Heartbeat: Hello my name is… Meagan Fernandes
August 1, 2021
Meagan Fernandes has recently joined our workplace as deputy chief people officer. The chief people function supports development and implementation of a people strategy for sustainable and transformational services in the Trust, developing an inclusive and open culture, ensuring organisation wide change supporting our objectives and strategic goals in attraction, retention and engagement.
Meagan brings with her over 16 years’ experience within the field of people and organisational development across community mental health and commissioning services. Prior to joining the Trust, Meagan worked for Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust as the head of people and culture.
Meagan tells us more: “I am passionate about placing our patients at the heart of everything we do, to create an environment where colleagues feel safe to speak up and to enable learning so as to enhance patient care and staff experience. I am always keen to contribute as much as I can, to improve and develop services using evidence and best practice.”
The Trust’s focus on integrated care, public health regeneration and tackling poverty align with my Meagan’s own passion and commitment to tackle inequalities and to always look for opportunities to enable person centred outcomes for our patients, colleagues and communities.
She continued: “I feel strongly about the inequalities that we see within the local population and I believe my role will give me the opportunity, through the workforce transformation agenda, to really expand opportunities for those in under-represented groups to gain meaningful employment, to tackle poverty and as a system to collaborate in an integrated way, in ensuring we have the right workforce in place to meet the diverse needs of the population we serve.
“In my new role, I have responsibility for leading the HR, learning and development, organisation development, widening participation, occupational health, recruitment, workforce information, ESR, workforce transformation and equality, diversity and inclusion teams.
“My experience in transforming people services, leading workforce transformation including at systems level, and implementing evidencebased interventions to improve engagement, staff wellbeing and developing compassionate and inclusive cultures will be invaluable in supporting the Trust. I am looking forward to being a part of the journey towards recovery and restoration as well as developing our new People Plan, refreshing our values and behaviours and in transforming our leadership, culture and staff experience.”
Welcome to our #SWBfamily Meagan!