Through extensive engagement and consultation processes, and a robust communications strategy, we successfully fostered a culture of agility and off-site working, allowing our people to shape how we work moving forward and ensuring that their voices were heard.

Background

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, staff at NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) adapted to working from home. Through regular engagement and communications, the feedback was that many did not want to lose the flexibility which off-site working had afforded them.

Action

As we started to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, an agile ethos known as ‘Our Way Of Working’ (OWOW) was developed to steer the emerging culture of NHS ML. We wanted to ensure that we embedded agility and flexibility into everyday life. Our priority was to focus on a person-centered approach – not just looking at work tasks, but looking at individual’s needs and preferences. As we started to gradually open our spaces in a safe and steady way, it was important to balance this against service delivery requirements for the team.

The People Services team developed a set of ‘people outcomes’ to guide us as we embedded OWOW. We undertook extensive engagement with our people, listening to them to help shape the framework for our new culture moving forward.

We also developed categories of workers, with a starting point that everyone was an agile worker unless there was a personal or organisational reason why this wasn’t possible. 

Throughout our journey of embedding our new culture, engagement was key to help shape what was needed for individuals, teams and the organisation to allow for maximum flexibility whilst still delivering high-quality work to our clients.

Impact

OWOW has led to our staff feeling motivated and having autonomy – whilst still being able to deliver a great service to our clients.

Our engagement told us that 95% of respondents felt motivated to deliver work of a high standard, with 94% feeling empowered to make informed decisions concerning their own health and wellbeing, and 93% feeling like they could work flexibly and have a good work-life balance.

The extensive engagement and consultation processes, and our robust communications strategy, meant that staff embraced the agile culture and off-site working. Our people had the opportunity to shape how we worked moving forward, and they could see that their voices would be heard.

The different teams were encouraged to share what they had implemented to encourage teamwork and boost morale whilst everyone was working remotely. This was supported with dedicated pages on the staff intranet full of resources, tools, and practical examples.

Feedback

“Thank you for the opportunity to express our thoughts.” 

“Enjoyed this session as felt included in the wider organisation.”

“Thank you.  This has been really good to have a say and input.”

“It’s great that we are all being given the opportunity to put our views forward for consideration – thankyou”

 – Staff feedback on our engagement