheads and improved data accuracy, with over 25,000 workflows delivered on iConnect@NHG monthly. Furthermore, mobile capabilities empowered employees to work beyond the hospital walls, out in the community.
NHG became the first public healthcare institution in Singapore to implement SAP Workzone, enabling collaboration among its employees. It is packed with essential information related to policy, benefits, news and more. NHG is also the first cluster in Public Healthcare Singapore to adopt Qualtrics for lifecycle and pulse survey, and also the first to implement SAP Analytic Cloud (SAC). The integration of SuccessFactors with SAC also provided the management team with deeper insights into data for better decision-making.
The relationship-based HR solution also enabled the NHG leaders to strengthen engagement with staff through regular feedback, which reflected in stronger performance management reviews and became a key talent retention tool.
The optimized workforce management with iConnect@NHG thus became a catalyst for improving patient care through empowered employees.
The National Healthcare Group (NHG) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a leader in public healthcare in Singapore and has more than 20,000 healthcare professionals. The group provides comprehensive, holistic and innovative clinical services through an integrated system of primary care polyclinics, acute care tertiary hospitals, community hospitals, national specialty centres and community-based ambulatory care centres. The NHG is also establishing itself as an academic institute focusing on clinical excellence and research. As the Regional Health Manager for 1.5 million residents in Central and North Singapore, the NHG collaborates with community health workers, social care providers and private general practitioners.
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