Improving Employee Engagement and Well-Being in an NHS Trust

Overview Mersey Care NHS Trust partnered with Robertson Cooper to design and implement an integrated leadership development and employee well-being program. This was introduced at a time during which the Trust was going through a major change and restructuring process, having recently begun their application to attain status as Foundation Trust equivalent. A priority of the program was to ensure that employees felt involved and supported throughout the restructure and felt good about coming to work. In light of this Robertson Cooper designed a program to measure the levels of Psychological Well-Being (PWB), engagement and perceived productivity of employees, using the ASSET framework (see Chapter 5). The leadership development process was then designed to incorporate ASSET results so that action plans could be made to improve well-being and engagement in the priority areas, as well as informing managers about how to become more effective leaders. Of the senior managers and clinicians who Completed the evaluation, 83 percent agreed that the content of the development centers met their expectations. Subsequent monitoring of performance of the Clinical Business Units has seen an improvement in key performance indicators and some measures have significantly exceeded original targets. There are now plans to re-use ASSET to assess the impact of the change, which will lead to further evaluation and progress toward the full objectives of the program.