03.10.16
On the road to becoming ‘a truly inclusive employer and service provider’
Jackie Daniel, CEO at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, discusses the organisation’s journey to becoming an inclusive employer.
As a trust board, becoming a truly inclusive employer and service provider is really important to enable us to provide the best possible care to our patients. The focus of our approach has been developing inclusive leadership at all levels. I am proud to lead a board that is making consistently good progress in being representative of our workforce and local population.
Michael West spoke at one of our leadership workshops last year around three principles: Listening with Fascination; Showing Compassion and Understanding; and Acting with Intelligence. These have been at the heart of our inclusion work.
We have listened with fascination to our staff, managers, and staff side colleagues to understand their experiences in our organisation. We have invested time in understanding what other NHS employers are doing, what has worked, what hasn’t in relation to inclusive leadership and changing organisational culture. We have looked outside the NHS, to other public and private sector organisations – to bring back best practice examples to translate into reality at our trust. Our (very privileged) involvement in the NHS Employers Equality Partner Programme has really helped us.
We have shown compassion and understanding. We are now talking about difference, being open and transparent with sharing the data relating to differences in employee experience for different groups. We have invested time in seeking out and involving some of our staff who have had bad experiences to work together to drive improvements
We believe we are now acting with intelligence to make improvements, developing and enabling inclusive leadership at all levels with a Personal, Fair, Diverse Champion network and three inclusion networks (for BME, LGB&T and Disabled staff) – led by staff, for staff, each with an executive sponsor. Our action plans to improve employee experience for different groups are developed together with our staff.
Our aim is to become ‘effortlessly inclusive’ as both a service provider and employer. The new national NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard has given us a great platform to really demonstrate a new way of working with our staff – using data to drive discussion, to develop action plans in partnership and make sustainable improvements for our staff and ultimately our patients.
Our partnerships have made us stronger. Our local BAPIO (British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) network has worked closely with us to drive improvements in BME employee experience. We are standing side by side, leading targeted work including developing employee centric employment practice, focusing on early intervention and the introduction of protected characteristic advisors for Investigating Officers, Panels, and support for staff. We are developing inclusive recruitment training, systems and processes. Our local BAPIO representatives have undertaken ACAS investigation and mediation training and are now proactively working with individuals and departments. We are now working with BAPIO at a national level – to help us to develop into a role model organisation that is truly inclusive.
The result? Our staff are feeding back that things feel different and we have given front line staff a voice. Our data is supporting this feeling. BME staff were almost three times more likely to undergo a formal disciplinary investigation – they are now no more likely than other colleagues; BME staff were less likely to be appointed once shortlisted for a job – this is reversed; Our medical leadership team is now representative of the overall medical workforce. We still have a lot of work to do, particularly in relation to experiences of reported bullying and harassment, however we are confident we can work together with our staff, to improve their experiences, and ultimately that of our patients.
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