Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

Results and benefits

MPFT has seen significant year-on-year improvements over the last five years in its NHS Staff Survey scores right across the People Promise, Staff Engagement and Morale metrics, achieving some of the highest scores across the NHS. It has done this through a focused approach to improved staff experience, bringing its organisational development vision to life and analysing and understanding results.

Importantly, the staff engagement score has increased and in particular the trust has seen a 14.4 per cent increase on the question “would recommend the organisation as a place to work”.

Furthermore, MPFT has the highest score of all trust types for the people promise element “we are always learning” and the second highest score for “we are safe and healthy” element. The remaining benchmarking scores sit within the top nine of all trust types.

There are many examples of the value created by looking after and engaging well with staff. These translate into 83 per cent of staff reporting that care of patients is the organisation’s top priority, and 77 per cent are happy with the standard of care provided, which is 12 per cent above average. Furthermore, 89 per cent of staff report that their role makes a difference, with 1333 compliments from patients over the year, outlining the incredible difference that staff make to patients.

What the organisation faced

The trust was formed following the merger of two organisations in 2018 (one was an inpatient and community mental health provider, and the other was a community physical health provider) which is a significant event in any organisation’s journey. Bringing together two differing organisations (with very different geographies) created both opportunities and challenges to develop a new, more strategic approach to staff experience.

Within two years, facing a global pandemic, where personal circumstances and professional practice were being challenged, a new more robust and accessible staff experience offer was required to support staff as they supported patients, carers and families through this unprecedented event.

While immensely challenging in a number of ways, this period of time created opportunities to deliver differently, particularly when it came to make some of the trusts offers more accessible through digital innovations.

What the organisation did

The trust developed a four-year vision for organisational development (OD), which highlights the relationships between aspects of staff experience and organisational culture.

One of the key elements include SOOTHE, which was created to provide a framework and strategic approach to a wellbeing culture and interventions. SOOTHE is an acronym built around key aspects of wellbeing: self-care; open up; others; team; help; and enjoy. These six areas were informed through research and the trust worked with the equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging lead to ensure that the offer was accessible to all and ensuring it was culturally sensitive. This framework is a board priority.

The trust has developed a SOOTHE resource pack which contains details for internal, regional and national resources. A network of around 200 SOOTHE buddies was also developed offering wellbeing conversations and support to others.

The leadership super series includes bite-sized modular content on wellbeing and culture to ensure the trust is focussing on improving the experience for all staff.  A bespoke programme called Be the Difference for middle managers further embeds the values, behaviour and approaches to taking care of our staff and patients.  

The In Our Gift Ideas hub uses a digital platform to harness the talents of staff, enabling them to connect, influence and collaborate on the things that matter most such as the wellbeing and experience of staff. Since its inception, over 3900 staff have joined the hub. As a UK-wide organisation, the trust has been able to virtually shrink its geography through the use of this technology and embrace new ways of innovating and collaborating together.

There have been many ideas which have inspired change, from a menopause group which has grown to over 700 members to staff connecting and sharing ideas to improve patient care such as the designing of a bereavement card for families they work with who experience the loss of loved one. The trust also made it possible for all staff to receive a St George’s Cross pin badge following an idea posted on the idea’s hub. This was to mark the award given to the NHS by the late Queen in recognition of its “courage, compassion and dedication” during the COVID-19 pandemic and its 74 years of service to the public.

In order to support the organisation’s approach to empowering managers and staff to improve experience locally and increase engagement in the NHS Staff Survey, dashboards were developed in 2023. This means that each individual manager has direct access to their team’s results and can undertake a comparison with results from the previous year.

Accessible and easy to use means that each team (where data is available) can see their overall results and their highest performing and lowest performing questions as well as being able access specific question level data. Based on last year’s feedback, further developments were made to the dashboards to improve their functionality. This year the trust saw a 3.5 per cent increase in response rate with over 700 more responses than in 2023.  In part, this is due to the increased engagement of managers with the survey.

Overcoming obstacles

Implementing organisation-wide schemes that are inclusive for all within a diverse workforce is difficult. It takes time, dedication and effort to embed improvements to staff experience.

The obstacles the trust has encountered along the way include managing the resource required effectively to both develop and deliver the multiple ways in which improvements to staff experience are delivered. 

One of the biggest challenges the trust continues to experience is the size of the geographical area it covers, which is why having effective communications is key.

The benefit of having a strategic approach to improving staff experience and the significant work the trust do to fully understand their staff survey results has also stood them well during changes in context.  

Take away tips

The success at MPFT has taken both time, effort and strategic thinking. It would not have been possible without support from the board of directors, ensuring that resources and organisational space for conversation and action to improve staff experience have been available. 

To embed good organisational culture, the trust has needed a multi-professional approach including people professions of all types, clinical psychologists and wider corporate and clinical colleagues. 

Use NHS Staff Survey data as a year-on-year indicator of progress towards the strategic ambitions outlined in organisational people strategies and visions for OD. The yearly in-depth pulse check completed in July has given the organisation an early indicator of the likely trend of Staff Survey results and areas for improvement. 

Treat staff engagement and experience more than simply a collection of resources or offers of support; rather consider it a way of thinking with compassion for people at its core.

Contact

For more information, please contact Dr Lisa Whitehouse, associate director of culture and staff experience at Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, via lisa.whitehouse@mpft.nhs.uk.