Monthly archives: March 2024

Healthcare Science Week: 11- 15 March

Healthcare Science Week runs from Monday 11 March through to Friday 15 March. Healthcare Science Week brings together over 50 scientific specialisms and professional groups to celebrate and raise awareness of this diverse NHS workforce. Over the last 75 years, NHS healthcare science has played a vital role in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease and the health of our population. Healthcare Science Week is an opportunity to showcase this work and inspire the scientific workforce of the future.

As part of the week, the team is hosting a ‘ Healthcare Science Innovation’ event on Friday 15 March from 12.45pm – 3.15pm in Sandwell Education Centre.

The event will focus on promoting the work within different specialties in healthcare science within the Trust.

To see a schedule of the day, please click here

If you would like to attend the event, either in person or via Microsoft Teams please contact John Hayman to book your slot.

Get involved with agile working

As part of the agile working plans we understand the importance of providing spaces where colleagues can retreat from their desks for a quiet conversation, make a call, or join a Teams meeting without interruptions. This is why we’re seeking your feedback on three key pieces of furniture that we’re considering for our agile working spaces alongside conventional desks.

You can find these furniture pieces conveniently located at the Birmingham Treatment Centre on the first floor, just behind the vending machines at the top of the escalators.

We invite you to take a moment out of your day to test each piece and share your thoughts with us.

Please note, these are not replacements for desks and workstations, they are simply to be used to take a call or join a teams meeting for a short period. Final covering fabric will be fully compliant with infection control standards. Sample fabrics on display may differ.

Complete the survey on the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GGQXZBS

Your responses will remain confidential, and your input will be instrumental in making our workplace more conducive to collaboration, focus, and wellbeing.

NHS Finance – Paid work experience placement opportunity for year 13 students

The NHS finance insights placement scheme is now available for any year 13 students from low-income families in the Midlands.

If you have a child that is interested in a career in Finance, within the NHS, then please visit the information pack here.

The closing date for applications is 5 pm Friday 24 May 2024

Ramadan: Supporting colleagues who are fasting

Fasting plays an important role in many major religions and is a central feature in all the Abrahamic faiths. In Islam, adult Muslims, who are able to, are required to fast during the month of Ramadan.

Advice for line managers:

1. Do not make assumptions about who in your team may be observing Ramadan – Islam is a faith that welcomes people of all races and backgrounds.
2. Observing Ramadan may not be noticeable so make it easy for your team members to let you know if they are fasting.
3. If you manage a colleague who will be observing Ramadan, ensure you have some one-to-one time to discuss any workplace adjustments that can be considered.
4. Fasting can affect people in different ways (for example, some people may understandably become a little quieter or slightly tired at times, even though most staff have fed back that their productivity increased after the first few days).
5. Dignity and respect from managers and colleagues are helpful and expected. Be aware that fasting colleagues will not even be drinking any fluid (including water) and they may therefore feel less energetic and even less inclined to join in office conversations on occasions – don’t take it personally and ensure communication can be made in other ways where possible.
6. Workplace adjustments should not impact negatively on patient care. Managers and their colleagues can discuss and consider options such as occasional working from home where appropriate to the role and individual circumstances, core hour working where time can be made up in lieu, and provision for paid and unpaid leave where viable. When Ramadan falls in the summer months it can be particularly challenging, as the days are longer.
7. If members of the team observing Ramadan feel comfortable doing so, encourage them to give short presentations and encourage normal discussions about Ramadan and how the team can best support them.
8. Colleagues who are fasting will not expect others, who are not observing Ramadan to do the same, so please don’t feel anxious about making a cup of tea for the team or eating your lunch. However, please be sensitive by not continually offering them a food and drink.
9. You may find that some colleagues request up two weeks annual leave towards the end of Ramadan to help focus on and intensify their acts of worship. This should be treated as any other annual leave request, therefore managers should use their judgement to ensure that negative impact on the team and patient care is mitigated against but should try and accommodate as fully as possible.
10. Please ensure colleagues have reasonable time during the day to complete prayers and an appropriate space is allocated for this purpose.
11. If the prayer room will be closed for cleaning or for some other reason please ensure that staff are given enough notice, and reasonable alternative facilities have been provided during the closure. 

For more information about Ramadan, please visit the NHS Guidance here.

Flexible Working at SWB

Flexible working is defined as “An arrangement which supports an individual to have a greater choice in when, where and how they work”.

An effective flexible working arrangement balances the needs of the individual, with the ability to deliver safe, high-quality services, and good patient experience and considers the work-life balance of the wider team.  It can help to improve work-life balance, health, and wellbeing, reduce turnover, sickness absence, and bank & agency costs, and recruit and retain a more diverse range of colleagues.

Anyone can apply regardless of their length of service, job role/grade/department, or their reason for wanting flexible working. Whilst it may not be possible to support all flexible working requests in every situation, requests will be carefully considered.

To support this, it is important that colleagues can have an open and constructive conversation about flexible working with their manager. By creatively exploring ways in which an individual can be supported to work flexibly and meaningfully considering any compromises (on either part), it is often possible to find a solution that works for all parties.

There are a range of resources available on Connect to help you understand more about flexible working: Flexible Working (swbh.nhs.uk)

• Flexible Working Policy: All requests will be seriously considered in line with the process set out in the policy.
• Flexible Working Myths: There are many myths around flexible working – which ones do you recognise?
• ESR Flexible Working Applications: Applications for Flexible working should be made and responded to via ESR. See guidance on how to create and respond to a request here: Employee Self Service (swbh.nhs.uk)  Microsoft Word – MSS – Processing Flexible Working Requests updated 120123 (swbh.nhs.uk)
• NHSE Manager and Individual Flexible Working Toolkits: Toolkits to help colleagues think through how to make a successful request and to help managers know what to consider.
• Line Manager guides: a range of guides have been created in response to feedback. These include: Managing Multiple Flexible Working requests, How to review an existing Flexible Working arrangement, Designing Flexible jobs.

Have you thought about joining our ARC Compassionate Caregiver (Team Member) development session?

The compassionate caregiver (team member) module is now being offered to all colleagues at Band 6 and below who do not have any line management responsibility. This module is for you whether you are a clinical or non-clinical staff member. The module is part of our wider Trust ARC Leadership Programme, and is being offered to all colleagues with no line management responsibility so that we can all understand the Trust’s priority for leadership development and our roles within that. Please could line managers book their Band 6 and below staff who do not have any line management responsibility, onto a cohort. Sessions can be booked via ESR. This can be done by searching in the Course Catalogue for ‘The Compassionate Caregiver’ and enrolling into a session or by following this link: The Compassionate Caregiver Training

The ARC Leadership Programme will also be rolled out to managers – if you are a line manager you do not need to book a place – it is planned for all managers to be able to attend so opportunities for managers will be communicated separately. Our next training session – ‘team member (compassionate caregiver)’ aimed at colleagues at Band 6 and below with no line management responsibility is on Wednesday 28 February – for further details and to book via ESR please click here.

Further dates for the team member (compassionate caregiver) sessions can be found below:

• Friday 15 March, 9.45am -12pm, Postgraduate Centre, City
• Wednesday 20 March – online
• Tuesday 26 March, 9.45am -12pm, Sandwell Education Centre

Be sure to check out this video from Richard Beeken, Chief Executive talking about the programme and why it will benefit you.

For further details click here.

To find out more about the programme itself, please email richard.burnell@nhs.net.

Happy International Women’s Day

Today, we celebrate the strength, resilience, and achievements of women all around the world. But, most importantly, we celebrate the women here at the Trust.

Today is not only a celebration but a call to action.

It’s a reminder that we still have a long way to go in achieving gender quality and empowering women everywhere. As women, we must continue to challenge stereotypes, break down barriers, and create opportunities for women to thrive and succeed.

This year’s theme focused on ” Inspire Inclusion” which is proven in the video below, at the Trust we employ over 7,000 employees most of whom are women. These women, play a huge part in the everyday runnings of our hospital ranging from Doctors to Catering Assistants to Nurses and Chief Nurses.

Check out the video below to see how our women at the Trust inspire each other.

If you would like to be a part of the Women’s Network here at the Trust and connect with your colleagues, then please email Amber Markham, Chair of the Women’s Network.

Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 8 March

As I mentioned last week, my message today will focus on the results of the national staff survey and the pulse survey and what we will be doing with you, in response to the feedback, to make things better for all of our people.

As you will know, the annual staff survey runs in October every year and is an in depth look at how you feel about working at SWB, and then we have three pulse surveys (in January, April, and July) every year, which are shorter in length, and are designed to act as a ‘check in’ in between the annual survey.

In the annual survey, we had our lowest ever response rate of 29 per cent – this is 9 per cent less than 2022 and 15.5 per cent lower than the national average. You will all know how disappointed I was with this response rate, and a lot of the feedback I had was that you don’t feel the Trust does anything with the results.

I took this on board, and in the promotion of our January quarterly survey, we made our SWB Promise to you, that we would ACT (action changes things) on your feedback and the rest of my message will set out exactly what that means. The January survey had over a 40 per cent response rate, so we went from our worst to our best, within a matter of months – thank you to those you took the time to complete it.

As I have said multiple times in these messages and when I have spoken to you as groups or individuals, we don’t push for a higher response rate because it makes us look better, it’s because the staff survey gives us a great opportunity to better understand the experiences of our people; to hear about how you are all feeling, what works well, and most importantly what needs to improve. A higher response rate gives us more accurate information and therefore a stronger view of where to focus our efforts to make improvements.

So on with the results..

Starting with some positives:

• 70 per cent of colleagues agreed that care of patients and service users is our top priority – which is absolutely where it should be – I know each and every one of us comes to work to provide the very best care to those who need it.
• 55 per cent of colleagues would recommend SWB as a place to work – this has increased five per cent on last year’s results – many of you would have heard me say that this is one of the friendliest organisations I have ever worked in, so I was pleased to see this increase.
• We have increased both our staff engagement (6.6 in 2002 to 6.7 in 2023) and morale scores (5.6 in 2022 to 5.79 in 2023) whilst only slight increases, they are still moving in the right direction.

We have actually seen a small increase in most of our scores, in fact, amongst all of the questions, only 4 per cent have seen a slight decline.

This shows that some of the work we have done, since we introduced our People Plan last year, is working. However, when we compare against the national average, in 55 per cent of the results, we are significantly worse than other similar organisations – which tells me that we have a lot more work to do.

The table shows our scores against the seven people promises. The two areas which we scored lowest (when compared to the average) were ‘we are always learning’ and ‘we are compassionate and inclusive.’

Some of the themes that came through from the ‘free text’ comments were that you find it hard to access training. Within the Trust, we do have a protected training budget that is available for colleagues at all levels. I have asked our HR and comms team to see how they can make the process of accessing this easier and more widely known – but if you are struggling to undertake training, please discuss this with your line manager or our learning and development team, you don’t need to wait for your annual appraisal to have that discussion. We want SWB to be a place where everyone can flourish, and access to learning opportunities to essential to that.

Other areas in which our scores were lower than I would like were in the domains of ‘your managers’ and ‘your team’ meaning that in some (certainly not all) areas of the organisation, people have a poor experience with their managers and feel that their team don’t work well together, this is an area we need to improve, because, as we know, happy, engaged and professionally developed staff deliver better care.

As a direct result of your feedback in the staff survey, we have developed some people engagement objectives for 24/25. These are:

Improve teamwork
We will roll out our compassionate ARC leadership and team effectiveness programme across the organisation.

Improve our wellbeing programme
We will strengthen and enhance our health and wellbeing offer

Implement our EDI delivery priorities
Empower, equip, and enable our staff inclusion networks

Optimise the role and function of the EDI Team within the Trust

Deliver and embed a robust framework for inclusive recruitment

Launch a SWB inclusive Talent Management programme

Trust wide approach to improvement
We will implement the SWB Quality Improvement System, working with colleagues at all levels of the organisation

Support our line managers
All line managers will have a clear PDR objective for strengthening staff engagement, through roll-modelling compassionate, restorative and inclusive leadership behaviours

Establish our People Engagement Teams
Each group will have a People Engagement Team which will be made up of colleagues from a diverse range of roles, backgrounds, and levels. They will be responsible for supporting and championing the actions that are required to improve the experience for staff in their group.

Lead from the top
We will appoint an executive and non-executive inclusion champion for staff engagement and experience

For the first time, our clinical groups will be setting their own local objectives, the start of this will be when we launch our People Engagement Teams in a couple of weeks – if you are interested in being part of this work, please speak to your directorate leads.

Once agreed, these local objectives will be communicated with colleagues across the groups, and we will keep you regularly informed of progress – this is our SWB Promise to you.

Over the next couple of weeks, members of the executive team and I will be holding drop-in sessions and visits to areas to talk more about the results – please do keep an eye open for more details on this.

If you are interested in finding out more, you can read the full results here.

As always, thank you for your hard work, commitment, and dedication to SWB. I hope that the above message highlights that we are an organisation that does listen and does act upon your feedback.

Kind regards,

Richard

Job of the week: Band 3 opportunities in stock management

We’re expanding our materials management team and are looking for enthusiastic, reliable individuals to join our new “Scan4Safety” team across three City, Sandwell, and MMUH.

These band 3 roles offer full time and some part time (18.5 hours) opportunities. You’ll play a vital role in ensuring wards and departments have the necessary stock levels to provide safe and effective patient care.

What will you do?

• Use a handheld scanner (similar to the ones used in supermarkets) to manage stock levels through our new inventory management system.
• Build relationships with ward staff and support them with their stock needs.
• Unpack and organise stock in designated storerooms.

To apply for this role please click here.

This vacancy closes on Monday 18 March.

Want to find out more or would like to experience the role first hand? Email lisa.southall1@nhs.net or call ext. 4938.

Swallowing Awareness Day: 13 March

Swallowing Awareness Day raises awareness of dysphagia and the role of speech and language therapists in helping people living with eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties.

This year, we’re celebrating innovation in swallowing treatment. Why not pop by and meet our speech and language therapists in the main reception at Sandwell (by the lifts) from 1pm – 4pm. The team will also be covering the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) between 2.30pm – 3.30pm.

For more information please email danielle.godfrey2@nhs.net.