Over the past six months, there have been many significant changes at Fenway Health. Our management team, staff, Board, and wider community have come together to find ways to improve our organization and help Fenway become a more inclusive, diverse, and safe environment for all. Let’s take a look at some of the important work that has been done in the past half a year to Move Fenway Forward.
Listening Session Report
Members of our Board of Directors sat down with more than 150 employees during nine sessions across four locations and listened to the challenges and rewards of their work. Both staff and Board members were given a comprehensive written report of the learnings from the listening sessions. This detailed review of comments and suggestions from the sessions is a helpful tool for planning changes and new initiatives in the months and years ahead.
Organizational Changes
We’ve made some major changes to our organizational chart, particularly on the Management Team level. In January, we appointed our Interim CEO Darlene Stromstad. We also appointed Jane Powers, former Director of Behavioral Health, as Interim Chief of Staff.
We created a new Senior Level Chief Human Resource Officer position, which will report to the CEO. A search committee was formed and is working with search firm Zurick-Davis to find the right candidate. Zurick-Davis also met with many staff members to get their feedback on what sort of candidate is best for the CHRO position. Another new position, Chief Diversity Officer, has also been created and will report directly to the CEO.
Corporate compliance will now be a discrete job function reporting to the CEO through the oversight of Jane Powers and will have a direct relationship to the Board. A full-time Corporate Compliance Officer will be hired by the permanent CEO, and a consulting agreement will be implemented in the interim. A firm has been selected to manage the Compliance review.
To ensure proper alignment of clinical care and to meet all regulatory requirements, three clinical leaders will have a matrix reporting relationship with Fenway’s Medical Director: Director of Dentistry, Director of Optometry and Director of Pharmacy. These individuals and the retail side of their departments will continue to report operationally to Vice President of Finance and Administration. Additionally, an external review of The Fenway Institute’s internal reporting relationship to Fenway Health will be conducted, and short term strategic initiatives will be identified and implemented.
New Initiatives
With the help of vendor Red Flag Reporting, we established an independently-managed compliance hotline in April. This new system has dual reporting capabilities to both the Compliance Officer and the Board and allows employees to anonymously report any concerns. All Fenway Health staff members have attended mandatory training on sexual harassment and bullying. An extensive workplace security analysis is in the works, with all Fenway Health, AIDS Action and Boomerangs sites being reviewed for any additional security needs.
Management continues to work closely with our Employee Resource Group, the Racial Justice and Equity Collaborative, to create a more inclusive and diverse Fenway. This is part of our overall goal to build a truly culturally competent organization. A newly established Employee Advisory Council, made up of employees from all departments and a wide variety of positions, meets monthly to advise management on organization policies. We’ve recently completed an annual salary survey for all levels of the organization to ensure that our employee compensation is competitive in the marketplace. In the coming weeks, we’ll be testing our salary structure to look for any discrepancies on the basis of gender, race or age.
Board of Directors and CEO Search
Search firm Heidrick & Struggles has been selected to lead the search for a permanent CEO, and is working closely with a search committee made of Board and staff members. An outside law firm was hired to review all policies, practices and procedures to ensure we are using best practices. We also established the [email protected] email account to gather internal and external feedback on how Fenway Health is doing.
Our Board member went through extensive training and review of all fiduciary responsibilities and governance structures, covering conflicts of interest and the role of the Board and updates were made to the bylaws. Directors will also participate in sexual harassment and bullying training in the coming months. A number of Board members are retiring or stepping down at the end of our fiscal year (June 30) and a new Board, which we believe is the most diverse ever, has been recently announced with 10 new members.
We thank everyone – our staff, patients, Board, donors, and community members – for their continued support of Fenway Health over the past six months, and we’re excited to continue to Move Fenway Forward in the months to come.