Professional Development Projects – Class of 2023

• By the end of the Fellowship, I will be armed with feedback from employees that will inform our internal training programs – Feedback will be used to create micro “communities” focused on various skillsets (personal/professional life). These communities will be built out to facilitate meaningful connection around common goals and provide access to resources/opportunities provided by my company and outside vendors.

• A “proof of concept” volunteer service outing will occur involving any interested Indianapolis-area Conga employees. We will partner with an organization that has a specific dedication to the betterment of Indianapolis. We will aim for this to be corporately sanctioned and sponsored, and to conduct the service day during a 4-8 hour window within a work day in early April. There will then be an optional employee happy-hour at the conclusion of the service outing.

• Everyone in my office has specific work to complete to assist in the betterment of patients’ lives, but poor communication leads to less efficiency, occasional mistakes, and frustration.  The staff will be able to quickly identify issues as they arise. This will be possible as a board in the breakroom will include “Frustrations in Focus” in which team members are encouraged to write specific barriers they often face that impede their ability to assist patients. By May, I expect that we will have completed 10 separate improvements or educations amongst the staff. These will be completed by employees from different areas of the office to improve integration amongst the team as a whole. As the solutions arise, these will be communicated via the already used daily email.

• Jobs in public health have been filled by people with passion and interest but possibly less formal public health training. Employees are hired for a specific job and there is no organizational approach to training and development to advance in a career or to be a part of advancing the field of public health. Lack of dedicated time, funding, or knowledge of what training opportunities are available, what skills are needed to advance in their career, and connection to other co-workers in a similar career position in other departments may contribute to this. This means that employees are not trained and equipped to address the diverse public health challenges that present themselves. Combined, this creates a less developed public health workforce, frustration about the lack of advancement opportunities, and a higher churn of employees. Because of my project, our staff will have a resource of funded and non-funded training and development opportunities that equip them to both be professional at their level and prepare for the next level.

• Communication is an obstacle in the state’s work with local partners that we believe is within our power to improve. My project will consist of a series of two focus groups led by one of our leaders with local partners where they will discuss and narrow the ways that the state organization can better communicate with them. The intent is to give these local partners the opportunity to communicate how they feel about us as a partner, and what opportunities exist for improvement in our communication style. After these two focus groups, we will send out a simple survey to all local partners to identify the best 1-3 ways that can better communicate with them.  In the end, we will have fostered a greater awareness within the agency and the business development team in particular of the landscape within which we operate (the state of Indiana), and of the ways that we can better support and communicate with our local partners.