Report findings on health and wellbeing interventions for staff

The Organisational Wellbeing Interventions: Case Studies from the NHS report is published by the Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) and produced by a team of researchers from universities across the UK. 

It comes as working conditions and psychological wellbeing of NHS staff is an increasing cause for concern, and more questions are being raised about how they can best be supported in these challenging times.  

The report aims to: 

• identify examples of organisational interventions to improve NHS staff wellbeing 

• map how these interventions attempt to reduce demands on and increase resources for individuals, groups, leaders, organisations and overarching context 

• identify the barriers and facilitators of success for organisational interventions 

• summarise key recommendations to encourage more, and better, organisational interventions to support staff wellbeing. 

Using case study examples, it provides insights from 13 interventions. These include overhauling rotas and shift patterns, removing bureaucracy and reducing meeting times, changing patient care processes, co-designing fatigue management strategies, and improving team formation and psychological support. 

It also details the learnings from these interventions, including facilitators and barriers that affected their success. 

The learnings are summarised into six key principles to guide organisational approach on supporting staff wellbeing: 

• Recognise staff wellbeing is a systems issue. 

• Tailor the intervention to the organisational context. 

• Involve staff in the process. 

• Get support from leaders. 

• Interventions need to continually evolve. 

• Plan for the long haul.