As a NHS Trust with more than 9,000 colleagues providing services across hospitals and in the community, it’s extremely important that we have a set of Trust Priorities that everyone supports so we can continue to provide safe and high-quality services.
This is why we have our Areas of Focus each year, and while they don’t detail absolutely everything that we all must do in the coming year, they do allow each of us to have a shared focus.
Click here to watch a video about our Areas of Focus.
There has been a change to the structure of our Areas of Focus for this year. In 2022, we launched our new Trust Strategy - Putting Patients First. The areas of focus are a vital part of how we will achieve what we set out in the strategy, so for 2023/24, these now reflect our four strategic priorities.
One of our four Areas of Focus is: ‘Creating the culture and conditions for our colleagues to be the very best they can be’.
Colleagues are absolutely at the heart of all we do as a Trust and it is vitally important that we all feel valued, engaged and have a great experience at work as this will have many knock-on benefits for our patients’ care.
Ray Olive, Associate Director of People Services for UHMBT, said: “At UHMBT we are committed to creating the culture and conditions for all colleagues to be the very best they can be.
“Our levels of colleague engagement are in line with those of best national practice, where every colleague has a voice that is heard. This will enable us to embed the changes that we've made to deliver services which truly meet the needs of our patients and colleagues. We have already seen some really great successes with our plans over the last year and we want to build on that.
“We will move towards sustained improvement across our culture and then improvements in all of our core HR metrics. This will help us drive towards setting the culture and conditions for colleagues to be the very best they can at work and at home. If we manage to deliver all of this, we will have a diverse, inclusive workforce that's representative of our community at all levels of the organisation.”
The Trust has set a number of targets in terms of creating the culture and conditions for all colleagues to be the very best that they can be and these are listed below.
We will empower our leaders at a local level to lead their services and teams
How we will deliver this:
- Talent management
- Leadership development
- Team engagement programme to support continuous improvement.
How we will know what we are doing and how we will measure it:
- Leadership community not based on hierarchy
- Talent programme that reduces inequality
- Completion of Focus 2 and Focus 3 of our Leadership Programme
- Clinical strategy delivery and new operating model
- Staff stories.
We will embed our values and expected behaviours
How we will deliver this:
- Value how we behave as much as delivering objectives
- Embed effective partnership working
- Culture and engagement programme - golden threads values and behaviours; psychological safety; just and learning culture and compassionate leadership
- Ensure all colleagues have a voice that matters by creating listening spaces accessible to all colleagues to enable a meaningful two way communication.
How we will know what we are doing and how we will measure it:
- Gathering 360 degree feedback
- National Staff Survey and Pulse survey
- Turnover
- Employee / employment relations activity
- Freedom to Speak Up (FTSU) / psychological safety measures
- Culture and engagement dashboard and triangulation with performance and quality
- Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) – Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) – Gender pay gap - Rainbow badge.
We will enhance our use of technology to improve the experience of our colleagues
How we will deliver this:
- Maximise the use of existing digital systems
- Implementation of new technologies to improve user experience and maximise efficiency
- Ensure user experience is at the heart of all digital developments.
How we will know what we are doing and how we will measure it:
- People digital – levels of attainment
- Digital maturity framework
- Use of real time data to inform good decision making
- User experience review.
We will create a culture of well-being in all services
How we will deliver this:
- Person centred attendance management and well-being
- Strategic well-being needs assessment and Grow Occupational Health
- Embedding high value well-being conversations
- Embedding adjustment passports.
How we will know what we are doing and how we will measure it:
- Well-being dashboard
- Sickness levels
- Attendance management employee/employment relations activity
- Staff stories.
Ray said: “We are empowering our leaders at a local level and are aiming to deliver against our People and Organisational Development Plan.
“We're going to deliver and develop a collaborative partnership approach with colleagues and teams so that we can be a real partner in the new Provider Collaborative Board (PCB), to develop services that meet the needs of our patients and our service users. We'll also be looking at sustained improvements in all of our metrics and part of this means that we will deliver on the NHS People Promise.”
The UHMBT Leadership Programme will continue to be developed through ‘Focus Two’ and ‘Focus Three’ modules this year. New technologies will be further developed to improve user experience and maximise efficiency, with the aim of releasing time back to colleagues to enable more capacity for patient care.
Ray added: “We’ll continue to embed effective partnership working to ensure that we all work collaboratively to deliver all of our priorities.
“Our cultural engagement programme, which we started under Recovery Support Programme (RSP), will continue. This is only the start of the journey. There is still more to do, however we have come a long way in the last 18 months.
“We have golden threads running through all of our work, whether it be our new Values and Behaviours Framework or our Freedom to Speak Up (FTSU) work.
“We will provide the best possible support to colleagues including a person-centred attendance management and wellbeing approach. Our policies will be developed to reflect this change in direction, and we'll make sure that people are at the centre of all of the decisions we are making.
“Finally, we're going to focus on a ‘Strategic Wellbeing Needs Assessment’ and deliver on the national Occupational Health Programme. We already have a fantastic offer from our Occupational Health Team and we will continue to improve this for all colleagues over the coming year.
“I’d like to thank everyone at UHMBT for enabling our Trust to be a great place to be cared for and a great place to work!”
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