There are many areas that cause stress and burnout for our workforce. Our model groups these into three areas.
How we will respond:
We want to ensure that all staff who work in health and social care in our system have access to the tools, resources and support they need to look after their wellbeing. This is support for the whole individual and not just about their professional development and needs. It includes focusing on levelling up for areas that are underserved.
How we will respond:
We want to ensure that all staff feel safe and supported whilst at work, no matter who they are or where they work. We want to ensure that organisations respond to concerns of violence and abuse in an effective way.
How we will respond:
Through a co-productive approach, we want to understand from staff the stress that’s happening within our system, and provide the methodology to support organisations in listening to staff and improving in areas that mean the most to them. This can range from a variety of pressures to do with change, processes and ways of working. It can also include the systemic discrimination in different processes individuals face, especially in relation to protected characteristics. We will also consider the wider impact of retention on staff health and wellbeing, and how the experience of people managers can contribute to overall staff experience.
It is clear that there is still a need for a holistic approach when it comes to supporting staff health and wellbeing.
We believe that the six pillars of wellbeing introduced in the last iteration of the strategy provide a strong framework for us to reflect and support ourselves and each other when it comes to wellbeing.
Work and career
Feeling engaged with our work and career, appreciated by our colleagues/managers, creates an inclusive culture, and also offers a sense of safety. Work and career wellbeing helps us to have a positive attitude and experience satisfaction and pleasure in our role / organisation.
Physical
A healthy active lifestyles help to reduce the potential for poor health and enables better performance, and more resilience against stress.
Mental and emotional
Good mental wellbeing helps us to feel well, resulting in positive mental health. Having emotional wellbeing raises our confidence and self-esteem, which helps us to thrive in our relationships, both in and outside of work.
Social
Having good social wellbeing enables us to develop and maintain healthy relationships. A sense of belonging is essential for our mental and emotional health too.
Spiritual
Our faith and commitment to our beliefs gives us a feeling of meaning and purpose, contributing to our spiritual wellbeing.
Financial
Having the appropriate control of your finances can relieve stress, giving you the time (and money) to pay attention to all elements of your health and wellbeing.
A holistic approach empowers individuals to have access to the support they need. Assessing levels of engagement with interventions also enables us as system to understand what areas require more targeted support.
Preventing and reducing violence in the workplace is a key part of keeping colleagues safe, healthy and well.
We know that locally, organisations will already be doing lots to encourage staff to report incidents of violence and abuse, as well as have measures in place for post-incident support. However, across health and social care, we know that these are inconsistently applied and without any real clear strategy or goals, these activities can become ad hoc and not monitored effectively.
As an integrated care system, we play a crucial role in developing shared thinking in this area, and coming together to set out our system wide strategy. A systemic approach will draw together the things that are already working well and identify areas where new activities or approaches could help.
Preventing and reducing violence creates a culture where colleagues feel safe and supported. It can lead to higher retention, lower sickness absence rates, enhanced employee experience, and subsequent improvement to patient experience and outcomes.
It is important for us to understand the nature of the issue, who is affected and what causes it. We then need to ensure the people, resources and infrastructure are in place to prevent violence from happening, and support colleagues and teams if it does. The trauma informed approach is based on understanding that being exposed to trauma can impact on a person’s psychological development. Trauma informed practice does not ‘treat’ trauma, but rather aims to understand and address the barriers that people affected by trauma can experience when accessing health and care services.
Tertiary
Responses after violence has occurred focused on care, rehabilitation and integration to deal with the long-term consequences
Secondary
Immediate responses after violence has occurred to deal with the short-term consequences and prevent any further escalation of violence where it has not been prevented
Primary
Approaches – such as programmes, policy and interventions that prevent violence before it occurs
Data from staff surveys shows that violence, abuse and aggression remains a significant issue for the health and care workforce. Contractually and legally, we have a duty of care to protect the health and safety of our workforce. Not only this, but it is the right thing to do.
Stress and burnout also remain a significant issue when it comes to health and social care staff. Continued high demands and pressures and increasingly complex population health needs, make for a stressful working environment.
However, it’s important to recognise that sometimes the source of those stressors lies within organisations and their processes, rather than individuals themselves. How can we work together to reduce the stresses from our organisations, their structures and processes, and overall improve working conditions?
Whilst the research shows clearly that having decision making latitude is a very strong anti-burnout indicator, many staff still feel disempowered over the direction of their workload and organisation. We propose that co-production with staff is the best response to that stress – such as an experience based co-design approach, for example.
This process was originally designed to improve patient experience and services, however methodology can be applied to how we listen to our workforce and frontline staff.
It involves gathering experiences from staff through deep listening and group discussions. As part of this process, ‘key touch points’ are identified and assigned a sentiment (positive or negative). Through the use of storytelling, this is fed back to staff in a creative and impactful way. Staff from all levels are then brought together with senior leadership to explore the findings and identify/implement activities that will improve staff experience.
Overall it not only helps in identifying key causes of stress for staff with our organisations, but also encourages everyone to participate in exploring and implementing solutions. This is a fundamental shift in our how we do things, but will lead to staff feeling valued, heard and empowered.
Through our work, we will also support people management development, ensuring managers have access to training and networks to support them to support their staffs wellbeing.
Source: What is Experience-based co-design? – Point of Care Foundation
We are aware that causes of stress not only lie externally, but can also be internal to the organisation, its ways of working and processes. The report done by the British Psychological Society (2023) on learning from NHS MH hubs outlined that staff utilising services would also bring issues relating to systemic stress in organisations, not just due to the pandemic.