Teaching trust
Keeping staff happy in a big, busy trust is no easy task but Salford Royal Foundation Trust continually gets praise from its staff and recognition in the wider community for the quality of service it provides.
It’s the top teaching trust and, judging by staff comments, deserves its position. It puts patient safety, quality of care and the patient experience at the heart of what it does, but does not rest on its laurels, says one employee. Another adds it’s “a good feeling having experts on hand to talk through any problems, both professional and personal”.
Despite its size, many staff members say it is friendly and senior management are not distant: “It’s the personal things that the executive nurse remembers about you and asks about,” says one nurse.
Second is Aintree University Hospitals Foundation Trust and third is Derby Hospitals Foundation Trust.
Specialist trust
The top specialist trust is The Walton Centre Foundation Trust in Merseyside. Human resources director Amanda Oates argues its comparatively small size compared with acute trusts helps to make The Walton a special place to work.
“It has the ability to be different because something can go from the top of
the organisation to the bottom in a short time,” she says. “It is also very focused on a few key elements.”
But being a specialist trust can also present challenges – such as having to draw in foundation trust members and governors from across a wide area (the trust’s governors come from as far away as Wales, for example). In addition, because it adopts a hub and spoke model of care, staff have to be flexible enough to work in satellite centres in acute trusts as well as The Walton itself.
Second in this category is the Royal Marsden Foundation Trust, where staff obviously get enormous job satisfaction from working with and improving the lives of patients with cancer; third is the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust.
General trust
The top general trust is Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals Foundation Trust, an organisation that is committed to staff engagement across the board and has won plaudits as an employer.
It is committed to continual improvement through the “Blackpool Way”; one staff member says: “We are all working towards the same targets.”
There’s much praise for the training and development opportunities and also the forward thinking nature of the trust. One employee says: “The trust has invested in me and now I feel valued.”
Second is Yeovil District Hospital Foundation Trust and third, Burton Hospitals Foundation Trust.