A story of transformation

The average chief executive in the modern era stays in post for five years – but I worked as RCPsych CEO for seven years because I loved the job so much, only leaving the role earlier this month.

The College’s members are dedicated, hard-working and warm and the College staff are passionate, skilled and friendly.

During my seven years in post – which started on 28 November 2016 – I worked with four great presidents: Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Professor Wendy Burn CBE, Dr Adrian James and Dr Lade Smith CBE.

I also had the opportunity to work with amazing members from all around the world, in each specialty and sub-specialty of psychiatry, and with many members of the wider mental health multi-disciplinary team.

Transformation

Over the course of my period in office, together, as a team, we managed to transform the RCPsych into a modern, progressive, inclusive and values-based organisation.

Through rolling out our College values of Courage, Innovation, Respect, Collaboration, Learning and Excellence, we created a positive, enabling and empowering environment, where many people – regardless of their background or characteristics – felt as if they belonged.

• We hugely increased our media coverage – securing up to 13,000 media mentions a year.
• We enhanced our influence over politicians, for instance playing a key role in the injection of additional £150m of funding for urgent and emergency mental health care in England, earlier this year.
• We successfully digitised our exams in 2020, in response to the pandemic, through the biggest project ever run by the College.
• We helped increase the fill rate for core psychiatric training places from 67% in 2017 to 100% for the last four years across the UK, through our Choose Psychiatry campaigns.
• We increased the number of member events by 33%.
• We increased our membership figure by 18% from 17,900 to 21,200.

We raised the profile of psychiatry in the Devolved Nations and increased our support for the delivery of excellent mental health globally.

We also started winning national awards left, right and centre – for the Choose Psychiatry campaign, for our work on equality, diversity and inclusion, and for our work on sustainability among other areas.

Diverse, influential, forward-thinking and inclusive

We reduced our staff gender pay gap to 2% compared to a national average of 15%. We also reduced our staff ethnicity pay gap to 2% compared to an average for large charities of 22%.

The four most common words used by members to describe the College in 2016, according to membership research, were ‘London-centric’, ‘elitist’, ‘cliquey’ and ‘invisible’.

By 2021, these had changed to ‘diverse’, ‘influential’, ‘forward-thinking’ and ‘inclusive’.

Staff research showed that morale was high, and that the overwhelming majority of employees thought the College was ‘on the right track’ and was a ‘great place to work’.

Earlier this year, we were named as being in the top 100 UK employers for creating an LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace – and the Equality and Human Rights Commission highlighted us, through the publication of a case study, as an exemplary employer.

The future is bright

The College is a wonderful organisation and it was a real wrench to leave it to go and work as Chief Executive with the National Pharmacy Association.

Starting a new chapter feels exciting, but a piece of my heart will always belong to the RCPsych.

I know I leave the organisation in great hands with Lade as President and Sonia Walter as Interim Chief Executive, who will be supported by the excellent Officer and Senior Management teams respectively.

There will be many challenges ahead, but the future is bright for the RCPsych.