About
Founded in 1964, Ramsay Health Care is Australia’s largest private hospital provider, with more than 70 facilities and 35,000 people delivering care to over one million patients each year.
As part of its long‑term investment in people and culture, Ramsay set out to achieve something unprecedented: build a unified, enterprise-wide Leadership Academy at pace. Launched simultaneously across Australia, the Ramsay Leadership Academy has created momentum, connection and confidence at scale. It provides clear leadership pathways, a shared language and practical capability-building for leaders navigating continual transformation – while staying true to The Ramsay Way of people caring for people.
Ramsay was navigating increasing organisational complexity and cultural change. The organisation needed leaders who could operate with greater agility, enterprise thinking, collaboration and adaptability – capable of navigating ambiguity and transformation while staying true to ‘The Ramsay Way’ ethos of people caring for people.
Leadership development existed but was fragmented and inconsistent. It was clear a scalable, end‑to‑end approach was needed. Through robust stakeholder engagement, Ramsay identified core goals for the Leadership Academy:
- Immediate uplift in leadership capability and confidence, including people management, performance conversations and wellbeing.
- Consistent behaviours and shared leadership language, grounded in self-awareness, coaching and courageous conversations.
- Build a future ready leadership pipeline, to ensure succession readiness for future leaders.
- Stronger decision making and performance, aligned to Ramsay’s care-centred identity.
Ramsay’s ambition was to build a Leadership Academy to support approximately 3,000 leaders across Australia and make leadership development a strategic engine for organisational performance in times of ongoing change. To do this effectively, the Academy needed to meet leaders where they were, offer clear development pathways, and create a shared company-wide language and standard for leadership.
Ramsay partnered with Impact to design and deliver the Ramsay Australia Leadership Academy - a multi-level, integrated suite of distinct yet connected leadership programmes. Aligned to Ramsay’s purpose, strategic direction and future capability needs the Academy is grounded in the CARE Leadership Foundations and focused on practical, business-focused learning experiences that leaders could apply immediately in the workplace.
Impact and Ramsay worked at pace, using structured discovery - including stakeholder interviews, site-visits and co design workshops - to map the business needs and translate them into 10 core enterprise learning themes. A bold decision was made to launch all levels of the Academy simultaneously, creating momentum and engagement across the organisation. The Leadership Academy is made up of:
- Ignite: A virtual 4-6 week program on leadership fundamentals for new leaders.
- Empower: A virtual 6-8 week program helping experienced people leaders progress from competence to mastery.
- Amplify: A blended 8-10 week program for new leaders of leaders, to help them navigate increased complexity and leading through others.
- Inspire: A blended 10-12 week program for experienced leaders of leaders, integrating advanced diagnostics and strategic capability development.
- Transform: A blended 12-14 week program enabling executive leaders to courageously lead and deliver organisational strategy.
- 74% of managers report immediate, positive behavioural shifts in their leaders.
- Participants report a 20% increase in their overall confidence as a leader.
- 86% of participants report meaningful progress against their professional development goals.
At an organisational level, Ramsay's latest staff engagement survey showed a +6 lift in employee confidence in senior leadership, reinforcing trust and consistency across the business.
At the most senior level, live business projects within the Transform programme have contributed to tangible enterprise outcomes, including the launch of an AI chatbot to reduce demand on HR services and progress towards a stronger doctor value proposition.
“The Ramsay Leadership Academy has been fantastic. The CARE leadership foundations are a beneficial resource with clear prompts to help any level of leader. I have already shared learnings with my team and I would highly recommend the Academy to others.”
Nerida Russell‑Green, Director of Clinical Services, St George Private Hospital, NSW
The Ramsay Leadership Academy is now a cornerstone of the organisation’s investment in leadership capability - strengthening confidence, consistency and connection across leaders, and enabling Ramsay to continue delivering high‑quality, people‑centred care at scale.
The results of the review confirmed that the number of managers who present strategic and developing styles increased by over 20%. Moreover, the programme had a very positive impact on the inter-departmental / cross-functional cooperation, which is very important in such a large and diverse company as Polpharma."