Support for health and wellbeing guardians operationally
Health and wellbeing guardians are an assurance function, and not operational doing roles and therefore need support to discharge their duties.
This document is designed to outline wider strategic and operational supportive roles, functions and resources that are critical to enabling health and wellbeing guardians to discharge their assurance function and duties.
Key relationships, teams/functions, networks, and development offers/resources are outlined. However, health and wellbeing guardians will vary within each healthcare organisation and context, and these resources should be considered flexibly and interpreted and adapted to meet local need.
Roles and teams who support health and wellbeing guardians
The health and wellbeing guardian is an assurance function, and not operational doing role and therefore needs support from others to discharge their duties effectively. Detailed within this document is an overview of the various roles found in many organisations that are likely to be helpful in supporting health and wellbeing guardians.
It is recognised that not all support will be applicable to every healthcare organisation or environment.
For example, in small primary care organisations and networks, some supportive roles may not exist at all, and in small to medium sized organisations such as integrated care boards (ICBs) it is likely that one person may lead on many of these supportive roles and commission in wider support functions such as occupational health.
This is therefore for guidance only and must be worked through within the context of each healthcare organisation taking forward the function of the health and wellbeing guardian.
Roles that can support health and wellbeing guardians and how they may do this
Human resource (HR) director/chief people officer (CPO)
The HR director/CPO, or equivalent senior leader, manages both the strategic health and wellbeing needs of their workforce and how this is operationalised through various support services and interventions.
The HR director provides support to the chair and chief executive officer, who are responsible for appointing a health and wellbeing guardian. The health and wellbeing guardian is ultimately responsible to the chair (or equivalent).
The HR director should work in partnership with the health and wellbeing guardian to ensure:
- the organisation invests in and creates a culture of health and wellbeing for all employees
- the health and wellbeing needs of all employees are fully understood and operationally supported
- a health and wellbeing strategy and investment plans are in place, including access to occupational health and wellbeing services and interventions.
Board members/senior leadership team
All organisational senior leadership team/board members have a role to play in supporting the health and wellbeing needs of their employees. Further guidance on how they can support health and wellbeing guardians can be found in the following documents, wellbeing guardians on the board and wellbeing guardians poster.
Occupational health and wellbeing and human resources and organisational development team
The NHS growing occupational health and wellbeing together strategy outlines the value that occupational health and wellbeing services and interventions bring and offers a roadmap for how to grow occupational health and wellbeing services and the professions. In brief, occupational health and wellbeing and human resource and organisational development teams are vital in supporting the health and wellbeing guardian and HR director, as they:
- are experts in improving occupational health and wellbeing and can assist in needs analysis and designing the organisations occupational health and wellbeing strategy and investment plan
- have access to metrics and data that describe the occupational health and wellbeing needs, challenges, and service impact for the workforce
- operationally support the occupational health and wellbeing needs of the workforce, through supportive occupational health and wellbeing services and interventions
- can demonstrate the evaluation and impact of occupational health and wellbeing interventions, to inform ongoing investment.
It is acknowledged that for smaller and medium sized healthcare organisations (for example, in primary care, ICBs and smaller hospital trusts) much of the above service may be commissioned in. However, the leader for these services can work with the health and wellbeing guardian and draw on the expertise of the providers to support and inform the health and wellbeing guardian.
Health and wellbeing champions
Health and wellbeing champions are individuals who:
- promote, identify, and signpost their colleagues and team members to health and wellbeing support offers and resources at a team-based level
- work at all levels of the organisation, from all demographics and roles
- take on this responsibility in addition to their day-to-day role.
Health and wellbeing champions can act as the intelligence gatherers and eyes and ears of the wellbeing needs of our NHS people. It is therefore suggested that health and wellbeing guardians may wish, when possible, to regularly meet with the organisations network of health and wellbeing champions.
Staff networks
Staff networks are an ideal way to gather data on the diverse needs of all our workforce, and to provide intelligence to the health and wellbeing guardian that the organisations health and wellbeing strategy is meeting these needs.
Regional and national health and wellbeing teams
NHS England has a regional and national function that supports organisations in improving the health and wellbeing of their workforce.
These teams can work with networks of health and wellbeing guardians to support them in their role. Details can be found on the community web space.
Professional nurse advocates
The professional nurse advocate (PNA) is a new professional clinical leadership and advocacy role for registered nurses. It is the first clinical model of restorative supervision for nurses in England that equips PNA-trained staff to listen and understand the challenges fellow colleagues and teams are facing, and to provide and deliver quality improvement initiatives in response.
In healthcare organisations where PNAs are present, the health and wellbeing guardians may wish to meet with the organisation’s chief nurse or the identify senior registered nurse who is responsible for the oversight and implementation of PNAs, to actively listen to the experiences of PNAs.
Resources and tools to support health and wellbeing guardians
We are supporting health and wellbeing guardians as a community. All offers and support can be accessed via the community web space. This site also contains information on regional networks and the main local points of contact for further support, advice and guidance for health and wellbeing guardians.
The NHS health and wellbeing framework and diagnostic tool can be used by organisations on an ongoing basis as a developmental tool to continually baseline and seek assurance around employee wellbeing, and to build their dynamic health and wellbeing strategy and interventions.
Wellbeing is dynamic, changes over time and is different to different people. It is important that the diversity of employee voices is continually engaged and captured (beyond the NHS staff survey) to ensure these rich and diverse perspectives build a true picture of the current culture of health and wellbeing.
The model healthcare system has an evolving wellbeing data set that covers many healthcare organisational settings. It contains several wellbeing indicators which can be made of use as part of the health and wellbeing guardian assurance function. The NHS staff survey also has a variety of employee data for consideration.
The NHS growing occupational health and wellbeing together strategy has the ambition to grow occupational health and wellbeing services across systems, the multiprofessional family of people who support improving the health and wellbeing of NHS employees, and to increase the impact of occupational health and wellbeing services and interventions.
This strategy has a variety of proactive and supportive work that will directly support health and wellbeing guardians, and those who support them, to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Health and wellbeing guardians will naturally be concerned by any event of a death by suicide of any member of staff. It is important to therefore highlight the support resources available to all healthcare organisations.
There is now national guidance and toolkits for organisations to support with suicide prevention and postvention, these are:
This toolkit has been designed to help NHS organisations to reduce the risk of suicide in their workforce. It assists organisations to embed suicide prevention strategies in the organisation’s health and wellbeing policies and guide the approach to supporting those at risk of suicide within the workforce.
Developed by the University of Surrey, this guidance uses insight and testimonials from NHS staff affected by colleague suicide as well as those who have provided support to staff affected by suicide. The guidance is intended for everyone who works in the NHS but is aimed at NHS executive leaders, decision makers and policymakers.
This is a practical resource developed by NHS Confederation, NHS Employers, NHS England and Samaritans. It is aimed at helping NHS organisations develop a process for managing the impact of employee suicide on colleagues and is particularly useful for staff working in human resources, occupational health and health and wellbeing.
These documents help organisations to grow a supportive and preventative culture for our NHS people and guide organisations on how to develop and implement postvention processes to manage the impact of an employee suicide.
It is worth reiterating for clarity and confidence that, the health and wellbeing guardian is not expected to lead or report on any suicide investigation findings. The health and wellbeing guardian is entitled within the capacity of their assurance function to hold senior leaders to account.
Ensuring that the senior leaders are implementing the national suicide prevention and postvention guidance and working to proactively grow a preventative and supportive organisational culture for all our NHS people.