In Vevey, can a checklist make teamwork more reliable?
In the “Team Performance” programme at SHR — Swiss Human Resources, the reliability of collective work deserves to be distinguished from speed alone. The managerial question is specific: does a checklist used when a file passes between functions reduce omissions, or merely add another formality?
What the literature establishes
Alex Haynes, Thomas Weiser, William Berry, Stuart Lipsitz, Abdel-Hadi Breizat, Patchen Dellinger, Tejpal Herbosa, Sudhir Joseph, Pascience Kibatala, Marie Carmela Lapitan, Alan Merry, Krishna Moorthy, Richard Reznick, Bryce Taylor and Atul Gawande (2009, New England Journal of Medicine) studied the introduction of a surgical safety checklist across several hospitals. Their before-and-after comparison found a decrease in complications and mortality following the intervention. The approach combines safety checks with explicit exchanges between professionals: it is not simply a matter of distributing a form.
When rollout does not reproduce the result
David Urbach, Anand Govindarajan, Refik Saskin, Andrew Wilton and Nancy Baxter (2014, New England Journal of Medicine) examined the introduction of surgical checklists in Ontario hospitals. Their before-and-after comparison found no statistically significant reduction in operative mortality or complications. This finding usefully distinguishes institutional adoption of a tool from improvement that is actually measured.
The premature conclusion
Concluding that checklists always work, or that they are useless, would be equally excessive. These studies concern different contexts and different implementation arrangements. The managerial hypothesis to test is narrower: a collective check might prevent certain omissions if it takes place at the right moment and allows the file to be corrected in practice. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot promise
These before-and-after comparisons cannot conclusively isolate the checklist's own effect from that of concurrent changes. Surgical outcomes do not demonstrate a performance gain in an administrative or industrial team either. Finally, counting completed forms does not, on its own, establish the quality of the checks or the errors prevented.
A practical check in Vevey
In Vevey, with its global food industry, group headquarters and Riviera SMEs, an exercise in the “Team Performance” programme could focus on handing a product-change file from one function to another. During a baseline period and then a pilot period of equal length, the team records every file handed over and every file returned because mandatory information is missing; during the pilot, it uses a short shared checklist before handover. The indicator is the number of files returned for this reason divided by the total number handed over, using an unchanged definition and documented returns. Comparing files of similar complexity and also tracking processing time makes it possible to assess a local improvement without presenting it as causal proof. To go further: explore the Team Performance training in Vevey in the canton of Vaud, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Team Performance in Vevey
- team performance
- Vevey
- research
- training vevey