Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 27 September
September 27, 2024
The NHS Staff Survey is the largest single workforce survey in the world and is carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. It is the primary method of listening to staff and is aligned the NHS People Promise.
The Staff Survey helps us as a Trust to understand what it is like for colleagues across different parts of the organisation and work to make improvements and ultimately help to improve patient care. For SWB to implement the changes required to make our organisation the best lived experience for all our colleagues it is important that we hear all voices, that is why having your say does count. This year’s survey launches on Monday 7 October and runs through October to the end of November.
We have acted on the feedback from last year’s Annual Staff Survey, we have taken action at Trust and local levels (Clinical Groups and Corporate Directorates) to improve the working lives of our people, and as a result we have seen in a significant increase in both our Pulse Survey response rates and Pulse Survey staff engagement scores. I wanted to share with you some examples of how we have acted on the feedback from last year’s survey.
Firstly, our ‘promise’ to improve teamwork , we have rolled out our compassionate ARC leadership programme and team effectiveness programmes across the organisation and we now have 320 leaders have fully completed phase one of our ARC Leadership programme and 630 colleagues have attended the ARC Compassionate Caregiver course, an outstanding achievement given getting ready to move to MMUH .
Our ‘promise’ to improve our wellbeing programme has seen us launch the New Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and our first “Benefits and Beyond” events were held in July 2024. This showcased our holistic staff wellbeing, reward (benefits), recognition and development offer. In addition, our new Learning & Organisation Development prospectus was launched in July 2024 in response to your feedback and we have developed guidance on having one-to-one conversations.
Our promise to implement our EDI priorities , we have reinvigorated our staff networks, an Inclusive Resourcing and Talent Management Group has been established to support the work required to ensure that our recruitment processes are transparent and equitable and we have commenced our first inclusive talent management programme.
Our promise to lead from the top has seen us appoint an executive and non-executive sponsor to each of our staff networks – who will support and champion their work at Board level
We made a promise to support our line managers so that they have clear PDR objective for strengthening staff engagement , through role-modelling compassionate, restorative, and inclusive leadership behaviour, our PDR process has been updated to include a standard objective for all managers to embed this within their teams.
Finally, our promise to establish our People Engagement Teams has got off to a fantastic start, each Clinical Group now has a People Engagement Team in place who are responsible for supporting and driving staff survey response rates, as well as developing and implementing improvement actions in response to feedback. The People Engagement Teams have identified a range of high-impact actions in response to the specific staff survey feedback received within their Groups. A lot of work has taken place to make the improvements that matter at a local level and I would like to thank all those driving this work.
This shows a snapshot of the work against People Promises to date if you would like to find out more please link to People Corporate Objectives and actions here
We know and appreciate that everyone is extremely busy at the moment with the opening of Midland Met, but please do take the time to complete your staff survey so we can hear about what the experience of working at SWB is like for you and what can be done to make the workplace a good place for everyone. The changes to clinical services from both a community and acute perspective that MMUH brings, should be seen as a launchpad for improving staff engagement.
Last year we had our lowest ever response rate of just 29 per cent – so let’s improve on this and make it our best response rate. A high response rate means we are hearing a wider range of voices, which increases the reliability of the data we use to inform the improvements we need to make. It helps us ensure we’re doing that right things that will matter to you.
The survey is being run by Picker and most staff will receive it via e-mail – please click the link to open and complete the survey.
Porters, Catering and Ward Services staff will receive a paper copy of the survey.
Your responses are completely confidential and anonymous. It only takes 15 minutes to complete, and the closing date is Friday 29 November.