iMatter update – Listening to and responding to your feedback – Message for NHS Orkney Staff

Message for all NHS Orkney staff 

Dear all

iMatter update – Listening to and responding to your feedback

As we get ready to run the iMatter survey this year we thought it important to share an update on the ways we have responded to your feedback over the last year. 

In response to your feedback in 2024, the key areas for attention continue to be:

• Supporting your health and wellbeing
• Valuing and recognising you
• Involving you in decisions that affect you
• Listening to and acting on feedback (and getting better at closing the loop)
• Leading with kindness and living our values
• Being able to speak up and confidently raise concerns, especially about safety

Here’s a recap and progress update on how we’ve responded to your feedback.

1. Health and wellbeing

• We continue to offer access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), which offers free counselling and support and includes access to the Wisdom app for wellbeing resources. We are evaluating the use of our EAP as we will need to make a decision about the future of this service when the current contract is up later this year. Please take a few minutes to share your feedback via the Employee Assistance Programme Evaluation survey
• We have a renewed focus on sickness absence this year (especially absence due to stress) to ensure that staff are supported to be well at work, and have everything they need to return to work as soon as they are well enough
• We started work on developing a Peer Support network and are planning to put our first group of volunteers through Psychological First Aid training in the coming months. Once training has been provided, we will launch the service and hope to grow this over time
• Our NHS Orkney Staff Wellbeing Hub has had over 200 unique viewers, so around one quarter of you have accessed the site which is excellent. The Hub is a central location where you can access a range of health and wellbeing resources. This includes links to local support groups and national initiatives. The hub also provides an opportunity to share fun activities that are taking place throughout the year

2. Valuing and recognising you

• In response to your feedback, we launched our Team Orkney Awards last year and the awards this year were equally successful. We received nominations for 157 different people and teams in 2025 and the event to recognise their collective achievements on Friday 28 March was a memorable one. We are currently evaluating this year’s awards so that we continue to improve them in response to your feedback year on year. There are a few more days to have your say via the Team Orkney Awards Evaluation survey which closes on Friday
• Long Service Awards were reinstated in 2024 and we recognised 400 colleagues for their service to NHS Orkney and the NHS more broadly. We are reviewing your feedback as we launch our 2025 awards. We know these awards continue to be shared and celebrated with colleagues, however, we are committed to reviewing our process based on your feedback
• We continue to work to ensure every member of staff receives an annual appraisal and have stepped up our support for teams to help make this as easy as possible

3. Being involved in decisions that affect you

• The monthly all staff briefing sessions continue to be well attended and are recorded for those not able to make it at the time, with a summary of the discussions and the link shared on the same day of each briefing. These will continue, as well as the monthly CEO listening drop-in sessions which are open to all staff
• Any member of staff is invited to attend our fortnightly Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meetings to observe as a development opportunity. If you would like to attend, please email Corporate Governance

4. Listening to, and acting on your feedback (and getting better at closing the loop)

• We continue to undertake regular Board walk-arounds at The Balfour, in the community and on our ferry-linked isles. Feedback from these visits is sent to managers so they can understand what is working and what needs to improve locally. Themes from these visits are reported to our Board at every meeting so we have an organisational view of all of the excellent work that happens across the organisation, and to make the Board aware of areas for improvement based on your feedback
• The iMatter survey 2025 will run again in May and work is well underway to ensure teams are correctly mapped in the system
• Bright Ideas continue to be used to gather your ideas for improvement. To date we have received around 90 ideas and many great examples of positive change being led by staff across the organisation
• All of your feedback helps us prioritise improvements, such as the five identified last year, and good progress is being made in all of these areas, including:
  • Budget resetting
  • Job evaluation
  • Sickness absence due to stress
  • Appraisals
  • Supporting people to complete statutory and mandatory training
• We have pulled together a suite of manager (team lead/supervisor) training to help managers to deliver all of the points above, with the ongoing support of our corporate teams such as our Digital, Finance and People and Culture teams. Everything is already available in Turas but we will be rolling it out systematically in the coming months

5. Leading with kindness (one of our values)

• An action plan in response to the external review of cultural development, governance and senior leadership has been put in place and is monitored by the Board at every public Board meeting. Six highest priorities have been identified by the Board which are:

• Executive Team cohesion
• Engagement and leadership from our Clinical Executive Directors
• Behavioural standards
• Leadership development
• Appraisals, mandatory training and sickness absence
• Respect for our governance

• Linked to this, every Executive Director has now completed a round of 360-degree feedback and individual reports are currently being finalised. A senior leadership programme will also be developed and implemented in the coming months

• Alongside leadership development we are proactively working on our organisational culture, which involves taking the NHS Orkney values of openness and honesty, respect and kindness, and working at a detailed level to design with you what these look like when we live them every day. A first session was run with the Board in March and the same session took place with the Senior Leadership Team yesterday. We will move quickly then to have discussions with teams across the organisation over the next few months to build our behavioural framework for NHS Orkney which we will launch later this summer

6. Being able to confidently raise concerns, including those about safety

• We continue to support colleagues through our Whistleblowing Leads and through our Confidential Contacts. In response to your feedback, and now we have a substantive Medical Director, the Executive Lead for Whistleblowing moved from the Chief Executive to our Medical Director on 1 April this year
• We launched an anonymous feedback form in October 2024 for those people who are not able to confidently raise concerns and so far, we have had 9 responses from people providing feedback through that channel. As a reminder, you can find information on the NHS Orkney Wellbeing Hub about the ways we listen and how to speak up or raise a concern

We hope this update is helpful and summarises how we continue to listen to and respond to feedback from Team Orkney throughout the year.

If you have any further feedback do get in touch with us directly, any time.

Best wishes

Laura and Jay

Laura Skaife-Knight, Chief Executive

Jay O’Brien, Director of People and Culture