EMPLOYMENT
Health and happiness A
Maintaining NHS staff morale and productivity is going to be a tricky business over the coming years. Dr Steve Boorman tells Richard Mackillican how this can be done
long with facing one of the biggest reorganisations since
the introduction of the internal market, the NHS also has another problem on its hands; the health and wellbeing of its staff.
A report by Dr Steve Boorman last year found that the average number of sick days taken by NHS staff was around double that of the private sector and that if this issue was effectively tackled, the NHS could save itself a huge amount of money in staff costs.
The report said that improving the health, wellbeing and morale of NHS staff should be a priority, not least because a reduction in staff costs could go some way towards reducing the overall NHS spend. So what has happened since the report was released?
“I was certainly pleased that the then secretary of state for health announced his acceptance in full of the recommendations within two weeks of the report being delivered,”.
“Now we have a new
administration there was always a risk that there would be a delay in taking action,” says Dr Boorman, “but it was good to see that my recommendations had already been included in the operating framework drawn up by the last administration within the context of increasing staff engagement.
“It was also heartening to see that the new administration
20 nhe
has already committed to implementing the conclusions of the review, through their white paper Liberating the NHS, as part of their approach to valuing staff and promoting engagement.
“The DoH has also established a central scrutiny group to help in the implementation, which is chaired by Professor Dame Carol Black with other leading figures such as Professor Cary Cooper and Stephen Bevan from The Work Foundation. All of this activity has been very pleasing.”
Although the coalition government has promised to ring fence NHS investment for the next few years, there are areas where spending cuts will have to be made. Given that improving the well-being and morale of staff offers a way to do this, whilst also improving patient care, Dr Boorman’s suggestions need to be taken seriously by the NHS.
“Quite clearly it is a challenging time for the NHS and one issue which was highlighted in the report was the need to give leadership attention and commitment to staff health and wellbeing. I realise that maintaining that focus during a time when the NHS will be concentrating on many of its priorities around change is going to be quite a challenge.”
One area which Dr Boorman feels requires such focus is the development of occupational health services within the NHS.
“This will allow for more consistency and a change of
focus in terms of proactivity and prevention. A further area which needs focus is that of staff access to prompt treatment and care when they are unwell. In the review we found that trusts which had early intervention services, such as early access to physiotherapy or psychological services, more than saved the cost of those services due to increased staff productivity.”
NHS leaders also have to engage with their staff if they are to improve their wellbeing and morale during the testing times which the health service is facing at the moment.
As part of a recent push to increase employee engagement, many trusts have begun handing their staff a certain amount of autonomy over their shift patterns by using HR technology such as eRostering.
The use of this kind of technology has been recommended by NHS Employers for a number of years. Could it help in increasing staff well-being and morale, through better engagement?
“I think that organisations which have been successful in terms of becoming health promoting work places are organisations which have increasingly involved their people in influencing their own working arrangements. So anything which can be done to increase that feeling of autonomy and control is clearly important to morale and well being.”
Along with promoting a certain level of autonomy within staffing arrangements, Dr Boorman also feels that leaders themselves need to acknowledge that the health and well-being of their
staff is not an ‘optional extra’.
“NHS leaders need to understand that staff health and well-being is not something which can be considered separately and rather than being seen as an additional concern. It is simply part of developing a truly successful organisation.
“This means that managers need to be educated as to the benefits of looking after their staff better and the negative consequences of not treating their staff well - the managerial time and energy which is taken up by dealing with staff who are off sick. Managers need to realise that upfront investment in staff wellbeing will provide a significant return in terms of the improved outcomes which the trust will deliver as a result.”
This problem is not present in every single NHS organisation but the fact that it exists in even one trust means that there needs to be greater consistency across the health service as a whole.
“Whilst compiling data for the report last year, my team found a huge variability across the NHS in terms of how organisations maintain their staff’s wellbeing. Those NHS organisations which did take it seriously actually outperformed the private sector in terms of the arrangements they had and how they looked after their staff.
“However, the worst parts of the NHS are well behind the rest of the pack and, interestingly, our report found that if we were to improve the wellbeing of staff at these organisations, then we would be able to deliver a huge amount of benefit in terms of NHS staff productivity.”
Nov/Dec 10
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