. Strategic HR Review

Transcription

1 ISSN Volume 9 Number Strategic HR Review

2 Improving employee engagement and wellbeing in an NHS trust --=- Gordon Tinline and Kim Crawe Gordon Tinline is Director of Robertson Cooper Limited, Manchester, UK. Kim Crowe is an Executive Director of Service Development and Delivery, Merseycare NHS Trust, Parkbourn, UK. Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present how Mersey Care NHS Trust introduced a unique integrated leadership development and employee wellbeing programme from UK business psychologists, Robertson Cooper, to help it prepare for Foundation Trust equivalent (FTe) status. A priority for the Trust was to ensure that staff felt involved and supported throughout the restructure and felt good about coming to work and engaged by their roles. Design/methodology/approach - Robertson Cooper designed a programme to integrate management and leadership development with work to assess and improve levels of employee engagement and wellbeing. It used its employee survey ASSET to measure the levels of psychological wellbeing, engagement and productivity of employees in Mersey Care NHS Trust and assess the impact of the change. Findings - Using the results, individual employee action plans were designed to improve wellbeing and engagement, and inform managers about how to address staff priorities and become more effective leaders. Of the senior managers and clinicians who completed the evaluation, 83 percent agreed that the content of the development centres met their expectations. Originality/value - The paper describes a concrete example of how Mersey Care NHS Trust is improving employee engagement by focusing on wellbeing. Keywords Employee involvement, Leadership, National Health Service, Change management Paper type Case study IT] mproving employee engagement is a challenge that many organizations now I recognize as critical to their performance and reputation. Its importance has been acknowledged on a number of fronts, including the major report on employee engagement recently commissioned by the UK government's Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) from David MacLeod (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009). This article describes a concrete example of how one organization, Mersey Care NHS Trust - a UK public sector provider of health services that is part of the National Health Service (NHS) - is improving employee engagement by focusing on wellbeing. Definitions of employee engagement vary but at the core of the concept is the idea that employees are connected to the organization in such a way that their discretionary effort is willingly released and they are prepared to "go the extra mile" for their organization. A core argument here is that this can only be achieved and sustained when employee wellbeing, particularly psychological wellbeing, is positive. The relationship between wellbeing and engagement is explored in Robertson Cooper's 2008 wellbeing report and associated research (Robertson Cooper, 2008), as discussed below. The relationship between employee engagement and wellbeing Robertson Cooper has collected more than 80,000 cases of data using ASSET, its measure of psychological employee engagement and wellbeing. ASSET also measures the enablers DOl / VOL. 9 NO , pp , Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN STRATEGIC HR REVIEW 1 PAGE 19

3 and blockers of wellbeing and engagement, plus health outcomes and related factors like motivation and self-reported productivity levels. Because of the interest in both engagement and psychological wellbeing, the 2008 analysis focused on the factors that underpin employee engagement and productivity. The goal of the analysis was to explore the links between engagement, psychological wellbeing and productivity - concentrating the ASSET scales that measure psychological health, engagement and (self-reported) productivity. In summary, the findings of the analysis show that engagement is linked strongly to productivity, as one would expect. But when the combined role of engagement and psychological wellbeing was explored, it was found that the correlation with productivity rose dramatically - suggesting that the combination of engagement with psychological wellbeing (PWB) is more powerful than engagement alone. As the diagram in Figure 1 shows, two aspects of PWB - sense of purpose and psychological health - increased the overall correlation with productivity. It was also found that engagement itself is linked with psychological wellbeing (ie sense of purpose and psychological health scores). The suggestion is that underlying levels of psychological wellbeing are important conditions for achieving high levels of engagement. This enables conclusions to be drawn about the real drivers of employee engagement and therefore which "levers" to pull if you want to start to improve it. Within the context of the NHS, the emphasis on employee wellbeing has recently been reinforced by the Boorman (2009) review. This argues that NHS organizations need to get better at looking after the wellbeing of their employees if they are to successfully support the health of the nation. It highlights a number of needs, as prerequisites for employee wellbeing linked to better service delivery, which are relevant to this case study: The need for broad commitment, top management leadership and staff engagement at all levels. Embedding staff health and wellbeing in the core business of the organization. Proper resourcing for staff health and wellbeing services. Agreed and consistent measures of the effectiveness of staff health and wellbeing programs. Change challenges at Mersey Care NHS Trust Mersey Care NHS Trust provides specialist mental health and learning disability services for the people of Liverpool, Sefton and Kirkby. It is one of three UK mental health trusts with a high secure unit. The trust was facing a number of significant strategic change challenges PW8 - Sense of purpose 1 Engagement i PW8- Psychological health (emotional com~ollent)=li PAGE 20 I STRATEGIC HR REVIEW I VOL. 9 NO

4 "... underlyi g sychological wellbeing are important conditions fa adltiev'i:ng high levels of engagement. " --=....sset assessment provided Mersey Care wi a O)I'"''''C e '" si e and detailed profile of... _= carriers and enablers of wellbeing across the... s: - ferences highlighted by ocanon, role and length of service, among other c --8 ia,.e.so provided the organization data to feed into the leadership development process ch applied a development er model, to ensure leaders were challenged 0 i adoui - e impact they were having _,where relevant, the changes they needed to ma. e - 8 ance staff wellbeing. eadership development centres The development center model is an established adapt 0 assessment center methods. Participants work through a number of observed and assessed structured exercises (e.g. group discussions, role plays, in-tray exercises, e.c.). agans agreed criteria, and receive developmental feedback on their performance. The criteria for the DCs were based on the NHS Lea ~ snip Qualities Framework (LQF) but this was reduced to four core dimensions. The LQF is an established leadership competency framework widely used in the NHS. Ho. e er. like many such frameworks, it has o too many dimensions (N = 16) to be applied e 'ec - ely in a limited development context. Therefore, a content analysis of the framework as applied to cluster the competencies into four core areas: 1. self-development (internal focus); 2. drive and motivation (external focus); 3. leading through people; and 4. strategic capacity. This reduced model was easier to apply in a one-day DC and was well received, not just by Mersey Care, but also by HR professionals from other trusts who acted as observers on the events. DCs are usually very focused on the individual's development needs in relative isolation from the organizational context. We were keen to encompass the change context here by including a focus on developing leadership that was directly targeted at improving employee engagement and wellbeing. The design also incorporated opportunities for reflection and peer mentoring that enabled participants to carefully consider the relevance of the DC experience to their career progression at a time of substantial organizational change and restructuring. In order to meet these objectives a second Robertson Cooper assessment tool, Leadership Impact, was used as part of the DC process. Targeted leadership assessment The Leadership Impact tool is a personality assessment based on the "Big 5" model of personality, which is the most widely recognized and used personality model. It starts with the assumption that there are five stable elements to our personalities and that people have different natural preferences for each. The five elements are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Leadership impact does not report explicitly on these areas, but uses the leaders' scores to provide feedback engagement and wellbeing of their workgroups. around their impact on the - - ~m:gic HR REVIEWI vd

5 _._._---- All senior managers and clinicians attending the DCs completed the questionnaire. The benefit of using this tool was the ability to provide feedback to individuals on their natural leadership style and how it impacts the key areas that determine employee engagement and wellbeing (the same areas measured by ASSET). The participants were encouraged to consider their Leadership Impact profiles in relation to the wellbeing and engagement levels of the actual workgroups that they led - as revealed by the relevant ASSET survey results. This process, developed by Robertson Cooper, is known as Vector Analysis - see Box 1. The DCs were one-day events held off-site in the period October 2008 to February 2009 and were open to all senior managers and clinicians likely to play a leadership role in the new CBUs. Generally, the DC approach was well received - for example, 75 percent of participants agreed that they found the DCs useful for their personal development and 83 percent agreed that the content of the DCs met their expectations. This data was gathered through a post-dc evaluation survey. One longer term planned indicator of success is a repeat all staff ASSET survey (see below). Moving forward Looking to the future, the challenge is to build on this approach and the positive reactions that the first phase has inspired. Now that the CB Us are embedded there are a number of planned activities, including the following: Revisit the Leadership Impact data at a CBU senior leadership team level. The focus will be on considering the collective leadership impact on engagement and wellbeing at the business unit senior leadership team level. Facilitated workshops will be offered to support leadership teams through this process. Box 1. Vector analysis: Connecting leadership approach directly to staff engagement and wellbeing Vector Analysis is a process that brings together an assessment of the natural leadership style of a manager with an assessment of the wellbeing and engagement levels of the staff they lead. It provides a simultaneous focus on leadership development and employee engagement and wellbeing. Two assessment tools are used as the basis for the Vector Analysis process, Leadership Impact and ASSET. Leadership Impact is a personality-based assessment of the leader, which shows his/her likely impact on the workgroup. It reports on the leader's natural style in terms of the balance he/she is likely to strike between challenging people and supporting them. It focuses on leadership strengths and highlights the risks of overusing strengths without flexing his/her approach. The report is structured around six key areas that leaders must impact positively to ensure that their people feel motivated, energized, engaged, resilient and, above all, deliver high performance. These are the extent to which staff will feel informed and equipped; feel in control; have a balanced workload; experience well-managed change; have collaborative relationships; and have a strong sense of purpose. ASSET is a short questionnaire that the leader's workgroup completes (e.g. direct reports). It measures the workgroup's perception of the workplace in terms of what is blocking and enabling productivity and performance. It provides a real "view from the floor" based on an established model of the factors that impact performance at work. It asks about what the workplace feels like - NOT how the leader or manager behaves. By bringing together the results from Leadership Impact with those from ASSET, the Vector process provides a common framework for reporting on the leader's likely impact and the key situational factors that drive performance and wellbeing. Vector Analysis provides insight for leaders that opens up a process of personal development that can deliver benefits for the leader and the workgroup alike. The combined results from the two assessments provides a powerful process for developing leaders and workgroups to bring about measurable performance improvements in both, with a strong focus on the areas that are critical to wellbeing and engagement (e.g. collaborative relationships, well-managed change, balanced workload and sense of purpose). VOL. 9 NO I STRATEGIC HR REVIEW I PAGE 23

6 The whole workforce ASSET survey is likely to be repeated in This will be a key evaluation metric in establishing how far Mersey Care has come in improving staff engagement and wellbeing. One challenge will be improving on the 33 percent response rate in the last survey, as this in itself can be a strong indicator of staff engagement. It is hoped that the active use of the results of the last survey, particularly through leadership development, will encourage more staff to respond on the basis that they consider the survey to be a meaningful and useful staff consultation exercise. The process has given Mersey Care a strong basis for ensuring that leadership development is focused on employee engagement and wellbeing. However, there is still substantial work to do to ensure this becomes the norm within the trust and there are a number of barriers to achieving this goal. One of these barriers is the wide range of leadership development approaches and models the NHS is exposed to and, to some degree, generates. The factors that underpin employee engagement and wellbeing - such as strong relationships, ensuring a sense of purpose and managing workloads and change effectively - tend to be constants in complex organizations. Mersey Care, like other NHS trusts, has to rise to the Challenge of ensuring it keeps these factors firmly at the heart of leadership development and practice, while being able to take account of new thinking that comes along over the next few years. References Boorman, S. (2009), NHS Health and Well-being Review - Interim Report, Department of Health, London. Cartwright, S., Tytherleigh, M. and Robertson, S. (2007), "Are mergers always stressful? Some evidence from the higher education sector", European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp Donald, I., Taylor, P., Johnson, S., Cooper, C., Cartwright, S. and Robertson, S. (2005), "Work environments, stress, and productivity: an examination using ASSET", International Journal of Stress Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp Johnson, S., Cooper, C., Cartwright, S., Donald, I., Taylor, P. and Millet, C. (2005), "The experience of work-related stress across occupations", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp MacLeod, D. and Clarke, N. (2009), Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement, London, available at: available at: Robertson Cooper (2008), Well-being at Work: The New View The Business Well-being Network Annual Report, Robertson Cooper, Manchester. About the authors Gordon Tinline is a director at Robertson Cooper Ltd. A chartered occupational psychologist, he joined Robertson Cooper at its formation in October 1999 and is a director of the business. He has led a large number of Robertson Cooper's projects and has provided leadership development for senior management teams. He designs and runs board level development in several NHS Trusts. Prior to joining Robertson Cooper, he was a principal consultant with PA Consulting Group. He has an MSc in Organizational Psychology from UMIST and an MBA from Warwick Business School. Gordon Tinline is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: gordon.tinline@robertsoncooper.com Kim Crowe is executive director of service development and delivery at Mersey Care NHS Trust. FOllowing a politics degree, she commenced her career in the NHS as a management trainee and since then has held a range of positions in HR management. She was appointed executive director of HR with North Mersey Community Trust in 1997 and executive director of OD with the newly created Mersey Care NHS Trust in She is also a non-executive director for an award-winning social enterprise called the Furniture Resource Centre. To purchase reprints of this article please reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: PAGE 241 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW 1 VOL. 9 NO