Enjoying Work Collaborative
In June 2021, the College’s National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) launched a quality improvement (QI) collaborative to support teams to understand and improve the experience, wellbeing and joy of staff.
After 18 months of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of continuing to deliver care and working differently in light of restrictions, the collaborative was launched at an important time.
Some 38 teams from 16 healthcare organisations in England and Wales have taken part in the 12-month collaborative, which comes to an end this month.
The programme supports teams to apply quality improvement to this issue, with skilled QI Coaches facilitating an appreciative inquiry in the initial stages to explore what really matters, for individuals and as a team.
Teams identified ideas which they felt would improve their experience and wellbeing, and were supported to test these out, using data to determine whether the changes led to increased staff wellbeing and joy in work. In addition to this ongoing improvement, all the participating teams came together virtually every other month to share ideas and learn together.
Some of the changes that teams tested included sharing messages of thanks and appreciation, encouraging each other to take breaks, having walking meetings and trying out ways of improving communication in the team.
Over the course of the year, we have seen improvement across the three outcome measures that have been collected weekly in the teams and preliminary results are:
- a 44% improvement in the percentage of people who have enjoyed being at work frequently
- a 39% improvement in the percentage of people who are experiencing no symptoms of burnout
- an 8% improvement in the percentage of people who are extremely likely to recommend their team as a place to work.
The team at the NCCMH will now collate the learning of the 38 teams involved in the collaborative and share all materials publicly for any teams wanting to start their own projects to improve their wellbeing and joy in work.
Back to our May 2022 eNewsletter.