Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 16 August
August 16, 2024
Earlier this year, we had the results of the 2023 annual staff survey, in which one of our lowest results was for the section entitled ‘We are always learning.’ This is one of the NHS People Promises, which has a core focus on ensuring everyone is supported to reach their potential through equal access to opportunities to learn and develop. This did surprise me somewhat, as for many years now, we have had a protected education budget, from which colleagues can access funding in order to take on learning opportunities. However, on speaking to people about this – it seems that the knowledge of where or how to access learning and development opportunities is not always well understood across the organisation and we need to do more to ensure staff have career conversations supported with credible career development plans as part of PDR processes.
In order to address this, our Learning and Organisation Development teams have worked together to produce our first ever Prospectus of Learning and Development .This is a comprehensive guide to learning opportunities, not only within SWB, but more widely across the NHS. There are opportunities for everyone – do take some time out to read through it. Each opportunity will signpost you to where to go to get further information and if you need support or have any queries please reach out to the Learning and Development team via swbh.landd@nhs.net. The prospectus is an evolving document and will be updated periodically to take account of new offers that become available within the Trust and locally or nationally.
It is an excellent tool to use to enable development conversations during the PDR process. Our Trust PDR process includes sections on career aspirations and development planning. There are updated guides on the PDR page on Connect to having these discussions so make sure you prepare for the discussion with your line manager about your development.
Whilst it has improved slightly, one of the poorer sub-scores on the staff survey relates to the quality of PDR discussions, so, if you are a line manager please refer to the updated guidance on Connect to help you and your staff to make the most of this discussion. Please do ensure that you familiarise yourself with the opportunities that are available within the prospectus as well.
Remember though – you don’t need to wait until your PDR to access learning and development opportunities – you can have that conversation anytime – and hopefully you will find this document helpful. Thank you to everyone who has inputted into it.
Next week is an extremely important week for us on our journey to opening the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital – and probably the most important Board meeting that my executive colleagues and I will ever participate in. On Wednesday, the Trust Board will come together to hear the clinical safety case to open the Midland Met. If all goes well, this will give us the go ahead for Midland Met to open to patients on 6 October – more on that in my Friday message next week.
The Executive Team has also been participating in walkabouts around the organisation to better understand how you are all feeling about the move and how ‘set we are for Midland Met.’ .This week Mel Roberts , Chief Nursing Officer and Liam Kennedy, Delivery Director for MMUH visited the AMU team at City Hospital and were impressed with the engagement and enthusiasm of colleagues there who are eagerly awaiting the opening date.
Please continue to tell us how you feel by taking this short temperature check.
You can also submit any questions, concerns or simply tell us what more information you need here.
You have all worked so hard to get us to this point – we really are on the home straight now – and judging by the recent Olympics – this is really where all the action takes place.
If you will be moving to Midland Met, or working from there some of the time, an important action we need you to take is to complete your online induction. So far 728 have completed theirs, so there are lots more to go. We estimate it will take around an hour and a half to complete – but is split into modules and doesn’t need to be done all in one go. More information is available here.
Have a good weekend