Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 22 February
February 22, 2019
Thank you to everyone working hard to get ready for the start of April when dozens of expert school nurses join our organisation (in some cases re-joining us) and when the Trust, with partners, takes responsibility for GP services in Great Bridge, and the current Summerfield (Heath Street) and Parsonage Street (Lyndon) surgeries. We have plenty to learn from our new recruits, new alliances to build with patients and with schools, and a fair bit of work to do. Last month our TeamTalk Learning From Excellence video was about Rate My Day, a project from Foot Health about employee wellbeing and morale. It is good to see that project being part of the induction experience for our new school nursing teams. Of course not all of our community work is going so well. I want to thank our community based midwives, some of whom are working in poor conditions right now (having been moved out of Local Authority buildings that closed) and I know we are trying very hard to sort out the issue. To reiterate a message I do try and give here from time to time – anyone who works in our Trust can contact either the Chairman or myself with questions or queries. Your line manager will almost always be a better source of information or help, but nonetheless, there is no bar to speaking up. And we do reply.
This month’s Heartbeat will feature the changes that will be made in coming months arising from the third of our sample who filled out 2018’s weconnect survey. The next survey is out right now – so if it comes your way, please do raise your voice and get your ideas in. It was after all one of our employees who spoke up about getting rid of non-biodegradable plastic cutlery, two of our colleagues who started the Period Poverty campaign in the Trust which goes live next month, and now your feedback which means that our policies are available at your fingertips if you download our myConnect app. This is Connect on your mobile. But on your mobile, or tablet, our policies have a search function – making them much, much easier to use. Over the next three months many of our policies are being updated and so now is a great time to get ready by joining over 2000 Trust peers on myConnect.
Download myConnect from either the Apple Appstore or the Google Playstore on to your mobile phone or tablet and you will have access to news, blogs, policies and Unity quick reference guides at your fingertips. Simply search for ‘SWBH myConnect’ on the appstore or scan the QR code below on your mobile phone.
I very much hope you enjoyed your half term. That seems a timely moment to remind you that in a fortnight’s time we will launch our flexible working pledge, in response to your feedback on Speak Up Day about issues you wanted sorted. Get your ideas in through TeamTalk. One idea we are working through is a school holidays club to help working parents. That might mean you get some flexibility about holidays yourself, and we get the chance to spread leave across the year, as more and more staff (not just in critical care) move to annualised hours contracts. If you are interested in that type of contract get in touch with your local HR ‘business partner’, whose names are below:
- Medicine and Emergency Care: Nick Bellis
- Women and Child Health, Governance, and IT: Del Radway
- Surgical Services: Alison Newcomb-Ferreday
- Estates, New Hospital and Corporate Nursing: Sarah Towe
- Finance, OD, Operations: Annabel Roberts
- Primary Care, Community and Therapies: Julia Crannage
- Imaging: Stephanie Cowin
Would you like £3,000 more in your bank account? Tax free and not pensionable. That’s what most smokers in our Trust could save annually by quitting. There are just a bit more than 130 days until we go smoke free. Vaping providers will be on site (s) in coming weeks as we look to help our smoking colleagues “trade up” – in line with advice from Public Health England. Nicotine replacement therapy will become very, very available in our Trust this spring to both staff and patients. March’s QIHD will see a focus on our readiness and also guidance about how specific patients will be affected. Heartbeat with your February pay-slip will give you more information (can I park my car, and smoke in it? No) (will I be fined if I smoke on site? Yes) etc etc.
Congratulations to Sally and the Neurophysiology department. Their Fax Machine is retiring on March 31st. See details in daily comms on what replaces it, which will stay the same when Unity comes in later in 2019. When’s yours off? If you don’t have a Fax Retirement Plan you need to be working on it, as they will all be gone by March 2020. Our deputy chief operating officer, Liam Kennedy, is taking a break from scrapping colour printing, production planning and FDR, to lead this, so get your ideas to him.
From April our budgets are being set slightly differently. Our directorates will take the lead. Each are agreeing budgets with me, on behalf of the Board. Group and Executive colleagues remain responsible for our financial well-being. But senior ‘frontline’ leaders such as Bushra, Jay, Ruth, Nuhu, John, Kulwinder, and Abhay will be signing off on budgets for April 2019 to March 2020. Maintaining our premier league position as the Trust that makes the money work for students, patients and research is intensely important. With over £400m coming our way from London, we have a responsibility to invest to save, and to invest for health. We will commit over £20m of new investments in staff and another £30m in equipment, IT and estates. My message is simple: Dispute how we spend the money, but let’s not pretend a £500m turnover organisation is poor. We are fortunate and make choices. I want those choices made closer to where you work, and our directorate leadership teams will become the engine room for improvement as we move towards Midland Met: A full guide to who’s who in our leadership structure will be in March’s Heartbeat.
Also in March we will follow up the extra car parking spaces, with our wider plan to change car parking at the Trust. It looks like our new car parks at Sandwell and City will be with us by October 2020. But the great news is that our GP practice at Sandwell got planning consent last week, and building work starts this May. So both changes mean we need to get moving with taking some cars off site, and others cars off the road by car sharing, using public transport and even more cycling (especially if you live within half a mile of our sites). As I have written here before the Pay-As-You-Use scheme will be relaunched, ready for April, and we are finalising schemes for those who only use our car parks at night or on weekends. As the spring sunshine brightens, do you need a car every day?
The Trust’s Public Health collaboration on Clean Air launches in March… #justsaying
March also sees a country-wide drive to make sure that cervical screening take up improves. More than three quarters of everyone in our organisation is female: Most all eligible for life saving screening. Please do not let pressure of work stop you. Your line manager will support you. Get your screening done.
Attached are this week’s IT stats: IT Performance Stats 22 February 2019
#hellomynameisToby