About the trust

Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust provides health care for the people of Huntingdonshire and surrounding areas. More than 161,000 people rely on the hospital for a range of services.

Background to the project

Hinchingbooke was a trust under financial pressure, operating whilst going through a potential franchise arrangement for the future governance of the organisation.  This was obviously a time of great uncertainty about its future with a resultant high public profile and sometimes negative press, all of which resulted in difficult staff engagement and poor staff morale and retention. 

In August 2009 the trust began a period of consultation about its future and the SHA-led Hinchingbrooke Next Steps project was established to determine the future governance and operating regime of the trust.  To be successful, the new organisational form and ways of working would need to be embraced by the trust’s staff and embedded as part of the trust’s culture moving forward.

Staff at all levels had to be engaged and involved in shaping and implementing the trust's future. At a formal level, staff side (trade union members) needed to act proactively; for example by sitting on the Hinchingbrooke Next Steps Stakeholder Panel which would have an active input into the bidding process and proposed governance arrangements.

The objectives of the project were to:

• improve partnership working in the organisation, in particular developing trust and helping management and staff side work more effectively together
• help equip the trust for the challenges of the SHA-led ‘Hinchingbrooke Next Steps’ project which was set up to determine the future governance of the trust, with new arrangements to be in place initially by April 2011
• help staff side members to find practical ways of encouraging staff engagement, facilitating partnership working and involving and communicating to the wider workforce
• enable the better management of change with more staff engagement and good quality decisions that are more acceptable to the workforce
• provide a platform for the implementation of the Staff Pledges of the NHS Constitution and our plans to reinvigorate our staff charter along these principles
• to improve staff morale and motivation, recruitment and retention and thereby improve the patient experience.

What they did

The project was delivered with the support of The Partnership Institute. The programme delivered was an initial four stage approach:

Stage 1:  Diagnostic Assessment (questionnaire, focus groups, evaluation of findings)

Stage 2:  Partnership Training and Development (joint partnership workshop and report with recommendations, with a focus on the requirements of staff engagement for the Hinchingbrooke Next Steps project, and using the Staff Pledges from the NHS Constitution to help facilitate this)

Stage 3:  Consultancy support (facilitation of relevant partnership meetings)

Stage 4:  Review and evaluation (survey and focus groups, review report with recommendations and good practice examples, and development of action plans to take it forward).

The trust then took this forward with an action plan to start working on a wider level with staff in implementing the Staff Pledges and involving them in the future of the organisation in terms of the Hinchingbrooke Next Steps project.

Project outputs/benefits

The local organisational goal was the need for both staff side and generic staff involvement and engagement in the Hinchingbrooke Next Steps project and five year strategy. The project met these needs by equipping staff and management side with the skills they needed to work effectively together and prepare for the wider staff engagement agenda in contributing to the Hinchingbrooke Next Steps (HNS) project. It provided a framework for partnership working and acted as a platform for reviewing and refreshing the Staff Charter in line with the NHS Constitution Staff Pledges. 

Another benefit of the project was an improvement in NHS Staff Survey findings published in March 2010, in particular those on Staff Pledge 4: staff engagement, and questions on staff satisfaction and staff intention to leave.

Examples include:

• Improved recruitment (success in filling vacancies as demonstrated by vacancy factor)
• Improved staff turnover figures
• Improved sickness absence rates
• Improved attendance at joint management staff side meetings and better decision making processes
• Staff side member(s) sitting on and making a positive contribution to HNS stakeholder panel
• Evidence of staff engagement in HNS/ future of trust through workshops, information sharing in newsletter, team briefings, notice boards, AGM etc
• Evidence of staff understanding of and ownership of NHS Constitution Staff Pledges and development of a refreshed ‘Staff Charter’
• Evidence of staff involvement in the development and ownership of the Trust’s Five Year Strategy which was launched for consultation with staff as part of the Trust AGM in September 2009.

Top tips

1.Get dates in diaries as soon as possible for focus groups and workshops – prior to agreement of plans where possible - to help keep to your timetable, especially where you have people committed to rosters and/or senior level people who have a lot of commitments.

2. Start discussions with possible partners and providers at the earliest opportunity – having discussions with the Partnership Institute before the Fund was officially launched helped them to develop their bid and saved time in developing the proposals later on.

3. Don’t underestimate the need for dedicated HR/ project and admin support in addition to the people implementing the proposals where they are external providers.

4. Get sign up for dedicated time off from staff side reps in advance – they put an element of the funding towards backfill for staff side to assist in this.

5. Maximise the investment in the project by promoting it as much as possible both internally and externally.

Further information and contact information:

Simon Steward - l Deputy Director of HR
simon.steward@hinchingbrooke.nhs.uk

(01480) 423176

Anita Pisani - Director of HR and Organisational Change
anita.pisani@hinchingbrooke.nhs.uk

(01480) 418755

Margaret Woods – Chair Staff Side/Society of Radiography margaret.woods@hinchingbrooke.nhs.uk

(01480) 416416