Spotlight on NMUH: Effective workforce engagement strategies in action
Rhonda Hennagan,
Customer Solutions Lead at Locum’s Nest
We have been working with North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust (NMUH) since 2018 on various workstreams to support the Trust’s workforce improvement and help overcome its challenges. So over the last few years, we have gotten to know the Trust a bit more and learned about the great initiatives they have launched around workforce and staff engagement. This is why, in the spirit of collaboration, we are using our platform to celebrate their cooperative spirit and share best practices around workforce management.
NMUH in a nutshell:
One of London’s busiest hospitals, providing acute care and community services for over 350,000 people within Enfield and Haringey and the surrounding areas, including Barnet and Waltham Forest.
On a daily basis, the hospital cares for over 500 patients in A&E, 450 in-patients, and 800 patients attend outpatient clinics, all of which is possible with the support of over 4,000 staff members and bank workers.
Supports one of the most diverse communities in the UK, caring for a catchment area with over 90 nationalities and a growing younger population. The staff population also reflects this community.
Supporting the local community
The trust has been supporting the local community for over a century, first established in 1842 and evolving ever since to currently provide a full range of adult, elderly and children’s services across medical and surgical disciplines. Its specialist services include stroke, HIV/AIDS, cardiology, haematology, diabetes, sleep studies, fertility and orthopaedics. The hospital is also home to nationally recognised services for sickle cell and thalassaemia, in addition to the Helen Rollason Cancer Support Centre. The hospital has been running multiple initiatives to anchor it in the community as more than “just” a healthcare service provider, such as delivering the national Healthy Child Programme, consisting of interventions to support health and wellbeing of children and families.
Effective workforce strategies in action: NMUH’s creative staff engagement initiatives
Now how does NMUH maintain its staff engagement amidst the busy nature of the hospital and competing demands? And what lessons can we learn from the Trust’s initiatives?
Shaped by the hospital’s role within the local community and its investment in reducing health and work inequalities, the Trust has continued to develop its workforce strategies and services to deliver better care for patients and excellent opportunities and engagement for its staff members. This has allowed NMUH to create an engaged organisational culture built on being more caring, fair and open, as demonstrated by their high completion of the NSS survey in 2021 (approx. 62%) and current efforts to surpass that number this year. This is a testament of the efforts that the different teams within NMUH exert to engage staff and listen to their needs in various creative ways and channels. Below, we feature some initiatives that demonstrate the ways that the Trust has been engaging with its staff members around NSS completion and the importance of getting their voice heard.
2022: Onsite engagement with staff members to encourage completion of the survey, ensuring all staff members a protected 15 min to complete the survey.
2022: Freedom to Speak Up Guardian visit to the trust to encourage staff engagement with NSS 2022.
2020: NMUH displayed feedback from NSS 2019 on staircases within the Trust, serving as a message that the staff members are listened to and a reminder of the work that has yet to be done to change.
The Trust’s ways of engagement demonstrate that simple initiatives that make staff feel valued go a long way in ensuring the constant presence of meaningful communication opportunities and feedback touchpoints between staff members and departments/execs. For example, to leave no staff member opinion unheard and realising that teams operating in the Emergency Department (ED) often don’t get time to leave their stations, a portable PC was parked in the department to make it as easy as possible for ED staff to fill in the survey. Follow up on what else #TeamNorthMid is up to and what other initiatives are live in different departments by checking out their Twitter.
Another initiative we would like to highlight is NMUH’s annual staff awards, where the entirety of the Trust’s workforce gets to nominate their peers for different awards across various categories, which then culminates in an annual ceremony to recognise all the staff’s hard work, energy, and services. NMUH’s 2022 staff awards saw the celebration in the local community, north London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where there were over 540 nominations across different departments and all NMUH teams were able to celebrate their achievements and contributions. This a great example of the importance of peer-to-peer recognition, which not only empowers staff and builds better relationships, but also provides visibility of individuals and their contributions across the Trust.
2021: Snapshot of NMUH’s staff awards in 2021
These initiatives, such as encouraging sharing voices and feedback in addition to peer-to-peer recognition, continuously help shape and foster the sense of community within the Trust, where people feel engaged, empowered, valued, and respected.
The impact of this work has been highlighted by recent surveys and interviews conducted with doctors, reflecting on their experience at NMUH, by which some key themes emerge around the Trust: Supportive and friendly workplace, diversity of ideas and variety of clinical cases, making the Trust a great place to learn and flourish.
We are looking forward to seeing all the new and exciting initiatives and projects that NMUH has yet to embark on and continue to be inspired by the Trust’s staff empowerment journey as it works to further embed a culture of mutual trust, learning, and engagement.
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Is your Trust doing something great and/or is involved in an impactful workforce recognition initiative? We’d love to hear more about it and feature it in our next sharing best practice blog. Get in touch with lara@locumsnest.co.uk