Time to do things differently
Steve Harrison, Deputy Organisational Development Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Strategic Lead for the Flow Coaching Academy shares his reflections on the last 18 months.
As we enter another year, there has never been a stronger focus on rebuilding and redesigning the NHS to meet the challenge of ongoing winter and Covid-19 pressures.
The role of Organisational Development (OD) professionals will now be more important than ever in supporting the NHS in its vision for 2030, to deliver more care to more patients, work differently, in a compassionate and inclusive culture.
We not only need to do more of what we have already been doing but we need to evolve to meet a changing world and make sure our services meet the needs of both our patients and staff. So how can we as OD professionals help remotivate staff and help improve our NHS services for the better?
The most important thing we need to start with is meeting people where they are at. Whilst there is truth that many NHS staff are feeling tired, what we have seen in Sheffield is that there is still an appetite from individuals to make a difference and change things for the better.
Our Flow Coaching Academy team, who work locally and nationally, have recognised this, and have adapted the programme so this can be delivered virtually. This has meant we have been able to train flow coaches in improvement methodology and coaching skills from across the UK as well as here in Sheffield, helping to meet that appetite.
In adapting the programme, the team have provided clinical and non-clinical staff the much-needed time away from their day-to-day role to think about how things could be done differently. Through the FCA Big Room, the team continue to enable colleagues working in the NHS to come together, alongside patients, to collaborate and take ownership of improvement initiatives. By involving those people who do the work, they ultimately have helped coaches in our network overcome organisational boundaries and change the culture surrounding patient pathways.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen how the use of the FCA approach has built capability and has motivated staff to make improvements to patient care. In Lancashire, the frailty team successfully introduced a new unit which has reduced waiting times in ED. In Devon the team have successfully joined its mental health and physical health services to better suit the needs of its gastroenterology patients. Here in Sheffield our team have used FCA methodology when establishing its Long Covid programme, as well as making reforms to the way hip replacement surgery is conducted.
That’s not to say the last 18 months have been all plain sailing.
Like many others, there has been much learning from the pandemic, and we have seen some of our training stop and start as organisational needs have changed. We’ve also seen some of our ongoing Big Rooms pause as staff have needed to focus attentions elsewhere. However, what we continue to see is that staff engaged with the programme continue to use these skills to develop the NHS, understanding the importance in creating a sense of ownership over buy-in when implementing changes.
It’s important when looking to the year ahead that we continue to give our staff some dedicated time to focus on this type of work both for their wellbeing and leadership development. Time is one of the biggest constraints in the NHS and we must strive to create initiatives and structures to remove this constraint to empower staff and make NHS organisations a fantastic place to work. During Covid-19 we saw many constraints removed out of pure necessity. We need to learn from this experience to make us more adaptable for the future and more equipped to make rapid improvements to care.
