Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff – 28 October 2024
Message for All NHSO Staff
Dear all
Last week we had our first named storm of the season hitting Orkney and it very much feels like winter is approaching.
I know this time of year can be challenging as we move through the seasons and as we find ourselves indoors more than many of us would perhaps like.
Please look out for each other and support each other now more than ever – let’s take good care of each other and remember in doing so – that the small things matter eg; asking how people are, saying thank you, and checking-in if you sense things aren’t quite right. If we all do one of these things a day, or even a week, things will naturally feel better for us all. We are all human, and are juggling busy personal lives with busy work lives and often what’s happening in one impacts on the other – so let’s be mindful of this also.
And on this note, how organisations weather and respond to and navigate challenges matters and says a lot about organisations.
NHS Orkney certainly has its challenges – like many other Health Boards – but what’s important now is we are well-versed and sighted on these and either have plans or are developing plans to address these on a priority basis.
As a Senior Leadership Team (SLT), we have identified that there are five key areas we must improve on related to our ‘People’ strategic objective if we are to improve your experience of working here – and these are:
- Improving the Job Evaluation process
- Ensuring all staff have an annual appraisal (currently just over 30% of our staff have had an appraisal)
- Reducing sickness absence, including absence related to stress and anxiety
- Getting budgets right for each service
- Improving compliance with mandatory/statutory training
Each of these areas were the subject of discussion at our most recent Senior Leadership Team, Extended Senior Leadership Team and Area Partnership Forum as well as at our first Performance Review Meetings with clinical and corporate teams last week, which went incredibly well. With a new subset of SLT taking this work forward, with support from our Employee Director and our staffside lead colleagues, we can better understand what we need to do differently to get on top of each of these areas and understand from you, what currently gets in the way.
Moving on, in response to your feedback we have slightly refreshed our categories for this year’s Team Orkney (staff awards) and a proposal will be going to our Senior Leadership Team in November for approval, ahead of launching our awards and opening nominations in January 2025. We are partnering with The Orcadian once again for these awards, including the popular People’s Choice Awards.
Later this week we have the stakeholder panels and final interviews for our substantive Director of Finance post. I will keep you informed of the outcome of this important recruitment process.
And finally – as I have been out and about in the organisation, it is clear that we have work to do when it comes to having an honest conversation with our community about what we can and can’t deliver at NHS Orkney, to manage public expectations and better explain the context re: some of the challenges we face, especially when it comes to our fragile clinical services. We will start this series of conversations with a focus on our Dentistry Service. Through these conversations we want to share with our community and be open and transparent about how we are addressing our challenges and how we will support our community in the NHS and also how people can help and take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, recognising this is about NHS Orkney and our community working in partnership. More to follow in the coming week or so.
Best wishes.
Laura Skaife-Knight
Chief Executive