Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 10 June 2024
Message for All NHS Orkney Staff
To: Team Orkney
In this week’s blog I focus on:
- Your response to Team Orkney and our new values
- Update on our financial performance
- Celebrating Pride Month
So let’s get going.
I’ve spoken to a number of colleagues since launching our new strategy and values and I wanted to acknowledge and be upfront about some feedback I’ve received. Some have spoken to me about not feeling part of Team Orkney and have raised concerns that we aren’t living these values so have questioned them. First, I’m glad that people have felt comfortable sharing their views with me.
I actually agree wholeheartedly with these comments, and this is precisely why we need new values and a focus on Team Orkney. What do I mean by this? I want us to aspire to work in an organisation where everyone feels part of Team Orkney and where we can – regardless of our role here – feel connected to our overarching goal, which for us is looking after our community and providing excellent care.
And I want us to aspire to be an organisation where our values of openness and honesty, respect and kindness are lived by us all more consistently – but as many of our own experiences show, including my own lived reality of working here, we are some way off this just now.
Your experience of working here is a very mixed one – as evidenced by our latest iMatter results – and this is what we have to fix. Some people and teams don’t feel part of Team Orkney and feel isolated in our organisation, some don’t feel valued or supported, some don’t feel well-led and some don’t experience our values being consistently lived. And this is why we need to aspire to do better – because we owe it to each other as colleagues to treat each other with respect and courtesy and we owe it to our community and patients to give this the focus it needs because consistency of teamwork and our own values and behaviours, we will not do our best for our community and patients. Every one of us creates the culture in our organisation and therefore it’s up to us to change it for the better so that everyone, more often, has good days at work.
With regard to our latest financial position, we ended the 2023/24 financial period with a £5.1m overspend, £2m adverse to our original 2023/24 Financial Plan, although an improved position from the £6.2m overspend which we were forecasting at the end of October 2023. We achieved £3.8m of savings against our £3.7m target in 2023/24, however, only £0.9m (24%) were recurrent savings, which stores up problems for future years, and for this reason our 2024/25 financial plan will shift the dial so that we aim for circa three quarters of our savings to be recurrent moving forward. We now focus on delivering our financial plan for 2024/25 which is to achieve a deficit of £5.8m, this is underpinned by a £4m full year savings ambition. Of the £4m, we have identified £2.8m to date, of which 82% are expected to be recurrent savings – which is a significant step forward. Our Annual Accounts for 2023/24, due to be published in the months to come, will show a balanced position for NHS Orkney which I know somewhat contradicts what we have been reporting for many months, but this is due to the fact we have received £5.2m of support funding from Scottish Government in the form of repayable brokerage. As such, I wanted to explain to you that the fact remains that receiving brokerage is not a good place to be and our underlying deficit position remains. I would like to recognise the positive progress we can evidence since my last update, remind us all that we cannot take our foot off the pedal recognising we have a statutory responsibility to breakeven as an organisation, though this must be delicately balanced with ensuring we deliver high quality care to our patients, and there are some compromises we are simply not prepared to make.
Moving on – June is Pride Month which NHS Orkney is fully supporting as am I personally. I want NHS Orkney to be a safe space for everyone – every day. With this I want to create an environment and the conditions here so that everyone feels comfortable being themselves and able to bring their full selves to work. I feel so strongly that difference and celebrating our difference is incredibly powerful – because we each bring something different to work and it’s this blend of experiences and our differences that makes for a great team. NHS Orkney will be supporting Pride Month both by joining the annual Pride (Tribe) Prom and we’ll have our own stand at Orkney Pride later this month. More information to follow on this via our normal communications channels.
Have a great week everyone.
I’ll leave you with this quote:
“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” (Stephen R. Covey)
Best wishes
Laura Skaife-Knight
Chief Executive