Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 2 April
April 2, 2021
Colleagues
A fairly short Friday message from me this week, to compensate for my fairly verbose recent offerings. I do hope those pieces resonated with you, however.
This week, I focus on the results of the NHS Staff Survey for our Trust. They are disappointing, in that, with the exception of the area of staff opinion about the quality of the care we provide and protection of staff from violence, the results have slipped again for the 4th year running and we remain lower than average for our peer group of acute and community Trusts.
The CQC and our own Trust Board treat the results of the staff survey very seriously. We understand that it remains a very good indicator of organisational health and can also be an indicator as to the quality of our services. After all, happy, engaged and professionally developed staff deliver good care. With the focus greater than ever before on our staff after the awful year of the COVID pandemic, we do not want to take you for granted. We want to know what matters to you and we want to try to deliver it.
So what are we doing about it? We are:
Embedding and developing our health and wellbeing offer to you, developed and improved during the course of the pandemic. This will be sustained and improved and any views from you on how we can improve this, are very welcome
Rolling out best practice with regard to equality, diversity and inclusion. Too many colleagues with a disability or from a black or Asian ethnic background suffer detriment with regard to career advancement or professional development. This cannot be acceptable in 21st century public service. Help us to stamp this out wherever it happens
Improving team communication – not by sending out more centrally produced corporate messages, but by using new techniques to ensure you and your line managers have meaningful conversations about what is going on in the organisation and in reverse, feedback concerns or ideas to senior leaders
Line manager development – linked to the above, in some ways. The job of NHS leadership has changed beyond recognition since I joined the service in 1994. It is a much more three dimensional and complex job than it once was. We must equip all our leaders and managers with the right skills to lead the service in our new context, with the right values
Do let us know your views on how we can improve engagement and morale in our Trust. We will be stepping up the “you said….we did” approach, so don’t be shy!
Now we have reached April, it is time once again to share Dr Makwana’s latest dance moves in his April’s monthly Dance 4 Wellbeing, where this time he is joined by colleagues Dinah McLannahan, Chief Finance Officer, and Martin Sadler, Chief Informatics Officer. If you do nothing else please watch and ‘like’ the video but of course, Nick’s real purpose behind his dance is to encourage all of us to join in, whenever and wherever, it suits you, and help improve our own health and wellbeing.
Our thanks to West Midlands Police, Queens Square Security, West Bromwich Business Improvement District, Asda and local patients for their kind donations of Easter eggs that will be shared over the bank holiday weekend with children who are accessing our services.
Congratulations to Ward Service Officer, Adriana Lup. Adriana was nominated for her exceptional working carrying out touchpoint cleaning in the Birmingham Treatment Centre. Ensuring a safe environment is vital to reduce the risk of infection transmission as well as instil confidence in the patients who are receiving care there. Thank you, Adriana.
This week the BME staff network hosted an open COVID-19 vaccine Q&A session. I hope that those of you who took part felt that you were able to air your questions and concerns. I know that the panellists are very happy to join in future Q&A events or even talk to people individually if you are unsure whether to have the vaccine. You can also arrange to talk to clinicians in occupational health and every line manager will be arranging a wellbeing conversation with each colleague who has not yet taken up the vaccine to see if there is any additional information or support you would like to help you make your decision. First doses can be booked at Tipton Sports Academy, via your GP or through any of the Primary Care Network hubs at City Hospital or in Oldbury. Lenny Henry this week shared his open letter urging black Britons to take up the offer of a COVID-19 vaccine. This short film, contributed to and co-signed by a number of black celebrities urges people get the vaccine so that families can be reunited and protected.
Richard