The Hospital for Sick Children Workplace Strategy

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is a pediatric teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. It integrates care, research and teaching to improve the health of Canada’s children.

SickKids asked HOK to develop a workplace strategy that would inform the design of a new office building that would meet the needs of its staff and mission.

HOK’s consultants studied SickKids’ workplace requirements, work processes, culture and organizational structure. To do this the team conducted interviews and led discovery and ideation workshops with executives, doctors, clinicians and 200 administrative staff members. Surveys on employee work styles, culture diagnostic tools and a space utilization study brought rigor to the analysis. HOK’s team used this data to create different scenarios, each with a financial benefit-cost analysis.

The team’s evidence-based research on SickKids’ organization and needs, along with its knowledge about workplace best practices and benchmarking data, enabled the hospital’s leaders to make informed decisions about the size, design and construction model for a new building that fit within the budget and funding model.

HOK also provided a change management framework that SickKids used to help its employees understand, feel ownership for and succeed in their new workplace.