NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has a range of ways that we listen to staff and use their feedback to improve our services to patients and to make NHSGGC a better place to work. Key mechanisms include iMatter, Investors in People, via Area and Local Partnership Forums and through team meetings, one-to-ones and other engagement activities with leaders and managers locally.
You can read below examples of how staff feedback from our annual iMatter staff satisfaction survey has been used to inform improvements across teams, services, Directorates and Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
Advance Nurse Practitioner Team – East Dunbartonshire HSCP
The Advance Nurse Practitioner (ANP) team in East Dunbartonshire HSCP, is a small of team of 6, supporting GP clinics as well as carrying out home visits, all across the Partnership. During our most recent iMatter action planning discussion, we reflected on the agile nature of our roles, and the need for lots of equipment to be transported when out and about at home visits.
We didn’t have a space to call our own for storing equipment, or dedicated desk space, as we’re fully agile. This means that equipment is often stored in our cars as we go back and forth to homes and clinics, which is not ideal for staff as we’re already taking other things, such as our laptops, out and about, so it’s a lot to consider for each trip.
So, we had a discussion with the Facilities Manager at Kirkintilloch Health & Care Centre to see what we could do to improve our experience.
Amazingly, we’ve secured a large double cupboard at the Centre, which is solely for our team, and we can easily access it to pick up just the bits and pieces we need, and store the rest. This is only a small thing but has gone a long way to making the team feel that they are valued, visible and that their needs are being met by the HSCP.
We’re now working with colleagues to look at ways we can use the space at Milngavie Health Clinic too, ensuring that our team can continue to have the same successful, positive experience, across all our sites.
Clyde Sector
Across the Clyde sector, we have seen real benefits of using feedback from iMatter to improve our staff’s experience. The big improvements in iMatter outcomes throughout 2022 demonstrate this, with an increased response to the questionnaire, an improved Employee Engagement score and a 7% increase in action planning.
We achieved this in a range of different ways. We took action before and during the questionnaire stage, to discuss iMatter at key management and partnership meetings, embedding it in business as usual. IMatter is always a key part of our thinking around how we engage with our workforce and use their experiences to improve services and make Clyde Sector a better workplace.
Alongside this, we shared ‘top tips’ during the team confirmation stage to ensure managers felt supported with each step, and staff were aware of the range of ways they could respond, to maximise participation. Maintaining a good working relationship with the iMatter team in HR meant we could quickly identify and resolve any action needed to support teams.
Once we received our results, we quickly shared the information with staff, managers and partnership colleagues, and ensured two-way communication was at the heart of improvement.
We now hold weekly partnership calls in Clyde sector to discuss emerging and live issues to identify solutions together. We’ve also introduced HR ‘Walk rounds’ across all three sites, meaning there are regular opportunities to meet with staff, be visible and discuss any concerns. Similarly, the Senior Charge Nurse (SCN) engagement sessions with senior management give staff the opportunity to discuss ways of improving services, staff morale, health and wellbeing. These allow us to hear directly from staff about how we shape support and drive improvement on an ongoing basis.
In addition to this, Partnership colleagues and HR now have access to daily safety briefings for all sites to keep everyone informed on hospital pressures and staffing. This means that appropriate action and support is given efficiently and based on feedback.
Taking this approach has achieved some really positive outcomes this year, leading to positive action, and we look to replicate and build on this into 2023, to realise continuous improvement for our staff.
Counselling Team (Human Resources and Organisational Development)
Our team always finds the feedback from iMatter a really useful tool to create discussions about how we do more for our staff and also for our clients. This year, the report has allowed us to identify service improvements that we think will deliver excellent performance.
Initially during COVID we were keen to explore the experience of clients using the counselling service, particularly as we moved from face to face to telephone appointments. We did this through a short survey, which we circulated to clients. The feedback was positive, and gave us reassurance that we were still providing a supportive and person-centre service during COVID.
As we moved into 2022 and back to more face to face consultations, our team suggested we expand the survey to allow us to explore ways in which we could celebrate great work, review the service we provide and identify any opportunities for improvement.
This has been going really well, and at our team meetings we always allocate time to look at the feedback together. The comments from the responses we get helps us to build a picture of progress and improvement themes. The information we gather also supports our accreditation with Safe Effective Quality Occupational Health Service (SEQOHS) standards, the benchmark for occupational health services.
One particular benefit of this approach has been helping us to celebrate the successes of the team through the positive experiences of our clients. When we see really great comments in relation to the service provided by an individual staff member, this is highlighted at the team meetings, as well as at TURAS review discussions.
In the team, we’ve used the iMatter process to help keep us on track when it comes to our commitment to positive staff engagement, celebrating success and working as a team. We know that doing this has really helped us to continue to deliver a great service for the people using our service.
COVID Safety and Wellbeing Engagement in Estates and Facilities
Like all services across NHS, the COVID pandemic raised a number of significant challenge for us in Estates and Facilities. One of those challenges was that guidance, including changes to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Safety instructions, was changing on a regular basis. For us, there was no reliable way to ensure that this information was appropriately circulated across all of our staff because of limited IT access for many staff in our service and the limitations on in-person meetings.
This meant that we were struggling to ensure that the staff on the floor were getting key information timeously, including COVID safety information and resources to support and improve staff wellbeing.
As a consequence, the Senior Management Team and partnership colleagues worked together to identify the best ways to get this essential information to staff reliably. This took the form of a Team Brief, which was initially issued on a weekly basis, and which we now issue on a monthly basis. We developed this based on the positive feedback and the recognition of an ongoing need for supportive engagement and communication with staff.
The detailed Brief is shared verbally with all staff, along with being circulated electronically and displayed on staff noticeboards. This very simple approach has been welcomed by staff, and has been adopted by others throughout the organisation too.
William Hunter, Deputy Director (Facilities & Corporate), says “there has been a positive response to this brief. In very difficult circumstances, we have been able to increase direct communication with our staff, including the provision of key work, wellbeing and safety related information, which I know that staff have found very reassuring and supportive.”
We can see from our 2022 iMatter results that one of the areas which saw the biggest improvement from 2021, was in relation to well-being support from line managers. In addition, improvements were seen around the themes of role clarity, effective team working and seeing the value and contribution made by the roles that staff hold.
This improved engagement and communication with staff, really focussing on well-being and experiences at work, has made a positive impact amongst teams, which we’ll continue to build on and celebrate.
East Renfrewshire HSCP
We were delighted with the iMatter results in East Renfrewshire HSCP, where we saw an increase in response rates and action planning engagement, whilst also maintaining a really positive engagement score.
We were particularly pleased to see that we’d had good feedback from staff against the iMatter wellbeing questions. This was due to the big effort we’ve made in the HSCP in ensuring staff are aware of the wide range of options available to them to support good mental health and overall wellbeing at work.
One way we’ve been showcasing our wellbeing activity is through our regular Staff Wellbeing newsletter with targeted articles on key issues e.g. alcohol awareness, stress at work, financial advice. These kept staff updated on any upcoming classes and sessions, as well as providing access to information and resources which covered a wide range of topics.
During the summer months, we rolled out a programme under our “Summer of Wellness” brand. Creating this brand allowed us to bring together a whole range of opportunities for staff in one place, including yoga, fitness classes, 121 wellbeing conversations etc. The uptake for these was fantastic and feedback from staff was extremely positive. We’re now building on that success and are rolling out a new “Winter of Wellness” programme during November and December.
Something that really helped us maintain the focus on wellbeing over this period has been our newly appointed Wellbeing Officer, Gerry Mitchell, who has led on promoting and improving the mental health and physical wellbeing of our workforce.
Gerry says:
“My role as Health and Wellbeing Lead Officer has been to build a proactive and preventative wellbeing offer across the HSCP for all our staff.
“It’s important for staff to have access to resources that supports holistic wellbeing, with a particular focus on mitigating the effects of work-related stress.
“Recent years have been particularly challenging for health and social care staff and volunteers. During this time, it has been more important than ever that we continue to offer an effective and sustainable approach to staff/volunteer wellbeing so that they feel valued and supported at work.”
Gerry Mitchell, Health and Wellbeing Lead Officer East Renfrewshire HSCP
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Hybrid Working in the Clinical Governance Support Unit
Our 2022 iMatter report showed some really encouraging results, and we were particularly delighted to see positive outcomes relating to engagement, well-being support and leadership. We always aim to apply a person-centred, continuous improvement approach, which focuses on our staff’s experience, as we know this has a positive impact on the work we do.
That person centred approach could clearly be seen through our recent implementation of hybrid working. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) introduced a Blended Working Guide early in 2022, to support staff to work flexibly and to provide a healthy work and life balance.
The Clinical Governance Support Unit (CGSU) implemented this approach across all teams during Spring/Summer 2022. To do this, working together with staff, we developed a project plan with six key steps for implementation:
Planning – Engagement – Assessment – Pre-implementation – Implementation – Evaluation
A key part of our plan was working with staff to develop an Etiquette Guide. This provided some key principles and supporting guidance and aimed to give consistency to staff in terms of how hybrid working would actually work in our team.
Almost as soon as we had implemented the approach, we held a short workshop at the CGSU Team Session, to gather feedback from staff on their initial experience of hybrid working. Feedback showed us that staff liked the flexibility to choose when it’s appropriate to work from home and when to be working on site. The staff told us they continue to see the benefit of meeting together in person where it’s appropriate. We were really pleased to hear that they found the room booking system really clear and easy to access, allowing them to arrange all the practical requirements when coming into the office.
To keep the focus on staff having a positive experience, we also sought improvement themes from staff, and have taken these forward quickly. An ongoing evaluation is planned on a quarterly basis to continue engagement with staff and determine if the actions are resulting in real improvements, and to consider if there are any new actions we need to take forward.
Pharmacy Services
Hear from Gail Caldwell, Director of Pharmacy for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, talking about the Pharmacy Strategy, which focusses on a culture of empowerment and enablement for all their staff.
Click below to hear more:
If you have a positive Staff Experience or Engagement story you would like to share, please get in touch with the team at iMatter@ggc.scot.nhs.uk
If you want to know more about the range of ways NHSGGC has in place to engage and communicate with staff, you can read our Internal Communications and Employee Engagement Strategy on HR Connect.
Action Planning Stories
During the Action Planning phase of iMatter, we want to share some of the ways in which teams have approached this discussion and how they have used iMatter to support key activity over the next 12 months. Below you’ll see details of stories shared via StaffNet.
Complex Trauma Pathway team
We hear from Lesley Hunter – Nurse Team Lead within the Complex Trauma Pathway team (Specialist Children’s Services), who talks about their approach to iMatter action planning:
“As a team we utilise our business meeting and team away days to discuss and review our iMatter report each year. These take place in June and November so work well in relation to the timing of the reports and allow for a six-monthly review. Following the completed reports, I review the comments and we discuss as a team the outcome and consider what our focus is for the year.
The focus is often on service development i.e. what we do well and need to focus on for our patients in the next year, as well as team cohesion and wellbeing/staff retention. From this, I write it up and we agree it finally as a team.
The pathway is a small team where the ongoing clinical task of working with young people, families with traumatic histories and experiences can be emotionally taxing, therefore team wellbeing, supervision and peer support needs to be central to what we do. The iMatter process allows us to look at this more specifically as a service.”
The most important bit of iMatter is the discussion you now have in your team based on the feedback. This is your chance to discuss and agree as a team how you want to work together to make things better. Please visit HR Connect for more information.
Primary Care Dental Services
This week, we hear from Karen Gallacher, Clinical Services Manager within Primary Care Dental Services:
“Looking at the action planning process with a new team has made me reflect on a number of matters, most significantly that I was, in recent years, part of this team and now, due to promotion, I am in a leadership position with the team and would look to maximise the benefits of the iMatter process.
In the past, in the team I previously led, we would have added iMatter to the agenda of group meetings and had a round table discussion to review our report, looking at what areas we should celebrate and those areas we should seek to develop further.
My previous team were predominantly involved in the management of clinical dental care, therefore would focus their efforts on analysing how to improve patient care while supporting the needs of staff. My new team involves health improvement managers, clinical managers and support services to the wider dental community.
As a consequence of being an original member of the above named group it was easy to identify the commitment of my colleagues to examine our report at our monthly operational meeting and to develop an action plan that would support learning, communication and, as an area for further discussion, review of equality and diversity issues to ensure that we are inclusive as we have a multi-disciplinary roles and responsibilities.
As a result, we will now have iMatter as a standing item on our agenda (an approach I used in my previous position) and ensure that all members have an opportunity to review and reflect on our action plan to support success as we move forward this year.”
The most important part of iMatter is the discussion you now have in your team based on the feedback. This is your chance to discuss and agree as a team how you want to work together to make things better. Please visit HR Connect for more information.
North AHP Team Leads
This week, we hear from Alison Leiper, Interim Chief AHP:
“The North AHP Team Lead group discussed the iMatter report and action plan at one of our monthly team meetings. We set aside approximately 1 hour to discuss the report and to decide on our action plan going forward.
As a group we have started to meet again in person rather than via Teams and we all agreed that this face to face approach led to better engagement, interaction and discussion. We started the process by reviewing this year’s iMatter report as well as looking at the previous year. This gave us some indication of where we have made changes that have had a positive impact and the areas we need to focus on going forward.
We recognised that we hadn’t achieved everything we had hoped to do last year and this led to a very open, honest and meaningful conversation about the reasons why and more importantly what we need to do differently this year. With this in mind our action plan focused on what are our priorities and what we can realistically achieve.
One of our actions concentrated on improving engagement between AHP Team Leads and North senior leader’s team, therefore to support this, we’ve planned a lunch, hosted by Team leads, inviting along members of the North SLT. This will allow an opportunity to provide more information on the key role of the AHP within each clinical area, and help promote the AHP role more generally.”
The most important part of iMatter is the discussion you now have in your team based on the feedback. This is your chance to discuss and agree as a team how you want to work together to make things better. Please visit HR Connect for more information.
