Employee information, consultation, and engagement

Collaboration, listening to each other and working together is at the heart of our commitment to work with staff and unions to deliver improvements for the benefit of employees and patients, enhance engagement, manage change, promote health and safety, deliver training and management development and develop policies and best practice.

This means that staff are consulted in any formal employment changes in accordance with our organisational change policy. This involves engaging with affected staff at the earliest possible stage, increasing engagement throughout the process. The Trust work in partnership with Staff Side colleagues to support improvements and efficiencies across the organisation, whilst ensuring that the quality and effectiveness of services and standards of care are not compromised.

In addition to formal HR consultation processes conducted as part of service change, the Trust is also committed to ensuring staff have an informal opportunity to regularly engage with improvements and developing services. This includes specific opportunities to add further commentary to the Trust’s annual staff survey results and in 2022/23 a specific exercise called ‘Walking in your shoes’ which looked at staff retention and what more we could be doing to retain our staff and improve their enjoyment at work.

There are various established communication channels operating regularly throughout the Trust, aimed at keeping all staff up to date with news and developments. These include:

• Better Together - members’ magazine provides an update on service developments and the activities of governors, staff and volunteers.
• Staff intranet - updated daily to share news and information with all staff.
• Weekly Word - weekly electronic bulletin sent to all staff promoting that week’s top news and forthcoming activities. This includes a summary of key messages from the executive team.
• Annual conferences - respected clinicians from across the country are invited to share their views on the latest developments in mental health and learning disability care with Trust staff around several key themes including, nursing, research, recovery and protected characteristics.
• Video blogs - filmed messages from the Executive Team and other senior managers on specific issues. These are posted on the staff intranet and closed Facebook group.
• Inspirational Leadership Programme –development events held quarterly with leaders across the Trust and involve a briefing from the Chief Executive and Chair.
• Staff Closed Facebook Page – a closed group enabling rapid consultation with and feedback from staff.
• Team Brief – monthly meeting chaired by a member of the Executive team and attended by senior managers to cascade key messages and share divisional updates.

There is a programme of corporate and local induction for all new employees, to ensure all staff are sufficiently trained to national NHS requirements. The corporate induction is delivered face to face for all new starters and is attended by our Chief Executive and Director of Nursing.

This programme of training is mandatory and includes elements to enable all staff to perform their role at a basic level. This may then be supplemented with additional training according to specific service need.