Amazing workplace:
 St John of God Health Care
We were very proud to include St John of God Health Care as the key Sponsor of the recent Australian Regional Women Leaders Convention. Equally, the people at St John of God Health Care have a lot to be proud of. The gender split within the organisation belies the ‘usual’ corporate distribution of seniority; 70% of managers are female while 84% of all employees are women.
In the 1890s, a group of young Irish women toiled under the harsh glare of the Western Australian sun, providing nursing care in the chaos of the goldfields – a remote region where others daren’t go lest they breathe the typhoid-ridden air.
The inhospitable conditions would almost certainly have been considered at the time to be entirely unsuitable for the delicate hands and minds of women. Nonetheless, the group worked with an extraordinary strength and fortitude that belied their youth and gender-stereotype.
The women were the Sisters of St John of God and, for those in St John of God Health Care’s hospitals and offices for whom the glare now comes from fluorescent lights rather than the desert sun, the Sisters remain an inspiration whose legacy continues to flow throughout the organisation.
The work they began has grown to become one of Australia’s strongest private health care providers. The commitment to filling identified gaps in health care, as modelled by the Sisters, has meant the growth of a strong regional presence aligned with a vision to create the same quality and diversity of health care services in regional and rural communities as those available in metropolitan areas.
The instrumental roles played by St John of God Health Care’s hospitals in Bunbury and Ballarat in gaining Federal Government funding and support for comprehensive cancer centres in those regions are testament to the group’s commitment and support of regional Australia. These centres are the result of passionate campaigning, extensive consultation and co-cooperation, and – in Bunbury’s case – direct funding by St John of God Health Care, designed to ensure regional communities can access the best specialist cancer services close to home and family.
The group’s Warrnambool Hospital also continues its quest for a cancer centre under the determined hand of its chief executive officer Glyn Palmer, who recently recruited Liberal MP Joe Hockey to assist the cause.
St John of God Health Care’s Social Outreach and Advocacy program, which assists people experiencing disadvantage, is yet more evidence of its commitment to regional Australia. Services under this program are aimed, as with all the group’s enterprises, at filling gaps in health care and subsequently feature primarily in regional areas.
The outreach services provided include specialist post-natal depression and/or mental health and drug and alcohol services in Bunbury, Geraldton, Warrnambool, Geelong and Ballarat; housing programs for homeless youth in Geraldton, Bunbury, Bendigo and Geelong and maternal health/parenting programs in 13 Aboriginal communities in the Kimberley, Pilbara, Midwest and Gascoyne regions of Western Australia. St John of God Health Care provides the services for free or at minimal cost. Since the program’s inception in 2002, the group has dedicated more than $121 million, including partnership funding, to Social Outreach and Advocacy services.
The pioneering spirit on which St John of God Health Care is based is not, however, limited to services provided or geographical reach. It also extends to its treatment of its caregivers, as it calls employees, and, most specifically, the strong focus on developing female leadership. The gender split within the organisation belies the ‘usual’ corporate distribution of seniority; 70 per cent of managers are female while 84 per cent of all employees are women.
By the end of 2009, the group had achieved a pay equity gap of 10% over all caregivers across the organisation, compared with the ABS recorded Australia-wide gap of 17%. In 2009, the group’s success in supporting women in the workplace was rewarded with the receipt of an eighth consecutive Australian Government Employer of Choice for Women award.
The common theme within this innovative organisation is that of care: caring for those who live far away from cities, caring for those whose needs would otherwise be ignored, and caring for those who provide this care to others. In so doing, St John of God Health Care continues to reflect the great strength of its humble beginnings and founders.
As with the Sisters of St John of God, providing nursing care in the chaos and torridity of the 1890s Gold Rush, St John of God Health Care continues to be an organisation which aims, and succeeds, in truly making a difference in the lives of those under its compassionate care.
Learn more about St John of God Health Care here.
For further information on St John of God Health Care, please contact Fiona Clark on (08) 9213 3662 or via email.
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