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
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 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.
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:
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:
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:
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.”
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