Improving employee engagement and wellbeing in an NHS trust

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.

Citation

Tinline, G. and Crowe, K. (2010), "Improving employee engagement and wellbeing in an NHS trust", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 19-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/14754391011022226