The Trust is working closely with the Institute for Health Improvement (IHI) and led an exercise which found out What Matters to You by asking staff:
- What does a good day look like?
- What are the pebbles in your shoe? (What gets in the way of a good day?)
They also asked teams about their “bright spots” – which looks at what we do well and what is great about Newcastle.
One theme that emerged from this work was flexible working. Staff told us that they wanted more autonomy and control about how they work, more permissive policies and discretion about how work is organised.
Teams across Newcastle Hospitals are now reviewing and testing ways of working more flexibly as part of What Matters to You – these include our District Nursing, North East Assisted Ventilation Service and Coronary Care Unit.
You can hear from teams who have already introduced flexible working practices here:
Alli McCall, Clinical Coding Service Manager, said: “Clinical Coding is the type of role where you sit at your desk for long periods of time. We were keen to retain our talented staff so introduced hybrid working for the team to give staff extra flexibility about how and where they work.
“We made sure everyone had the equipment they needed to work at home and a suitable set up. We were also careful to ensure the people at home felt included – so introduced small groups on Teams where everyone could chat and connect. The feedback from our team has been extremely positive and our staff retention was certainly increased.”
Odeth Richardson, Head of Occupational Therapy about flexible working in Community Therapy has a blog on the topic.
Richardson’s BlogIf you’d like to find out more, you can access advice, support and tools on how to start and develop flexible working conversations with your teams as part of the What Matters to You Programme by emailing: [email protected].