Home care organisation Vivium runs all screws

2015 – Vivium delivers home care and care at nursing homes with almost 4,000 employees and volunteers.
On the website www.nieuworganiseren.nu * you can find an article about this organisation, ‘Vivium draait alle schroeven los’) (‘Vivium runs all screws’) (August, 2015) which is summarized below. 

Workplace innovation
Since about three years parts of the organisation have been working in self-managing teams and it is intended that the whole organisation will be operating in self-managing teams. Also, all processes and IT systems are renewed, thus creating the feeling that everything is called into question (‘running all screws’).
The overall aim is to create a flexible organisation in such a way that it can respond quickly and appropriately to any changes that will arise in the future. One of the sub goals is to reduce bureaucracy. 

Driver
The sector is changing very rapidly. More and more the business model is: purchasing of care by the client him or herself. This client will become more and more critical. To this, the organisation must be able to adapt continuously. 

Approach
The employees are involved in the change process, they have discussed the strategy in World Cafés. Together they determined their most important values: professionalism, confidence, connection. 

Results
In the Vivium divisions where self-managing is already introduced the number of managers reduced dramatically: to manage 6 care centers and 18 home care teams (12-15 employees each) there is one Director and one Site Manager.
Bureaucracy is reduced as well: the number of documents went from 2400 to 200. 

Lessons learned
At the start some employees or teams do not like to be self-managing. But most people and teams grow into it. People get more comfortable when they understand that they need not take the responsibility for all tasks to be done, but that tasks can be distributed to everyone’s strengths and preferences. 

Reference
‘Vivium draait alle schroeven los’.  August 2015. See:
https://www.nieuworganiseren.nu/cases/vivium-draait-alle-schroeven-los/Â