Standard Work Training Updated 9/25

Standard Work at the Q

Training Series

Revised 9/18/2025

Index

1. Is It Time For Change?

2. What is Continuous Improvement?

3. What is Standard Work?

4. Standard Work at the Q

5. How Standard Work Fits Into the Q

Is It Time For Change?

Creating a Culture of Positive Change

• Qsource's mission is deliver patient and provider focused solutions to improve the quality of healthcare in our communities.
• We fulfill this promise through promoting change and continuous improvement.
• Keeping true to this philosophy, we need to ask ourselves, "is it time for change?"

Qsource's Values

Should we be scared of change? Absolutely not! Instead, we should consider how our values reflect who we are as an organization.

Knowledge Should Be Shared

• To collectively apply the knowledge we have found, we must systematize everything we can by recording detailed procedures for doing things (our knowledge).
• This is why we ask you to create Standard Work for every function. As the saying goes, you can’t be promoted if you can’t be replaced.

Qsource's Values

Should we be scared of change? Absolutely not! Instead, we should consider how our values reflect who we are as an organization.

Solve Problems, Not Symptoms

• A problem is a difference between things as desired and things as perceived. To change either, you must get as close to the root definition of a problem as possible.
• This means asking lots of questions, usually starting with, “who has a problem?” And to solve real problems, not symptoms, we often ask “why?”.

Qsource's Values

Should we be scared of change? Absolutely not! Instead, we should consider how our values reflect who we are as an organization.

Customers Come First

• Our customers are so busy working IN their business that they often cannot prioritize working ON their business.
• We must do that for them, and as such, we must always strive to better empathize with and understand our customers. This means putting them first. And remember customers can be internal or external.

Qsource's Values

Should we be scared of change? Absolutely not! Instead, we should consider how our values reflect who we are as an organization.

Change is Good

• We believe that almost nothing is permanent. This is why we don’t complain when there's something we don’t like.
• Instead, we do something about it, remembering that the team comes before any individual employee. Continuous improvement starts with the right mindset.

• Knowledge

• Change

• Continuous Improvement

• Standard Work

After reading our values, are there some words or terms that stand out to you?

What is Continuous Improvement?

Continuous Improvement

Defining the Process

• Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organization—processes, tools, products, services, etc.
• Sometimes improvements are big, sometimes they are small.
• But what’s most important is they are frequent.

Continuous Improvement

Defining the Process

• Every solution that we create is based on incomplete information. In other words, "we don't know what we don't know."
• New information is created every single time we follow a process or procedure that’s been established. Ignoring new information results in wasted time and effort.

Continuous improvement stops the cycle of being reactive to problems and helps us be proactive to emerging issues.

What Does Continuous Improvement Look Like?

Everyone can share ideas

Great ideas can come from anywhere! Organizations that use continuous improvement welcomes and rewards suggestions for improvement from any associate who can improve an aspect of day-to-day practices.

We are encouraged to call attention to problems both big and small

Improvements may include solving bottlenecks, eliminating unnecessary steps, or improving technology. When we are empowered to look for improvements, it leads to significant change over time.

What Does Continuous Improvement Look Like?

Regular review of processes

Succesful organizations know that to stay ahead, they need to take a step back and examine their old and new processes. By regularly evaluating our methods, we can find areas for improvement and make sure we are always on top.

Organizations welcome process changes

Organizations build processes over time, but some may be outdated. If the organization does not encourage updates, processes that are no longer working may continue to cause problems. Continuous improvement welcomes change and eliminates process that no longer serve the organization's interests.

What is Standard Work?

• Working smarter, not harder

• Giving our customers what they want, when they want it

Standard work is a tool that helps us to ensure we complete the process the "best known way" everyday, every time.

How Standard Work Reflects our Values

Positive Change

Continuous Improvement

Knowledge Sharing

What Are the Benefits of Standard Work?

Or, what does standard work do for us?

Problems are exposed and identified

When we standardize, problems such as bottlenecks, communications, or workflows are easily seen and can be addressed.

Creates consistency and eliminates variation

Standard work creates reliable processes, and expected outcomes.

Knowledge is shared with others instead of "gatekeeping"

Standard work gives everyone equal access to critical tasks in the organization. So, when there is a coverage gap, another associate can step in to help.

Standard Work at the "Q"

How Does Standard Work Fit In at the Q?

Click on the purple stars to learn more

Where Do We Start?

Observe the Process

Standard Work is not Person Dependent

Does the Standard Exist?

Not everything will need standard work.

Standard work should be documented for tasks that are critical to contractual deliverables, or organizational needs. Time sensitive tasks should take priority in the development process.

Other considerations...

If there is a staff shortage, could someone else perform the task with minimal instruction? If the answer is no, a standard work process should be developed. A gap on your team should not mean a breakdown in routine tasks.

Components of Standard Work

What are we doing?

How are we doing it?

Asking the right questions

As we document our task, we need to know what resources we need, and steps we need to complete.

What task do we need to document?

• Standard work involves finding the best current method of completing a process and making that method the standard.
• An important point to keep in mind is that standard work is not static.
• You won’t develop standard work processes and then leave them in place forevermore. Rather, standard work is part of a continual improvement cycle.

Why are we doing it?

How long does it take?

We need to understand how long our task will take. Will you need to dedicate a few hours or a few minutes?

Our task may be related to contractual deliverables, or critical day to day operations that would suffer if there was a staffing gap.

After all this talk about continuous improvement and standard work, let's take a break and find a snack.

Who Wants a Cookie?

It's time for a quick break, and your team decides on having cookies. So, we find a recipe and it gives us instructions on how to bake ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookies. Let's go to the kitchen!

We found a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but our Head Chef is on a tropical vacation. So, now what? Our recipe is good, but we are not experienced chefs and we need more to work with. So, let's look at this recipe, step by step using standard work principles.

What could have went wrong?

• Oven temperature could have been too high.
• The cookies were in the oven too long.
• Ingredients were left out. It's not a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips!

Think about what could have happened if you didn't have a standard work process documented? Our final product could have turned out like this.

When we use standard work we achieve:

• Stability in our day-to-day work
• Saved time and resources
• Quality outcomes
• Improved job satisfaction

But, we had a standard work process and our cookies turned out like this.

How Standard Work Fits Into The Q

The new standard work system will move us from the current Quality Management System (QMS) to a curated collection of standard work and playbooks.

Why are we using standard work at the Q?

The standard work system will be located in Teams, making accessing documents easier and part of your day-to day routine.

You will have ownership of your team's work. We all have a critical role to play in the success of our organization and all of our work is valuable.

Step 1: Training

Directions and support will be provided by the PMO

Live training sessions will be offered to all departments

Annual training will be required for all associates

Standard work training will be offered to all associates

Click on the lightbulb for more info

Step 2: Department Champions

• Getting started with a new process is challenging. Even though the change is for the better, it still takes work to implement across the entire team.
• Change Champions are team members who volunteer or are selected to help communicate and collaborate with the team.
• Your selected champion will be your cheerleader throughout the process.

Step 3: Determine a Revision Schedule

• Standard work is required to be reviewed annually.
• Standard work should be revised if any changes have been made to the task and may impact the standard work process.
• The PMO recommends scheduling your annual review before the end of the fiscal year, ideally in either June or July depending on the best timing for your department.
• Click on the light bulb for more information

Step 4: Start Developing Standard Work

It's time to start developing standard work for your team

• Departments will develop their own standard work with support from the PMO as needed.
• After your team completes a standard work document, submit to your department or team lead for approval.

• Your department or team lead will post your standard work to the appropriate folder in Standard Work Team in Microsoft Teams.

Step 2: Department Champions

Remember that our ultimate goal is standard work ownership-once you own your process you can improve it.

Thank You!

If you have any questions, please email HR hr@qsource.org

How long does it take to complete the task?

Our original recipe directed us to bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes. But, we didn't know how long the entire process would take. Now, the enitre process has an estimated time of completion including baking time.

Who is assigned to the standard work process?

A standard work process should assign ownership to a specific person or role in the department.

Standard work gives the user step by step instructions to complete a task.

Step by step instructions give the user a clear workflow to complete an assigned task.

Key points explain how to perform each step.

Standard work should not only show us the steps in the process, it needs to tell us how to perform those steps. Step 1 tells us to "pre-heat oven", but the key point clarifies that the oven should be set at 365 degrees F.

Who is assigned to the standard work process?

A standard work process should assign ownership to a specific person or role in the department.

Bright Idea

The review and revision of standard work documents may be an ideal performance goal for all departments during the 2025 fiscal year.

Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing breaks down organizational silos, building a culture of quality, improvement and respect for our peers. When people have the opportunity to share their knowledge they are empowered to find areas for improvement, which allows us to "own" our roles within an organization.

What resources do we need to complete the task?

The original recipe listed all the ingredients we would need to make cookies, but it didn't list all the materials to complete the process. Our new standard work clearly outlines everything needed to get started.

What does the step look like?

For standard work, a picture can say more than words. Most people can grasp pictorial information more quickly and easily than written.

Positive Change

When we are empowered to focus and align our efforts, we can work together to change the status quo and produce consistent results. The phrase, "we have always done it that way, " should be replaced by, "how can we do it better?"

Observe the Process

• Agree on the best way to perform the process
• Document the standard work process
• Implement the standard
• Train everyone
• Set expectations

Who is Responsible?

• Standard work should not rely on one person--it is a team effort.
• Is the process breaking down at a certain point?

Who approved the process?

Standard work processes should be reviewed and approved by contract leads, or department leadership. In this case, Cookie Monster has approved our standard work.

Does the Standard Exist?

• Is the standard equal to an existing process?
• Does the existing process have areas of waste, or bottlenecks in the process?

What are we doing?

Our standard work process tells us exactly what we are doing. We are making chocolate chip cookies for our team.

What department is assigned to the standard work?

Standard work should state which department manages and owns the process. In this case, the Qsource Kitchen owns the task of baking cookies for the team.

When was the standard work created?

Documenting the date for your standard work tells you how current the process is, and if it might be time for a revision. Standard work processes should be audited annually, or anytime threre are changes to the task.

Continuous Improvement

We maintain our cars to keep them reliable, and we get annual checkups to ensure we are healthy, so why shouldn't we apply the same principle to the work we do everyday? Continuous improvement helps us ensure we have the best, most efficient way of working.