Customer Stories
Ontario Chiropractic Association
How OnBoard Helped This Health Care Organization “Ease the Pains” of Governance
Customer Stories
How OnBoard Helped This Health Care Organization “Ease the Pains” of Governance
Industry: Association
Headquarters: Toronto
Board Management Goals
Results
The Challenges
Soon after Caroline Brereton took the helm as CEO of the Ontario Chiropractic Association (OCA) in 2018, she worked with Office Manager Deborah Gibson to replace the organization’s paper-based system to manage documents and other important information for the board of directors. Unfortunately, this platform did not work out well.
“Our previous platform was a challenge from the get-go,” Gibson says. “The concept was great, but it just didn’t work for us. I felt hopeless at every board meeting because many of the board members regularly had difficulties accessing the existing portal and their documents.”
The team had multiple challenges with this previous platform:
The Solution for Streamlining Board Book Preparation
The Ontario Chiropractic Association is a nonprofit, member-based association representing more than 80% of Ontario chiropractors. As a voluntary, professional association, OCA is governed by an elected board of directors. This 12-member group is supported by committees, the leadership team, and staff.
Streamlining the activities that went into board meeting preparation had long been a challenge for the team. In the past, OCA used a labor-intensive, paper-based system that relied on email, attachments, and paper.
A lot of paper.
“I would block off at least an afternoon to prepare the board books and get them out,” Gibson says. “I would run off 25 copies, collate them into binders, and then have the books delivered by courier to all board members. Depending on the meetings, some board books were a few hundred pages. They could be quite voluminous. Between the time lost and the expense of the paper and the couriers, it was all quite costly.”
With OnBoard, the entire board book production process is significantly streamlined.
"We were scheduled to vote for a chairperson for one of our committees, I was able to go into OnBoard, create a survey on the fly, and instantly share it with the members of the committee.
The Solution
With the Board of Directors having made a smooth and successful transition to OnBoard, Gibson next set her sights on organizing OCA’s advisory councils, board committees, and senior leadership team meetings in the platform as well. Documents are sometimes added on the fly while meetings are in progress, and members are given access quickly and without disruption.
She highlights how OnBoard has made the association more productive and efficient by sharing an example of using the survey function to elect a committee chairperson. Typically, they hold an election where candidates need to leave the room, and they take votes by a show of hands.
“We were scheduled to vote for a chairperson for one of our committees,” Gibson says. “I was able to go into OnBoard, create a survey on the fly, and instantly share it with the members of the committee. Committee members were able to vote privately and securely and the chairperson was elected within 15 minutes.”
Our CEO is very pleased with OnBoard! She finds it easy to use and can locate resource documents quickly.
The Results
After laboring so long under an intensive paper-based board preparation process and later with a cloud-based platform, OnBoard was a breath of fresh air for the organization.
Implementing OnBoard has helped Gibson and the OCA meet the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century health care.
Anecdotally, Gibson notes that board members come to meetings more prepared and ready to participate in the meetings. The same goes for the advisory councils, board committees, and senior leadership team meetings. Feedback from board members and the CEO has been extremely positive.
“Our CEO is very pleased with OnBoard!” Gibson says. “She finds it easy to use and can locate resource documents quickly. She doesn’t have to reach out to me quite as often for assistance to find the documents she needs.”
OnBoard combines the highest level of security with innovative features designed to optimize your board’s effectiveness. Start your journey and unlock unparalleled security, insights, and efficiency.
