Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 25 November 2024

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Image of CE for Staff Fortnightly Blog

Message for All NHSO Staff 

Hi All

I regularly mention the importance of celebrating small wins and our progress as we continue our improvement journey and over this last week there have been a number of these that I want to share with you all so we can pause, celebrate and recognise our progress, recognising these moments are important ones.

We know our own iMatter scores improved in many areas in 2024 compared to 2023 signalling that we are moving forward and that the areas we are focusing on in response to your feedback are beginning to make a difference to how you feel working here.

Last week, the national iMatter benchmarking was published which allows us to see our results alongside those of other Boards and peers – and there is much for us to recognise here for NHS Orkney, who feature prominently in the published ‘iMatter Health and Social Care Staff Experience Survey 2024’ report – https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836018940

Here are the headlines:

  • Overall national response rate: 58% (NHS Orkney 69%, marking a 10% increase for us versus 2023 and the largest increase in response rate compared to any other Board)
  • Action plans agreed within 8-week window: national score 56% (NHS Orkney 69%)
  • Employee Engagement Index: national score 76: NHS Orkney’s was 75, however,this shows an improvement versus last year and continued improvement, which is referenced in the report
  • In the section ‘My Organisation’ – NHS Orkney achieved the greatest improvement of all of the ‘My Organisation’ components across all Boards with an increase of 8 points for ‘I feel that Board members who are responsible for my organisation are sufficiently visible’ (from 53 in 2023 to 61 in 2024)
  • NHS Orkney was the only Territorial Health Board to improve (by +2 in 2024 versus 2023 from 72 to 74) for the question ‘I would be happy for a friend or relative to access services within my organisation’

In response to your feedback earlier this year, you told us that if we were to make improvements in six key areas, your experience of working here would improve further. As a reminder, these priorities are as follows:

  • Health and wellbeing
  • Valuing and recognising you
  • Being involved in decisions that affect you
  • Listening to, and acting on your feedback (and closing the loop)
  • Leading with kindness (one of our values)
  • Being able to confidently raise concerns, including those about safety

In the coming weeks we will share how we’re doing in each of these areas and the changes we are making in response to your feedback.

And on this note, last week at our Senior Leadership Team meeting we agreed and approved the categories for this year’s Team Orkney (staff) awards, which will launch in January 2025, with the event to be held at the end of March 2025. More information to follow on this in the coming month, however, for now the changes to categories for this year are as follows (these are the new/changed categories):

  • Open and Honest Award
  • Respect Award
  • Kindness Award
  • Star of the Future Award
  • Excellence in the Community Award
  • Outstanding Care Award changed to ‘Providing Excellent Care Award’
  • Innovation Award changed to ‘Continuous Improvement Award’ (Improving Together)

Moving on, I am delighted to congratulate our Health Visiting and Maternity Service for maintaining our Baby-Friendly Gold Accreditation. This is an outstanding achievement. It is great news for our teams and further evidences the excellent care they continue to deliver to babies and their families.

When completing the audits for our return, 100% of surveyed mothers said they were treated with kindness and consideration all of the time and 100% of women surveyed said they were happy with their care with lots of positive comments about how individual staff had made a difference. There is no higher recognition than this from our patients – and yet more good news to recognise and celebrate.

Earlier this week we received the first draft of a report into our compliance as an organisation against the Cyber Security Resilience Framework which provides evidence to Scottish Government, on the controlswe have in place to ensure our systems and data is safe.

Our Digital Services team have done a remarkable job of working across all departments to submit evidence to auditors for this latest National Information Security Audit and early indications are that we have indeed made some great progress this year.

Whilst there is more to do in terms of increasing our compliance, our Digital Services team continue to push forward with our improvement plan. This is another great example of a significant improvement and one we should all be very proud of.

Celebrating and recognising progress, no matter how big or small, is an important part of our journey and how I want us to do things here. It’s right when we have to talk about and focus on the areas we must improve for our patients and community and that we are held to account for doing so – but this must be balanced with celebrating the many good things that are happening and progress we are very clearly making. I receive this feedback often, and I couldn’t agree more – this balance is important and is something we will continue to focus on so we get this as right as we can do.

I leave you with this quote:

“Tiny victories are like gems scattered on your journey, notice them.” (Emma Xu)

Have a good week all.

Best wishes.

Laura Skaife-Knight

Chief Executive