Experiment Workplace Innovation in Elderly Care

By order of the Dutch national association for long term care, ActiZ, the Utrecht University of Applied Science has carried out an Experiment of Workplace Innovation for Elderly Care to develop a new innovative organizational design that is intended to improve the quality of care, work and efficiency. BrabantZorg, a large care provider in the South of the Netherlands, was the pilot organization for the experiment. The result is a general instrument that should enable other care providers to initiate a similar innovation process in their own organization. The experiment was finished in the summer of 2013.

The Experiment of Workplace Innovation is unique as the innovation is initiated and developed bottom up by the care professionals themselves together with the patients and/or their families. Managers, board and back-office are required to react on the change process started from the work floor and need to reflect upon their role and adapt it accordingly in order to facilitate the process. The project combines organizational design with change and implementation. The project consists of three pilots at three different nursing homes of BrabantZorg.