A major publication released today by the IPA argues that effective employee engagement is key to meeting the challenges the NHS faces.
Evidence shows that employee engagement in the NHS is linked to staff wellbeing, patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes such as mortality. Put simply, engaged staff deliver better, safer care. Engagement in the NHS has increased over the last two years but there remains significant scope for improvement.
The NHS is facing an ‘unprecedented squeeze;’ demand is growing and costs are rising whilst budgets are frozen. At the same time, following the Francis Report into the disaster at Mid Staffordshire, the NHS is being expected to deliver ever safer and higher quality care.
The report ‘Meeting the Challenge: Successful Employee Engagement in the NHS’ – produced for Healthcare People Managers Association and NHS Employers – is based on case studies of employee engagement at eight high performing NHS Trusts. It shows that only through effectively engaging with employees will the NHS be able to meet the challenges it faces in coming years. It calls on NHS Trusts to:
- Make engaging with employees a strategic priority;
- Ensure senior leaders are visible, approachable and in-touch with the frontline;
- Support a strong sense of employee voice so that staff can speak up when they have a concern, provide suggestions for improvement and guide organisational decision-making;
- Promote strong organisational values, that are clearly communicated and reflected in actions;
- Help line managers to engage their teams, offering them the support and training to do so;
- Devolve decision-making and responsibility as close to the frontline as possible, within safe limits, so employees are empowered to take control of their job and their services;
- Work in partnership with trade unions to build a relationship based on trust and involvement.
These are hard times for NHS workers. Ongoing pay restraint, increasing work intensity and organisational change risk undermining engagement. Yet, in order to meet the challenges the NHS is facing, engaging with the workforce is more important than ever. Engaging with employees can unlock their potential for innovation, allowing them to make services more effective and efficient. And involving staff in decision-making is vital during these times of change in the NHS.
Employee engagement must be seen as a key priority for the NHS. Leaders need to respond to this imperative and rise to the challenge.
Nita Clarke OBE, Director of the IPA and co-chair of the Engage for Success task force said: “Employee engagement is absolutely vital in the NHS. This ground-breaking report highlights some excellent best practice in the sector and could provide the blueprint for driving up engagement across the NHS.”
Sir David Dalton, Chief Executive at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, the top performing acute trust nationally in terms of employee engagement and one of our case studies said: “This report gets to the heart of the issues of why effective employee engagement is crucial for Boards to assure high quality, safe and reliable care. The case studies demonstrate that decisions and behaviours rooted in agreed values, authentic leadership, and devolved decision making are key ingredients to sustain the culture for successful delivery of high standards to patients.”
Kevin Croft, President of the Healthcare People Managers Association and Director of OD and People at Epsom and St Helier Universities Hospitals NHS Trust said: “The case for staff engagement is compelling and in the NHS this means improved patient outcomes. The challenge is not knowing what needs to be done, but how you make it happen. We are thrilled to now have this case study research highlighting how some of the best performing NHS organisations have achieved success through staff engagement.”
Dean Royles Chief Executive of NHS Employers said: “This report provides invaluable insight into how successful NHS organisations have sustained staff engagement in tough times. It highlights how these organisations have changed the way they listen to, learn from and work with their staff. There are no easy answers but shows there are some straightforward steps can be taken to help staff improve services.”
This is just common sense! Any employee who is involved and feeling valued in their role will contribute more to the workplace. The problem with the NHS staff engagement is not the NHS staff – it is the media who constantly criticise and post ‘bad news’ stories. How about praising our fantastic NHS workers and recognising the work they do – this would go a long way to promoting employee engagement!
“These are hard times for NHS workers”. Too true but the same could be said of all public sector workers.
I see an NHS which is kicked around and patronised by politicians and subject to endless initiatives focussed on anything but what it’s really all about; patient care. If patient care and a committment to excellence in care is put in the front and centre of everything that’s done in the NHS, employee engagement will follow.
Francis and Berwick have shown the way forward; the NHS leadership need to get behind their work and stop being distracted by the rest of these worthy but distracting side shows.
The issue of demotivation and lack of employee engagement in the NHS has arisen mainly because of the high level of stress to which staff are subjected. The high level of stress is a direct consequence of understaffing (shifts running routinely below the target levels set to ensure that the patient care is safe) – the Sectretary of State highlighted this when he delivered the Government’s response to the Public Inquiry in the Commons last Autumn. When shifts are below target, staff have to work in the knowledge that, if anything goes wrong (which is quite likely when they’re understaffed), they will be blamed. This is particularly stressful for the person in charge, but it is also difficult for students, who don’t get the supervision they need, and for the more senior staff, who are conscious of being unable to provide the supervision they should. No one becomes a nurse to provide sub-standard patient care, but in a situation of understaffing this is what they are forced to do, and it’s very stressful. It is also the cause of increased mortality and incident levels for obvious reasons. So the lack of employee engagement is not the cause of increased mortality. Understaffing is the cause of both increased mortality and poor employee engagement. Employee engagement in this instance is not just an “HR” issue to be addressed inits own right. It is a symptom of serious operational problems that need to be addressed.
Staff engagement is an issue both in the acute and community sectors. I agree with James, the endless re-organisation and reinvention of new systems that don’t necessarily improve the patient experience have a very de-motivating effect on staff. The continuous promise of a ‘New world’ that never seems to arrive doesn’t help. Senior managers spend their time inventing new organisations to deal with the same issues. They don’t have time to do the role they were actually employed to perform.
As ever this is really good report from Nita. It doesn’t tell us anything that most of us already know. One of the key challenges for the NHS is that there are lots of reports that come out saying this is the key to improved patient outcomes/saving money/reducing sickness/improved productivity and another group of ‘staff leads’ emerge. A lead for staff Health and wellbeing; a lead for engagement; a lead for compassion agenda; a lead for patient engagement/experience; a lead for staff experience; a lead for OD /Culture. Often developing different but clearly related strands of activity in isolation. The real challenge is to see that the solution doesn’t lie in any one of these areas but in an organisational approach which is about leadership and culture