Maarten Brandwijk and Didi Vlaar, JGZ Zuid-Holland West, share their experiences
JGZ Zuid-Holland West is responsible for youth health care in a region that includes major cities such as Zoetermeer, Westland, and Delft. The organization advises and guides children and adolescents as they grow up and supports parents in raising their children through health clinics, schools, and home visits. The goal is for JGZ to keep track of all children in the region, both those who are doing well and those who need extra attention.
“In the EscuLine Dashboard, the teams find the key performance metrics that are important to them: reach, staffing levels relative to the budget, and absenteeism.”
In 2018, all 24 teams were formed, and a transition toward self-organization began. Each team was given its own budget: an overview of the team budget, staffing levels, and the results to be achieved. Within established frameworks, each team has the freedom to achieve its results as it sees fit. However, that freedom also requires reliable and accessible management information.
The decision to choose EscuLine (part of SureSync) aligned directly with JGZ’s change agenda. In the words of Maarten Brandwijk: EscuLine understood the need and collaborated on the solution. To avoid overburdening the teams during this transition phase, JGZ and EscuLine opted for two development rounds: first a basic version, then refinement based on input from the project members.
The final version of the dashboard was ready in January 2020. Each team has two people with access. Didi Vlaar, who had already gained experience with the tool through her involvement in the implementation, took charge of training the end users together with the controller. This turned out to be a customized process: some colleagues picked it up right away, while others needed more guidance and had less experience translating numbers into decisions. Implementation takes time and requires ongoing communication, even after the system goes live.
Through the Teammonitor, teams benchmark themselves against other teams and the organization as a whole. This helps them find a balance between the human side of the work and their business responsibilities.
Now that the dashboard is operational, JGZ is working on making information flows accessible to the support service via the same platform. In addition, an innovative project is underway that uses machine learning to enable more preventive action—a concrete next step in the organization’s data-driven approach.