Improvement Story Ten

Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust

Contributors: Claire Eagleton: Matron for inpatients and outpatients; Cris Knill – Senior Project Manager, MTP; Vicki Robinson – HR Business Partner.

What aspects of culture did you focus on and what changes did you make?

The aspect of culture we focused on was staff engagement and morale. The change we implemented was the implementation of Improvewell – a digital platform in the form of an app or website that captures ideas for improvement from on the ground staff, who sometimes feel that their voices are not heard and listened to. The platform has a specific function called the ‘idea hub’, where staff can easily suggest improvement ideas, discuss and refine with managers, and monitor progress and implementation. Thereby, enhancing staff engagement.

What effect this has had on your team culture?

We have experienced a positive effect on our team culture as staff truly feel that that their voices are heard. So far, 40 colleagues have received certificates for their great improvement ideas which have been implemented. We have had a fantastic seat uptake, with over 200 members of maternity staff profiles set up on the platform, plus strong engagement with our quarterly baselining survey to monitor success and ‘you said, we did’ type initiatives. So far, two quarterly surveys have been conducted showing significant improvements. For instance, a positive increase of 5% of from 70% agree/strongly agree in Feb to 75% agree/strongly agree in May for ‘I feel that my voice is heard as an employee at SaTH’ and another positive increase of increase of 9% of from 69% agree/strongly agree in Feb to 78% agree/strongly agree in May for ‘I feel that I can raise ideas for improvement easily’.

What barriers have you had to overcome?

At first, staff uptake of the app was a challenge, as colleagues were not downloading the app and setting up their profiles. To overcome this barrier, we developed and implemented a communications and engagement plan, and organised different events on different sites promoting the app. The events involved the Improvewell customer success team coming on site to hand out freebies, cupcakes and share real time demonstrations of the platform. The president from the RCOM also attended the event, as well as members of our senior leadership team. Additionally, we identified Improvewell staff champions to help promote the app amongst colleagues, plus organised a raffle of an Amazon voucher for incentivisation purposes.

What helped to make this successful?

Great teamwork, passion and following a robust organisational cutover document produced as part of the people and culture workstream under the Maternity Transformation Programme.