Cerebral Palsy Alliance
Voice Project has been working with Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) since 2002. In that time we have been privileged to witness the Cerebral Palsy Alliance develop many creative solutions to human resources and management issues.
About Cerebral Palsy Alliance
CPA was founded in 1945, and has since risen to become the
largest provider of services, information and support to people with
Cerebral Palsy in NSW and the ACT. It is one of the oldest organisations of
its kind in the world. It employs over 800 staff and over 1,000 volunteers,
servicing over 3,700 families with multiple programs across 70 locations on
a statewide budget of $58 million.
Why did CPA Decide to Survey Their Staff?
After running two client surveys, CPA's Executive Leadership Team realised
that they needed to know more about their organisation, they needed the
full equation! It was ground level staff who dealt with the clients every
day, how were their experiences of CPA impacting on the success of CPA?
Voice Project
One of our senior consultants helped CPA create their own unique diagnosis
of their staff in a very short space of time. We were also able to offer
use of our standard survey and industry data to create results that
benchmarked CPA with other not-for-profit organisations.
Result of running the survey
Frank Sedmak, General Manager, People, Learning & Culture, tells us
that when CPA first conducted the survey they were surprised to learn that
staff had concerns that the organisation was not financially stable. This
was despite the fact that CPA had excellent growth projections for the
future! It seemed that CPA had not communicated their success effectively
to staff. So a decision was made to address staff concerns. The following
year, using almost the same survey, staff reported a significant increase
in satisfaction with CPA's financial position. In fact, staff reported an
increase in satisfaction across all areas!
Communication improvements
From 2002 to 2005, CPA experienced significant improvement
in many areas covered by the survey, particularly around communication,
which rose significantly. They achieved these results through communication
workshops involving 30 staff from various levels of the organisation. These
staff were trained and given all necessary resources and materials to
facilitate the workshops and progress was communicated to all staff via a
monthly newsletter - another communication initiative. In addition to all
this, CPA recently added monthly staff social events to their calendar.
What the Client had to Say
"The people at executive management level felt very comfortable with the
results of the surveys. They felt that the results were an accurate
reflection of where we were at. Because of the accuracy, they have become a
key part of the way we manage our strategies".
- Frank Sedmak, General Manager, People, Learning & Culture