Staff Action Planning

Collaborative Staff Action Planning: How Ethelo generated optimized and cohesive organizational plans

The Pacific Region of the Department of Public Services and Procurement Canada faced challenges turning Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) results into actionable workplace wellness plans. To address this, they partnered with Ethelo, an online collaborative decision-making platform. Over 10 days, staff and management evaluated, discussed, and prioritized 31 potential action items. Ethelo’s algorithm analyzed billions of scenarios, identifying optimized, broadly supported plans. The process fostered high engagement, transparency, and buy-in, leading to effective, data-driven solutions. The success of this approach is now being shared at high-level government meetings, demonstrating its potential for wider public sector application.

7000+
viable scenarios

75%
average support

Annie Desgagnes

Regional Director, Pacific Region, Public Works Canada

The Government of Canada conducts a government-wide Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) every three years to gather feedback from public service employees about their workplace and job satisfaction. While the data collected is reliable and well-segmented, it often takes a long time to develop structured plans to address the issues identified. In 2014, the Pacific Region of the Department of Public Services and Procurement faced this challenge. They needed to create actionable plans to address persistent workplace wellness issues, such as absenteeism, identified in the PSES results. To tackle this, they turned to Ethelo, a platform designed to facilitate collaborative decision-making.

The Challenge

The 2014 PSES results for the Pacific Region highlighted several areas needing improvement, particularly in workplace wellness. The survey consisted of 106 questions, covering employee engagement, leadership, workforce, and workplace issues. The region had already conducted 19 in-person workshops to identify potential action items, resulting in a list of 31 possible actions. However, the challenge was to narrow down these options to a set of actionable plans that would have the greatest impact, be feasible to implement, and gain broad support from staff.

The Solution: Ethelo’s Collaborative Platform

Ethelo was brought in to facilitate a 10-day online collaboration between staff and management. The goal was to create pragmatic, widely supported action plans for four departments within the Pacific Region. Ethelo’s platform allowed staff to evaluate, discuss, and prioritize the 31 action items in a transparent and engaging manner.

Key Features of the Ethelo Platform:

Background Information: Each action item was accompanied by a detailed description, which could be expanded to include additional media, links, or facts. This ensured that participants had all the information they needed to make informed decisions.
Discussion Forum: Participants could share their thoughts, reply to comments, and “like” others’ contributions. This social-media-style dialogue allowed for a thorough and transparent discussion of each option.
Quantitative Evaluation: Participants rated each action item on a nine-point scale, providing measurable insight into the level of support or opposition for each option. Ethelo’s algorithm then analyzed these ratings to identify the most viable action plans.

The Process

In the first stage, management evaluated the 31 options according to 3 criteria; feasibility, impact, and cost. Then, management identified a minimum threshold for each criteria that an overall plant would have to meet.

Staff were then invited to participate in evaluating the options according to their preference. The consultation was designed to be anonymous to encourage open and honest participation. Staff were able to log in multiple times over the 10-day period to contribute to the discussion, learn from others, and adjust their views as needed. Ethelo aggregated the preferences hourly, publishing interim results that allowed participants to see how the action plans were taking shape in real-time.

Key Outcomes:

High Engagement: On average, each participant spent 45 minutes on the platform, posting over 7 comments and generating over 1,000 “likes.” The discussion quality was high, with 60% of comments receiving likes and 8% generating replies. The overall tone of the conversation was positive, with no need for moderator intervention.
Optimized Action Plans: Ethelo’s algorithm analyzed over 2 billion potential combinations of action items, applying pre-agreed criteria for viability (overall benefit, feasibility, and cost). From these, it identified nearly 7,000 viable scenarios that met management requirements. The final action plans were not only strongly supported by both staff and management, but also optimized for broad cohesion, minimizing dissent.
Increased Buy-In: The process fostered a sense of joint ownership between employees and management. Staff appreciated the opportunity to contribute their ideas and see how their input shaped the final plans.

Results and Feedback

At the end of the consultation, Ethelo delivered four highly optimized action plans for the Pacific Region’s departments. The plans were well-supported by staff and aligned with both regional and national objectives as determined by management. Management highlighted the transparency and inclusivity of the process as key factors in its success.

Participant Feedback:

“I liked that this wasn’t simply a ‘rate from 1-10’ exercise.”
“Great to be able to see input from colleagues.”
“I appreciated the ability to add comments for clarification.”
“I like that we are actually being asked what we think, and the comments forum to hear what our colleagues think is great!”

Conclusion

The Ethelo platform proved to be an effective tool for collaborative staff action planning. By combining social-media-style dialogue with advanced algorithmic analysis, it enabled the Pacific Region to create actionable, widely supported plans in a transparent and inclusive manner. The process not only addressed the immediate challenges identified in the PSES but also fostered greater unity and buy-in among staff. As a result, Ethelo’s approach is being presented at high-level government meetings, showcasing its potential for broader application within the public service.

“The staff engagement process was successful in creating optimal action plans. Using Ethelo brought transparency and inclusivity to the process. One of the major contributions of the platform was to enable joint plan ownership between management employees and management.”