Case study: Using staff engagement to drive improvement

Kevin Moynes, Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, has played a key role in driving improvement at the trust by transforming their approach to staff engagement.

Together with his team, and in collaboration with Communications and Engagement colleagues, Kevin developed an ambitious plan to engage, involve and motivate the 8,000 strong staff within the trust.

With clear Board support, Kevin appointed a Head of Staff Engagement to lead the plan supported by a small Staff Engagement team and set out to “engage like never before!”

The Staff Engagement team organised activities such as ‘Back to the Floor’ opportunities for Directors and Non-Executive Directors so they could gain valuable insights into what was happening at the ‘coal face’, and ‘Patient Safety Walkabouts’ to help them understand patient quality and safety issues, so they as senior leaders could clear away any obstacles in order to improve the patients’ experience.

In addition, the team led ‘Big Conversations’ – a series of staff engagement events across all five trusts sites, helped design a more inclusive staff induction process to fully embed the trusts vision of “Safe, Personal and Effective”, and made productive links to the Staff Guardian and the newly formed Mediation Service, both designed to support staff in challenging situations.

As a result the trusts scores for the National Staff Satisfaction Survey and the Quarterly Family and Friends Test have gone from strength to strength, and the efforts of Kevin and his team have served to engage and motivate staff to drive improvements in quality and safety.

The latest results from the National Staff Satisfaction Survey shows the trust is in the top performing 20% for 16 of the 32 key areas covered, and the trusts specific score for staff engagement (which covers staff satisfaction, staff involvement and staff morale), is the highest it has ever been – well above the national average for acute trusts nationally.