How North Simcoe Muskoka’s largest hospital learns about workplace diversity

At a time when Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie, Ontario, was undergoing significant expansion and hiring, human resources leaders identified a need for diversity and inclusion training.

Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre began as a small-town hospital over 100 years ago. Over the century, the hospital grew along with the region’s population. It expanded into a multi-faceted healthcare centre with approximately 2500 staff, 400 physicians and 800 volunteers serving approximately 500,000 residents of the North Simcoe Muskoka region.

With their staff and clientele becoming increasingly diverse, RVH needed a learning solution they could deploy quickly.

“We explored options to provide our leaders with workplace diversity training. The rapid growth of our team, coupled with the growing population of Barrie and its surrounding areas, meant more diverse employees and patients,” said Kim Townes, Director, HR for RVH.

After looking at several colleges and universities that offer courses on cross-cultural communication and diversity and inclusion, they discovered the TRIEC Campus online learning hub. The Human Resources team at RVH began by reviewing the entire suite of e-learning courses and modules offered in Campus to evaluate which courses suited their needs.

Rapid Growth Means a Growing Need for Learning

Between December 2015 and March 2016, some 100 RVH leaders used TRIEC Campus e-learning to improve their awareness of workplace diversity for recruitment, communication, leadership and conflict resolution. The training is now a mandatory part of onboarding practice for leaders.

This is important to RVH: as they hire more internationally trained doctors and nurses they want to focus not on where their experience is from, but how it supports their patients.

“As our teams and patients grow more diverse, we needed a better understanding about cultural differences, recruiting from diverse talent pools and to learn more about conflict resolution from a multi-cultural perspective.

“Being in a smaller city like Barrie, we enjoy the flexibility to access TRIEC Campus on-site or off-site, without a need to travel to a classroom, or bring in an instructor. The videos were very helpful and provided good examples of the types of language to use and how to approach similar situations.” said Townes.

“TRIEC Campus has helped leaders feel more comfortable speaking about diversity,” Townes added, “It’s empowered them to be stronger leaders.”

What’s next for the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre?

RVH is looking to other healthcare providers in Ontario to see how they approach Diversity & Inclusion, as they develop their own action plan. The team is launching its diversity and inclusion council with subcommittees that would cover all diversity groups: LGBTQ, aboriginal, people with disabilities and introduce a number of new initiatives.

“We’re focusing now on setting our action plan and goals. What we know for sure is that we would like to utilize TRIEC as our partner in connecting with other organizations.”