We are safe and healthy

Improving the working experience of all NHS staff, which includes improving their health and wellbeing, increasing civility and respect, and increasing their safety, is a must.

We want to create an organisational culture of compassionate leadership, improved workforce resilience and support for our staff. If done right, we’ll see a reduction in staff leaving, a reduction in staff sickness absence and fewer incidents of bullying, harassment, violence and abuse.

Safer and healthier workplace success stories

You may find these useful when thinking about how to improve practices in your workplace.

Tools and further reading

Videos

 Documents and websites

What initiatives can I take forward now?

Supporting health

There has been a greater focus on both the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our colleagues, with more support offered in teams and organisations. This includes psychological support such as Schwartz Rounds and workplace chill-out rooms, or safe spaces to help manage the physical demands of the day.

Systems have played a key role in providing a co-ordinated approach and you can take some inspiration from our case studies.

Help the carers

There are currently an estimated 250,000 carers working in the NHS, many of whom are aged 45 to 64 and so are likely to be among our most experienced and skilled staff.

Action: Find out who the carers are in your organisation and support them using ESR and the Carers Passport Scheme. Lead by example and ask your team in their next 1:1s whether they have caring responsibilities. Use the working carers passport log to guide these conversations.

Offers available

We are continuing to support our people. There are many generous offers of help and discounts for NHS staff as well support services – for example through ‘first class lounges’. lounges’ (example at Frimley Health).

Action: Find out if your staff know about this site and encourage them to share things that have helped them.

Wellbeing Wednesday events

Led by NHS England, these interactive virtual sessions are open to all NHS staff and focus on supporting staff wellbeing. They help staff stay up to date with the national wellbeing offers and learn and share experiences together.

Action: If you have staff who work in workforce, occupational health, organisational development, wellbeing, leadership, trade union support and/or are line managers, encourage them to join an event.

Virtual shared learning staff events

Staff are matched with other staff members they have not worked with previously, and can share experiences and learning. An example of this is coffee roulette.

Action: Think about how your staff already share learning, and how you could use other methods to encourage more activity.

Encouraging wellbeing

As team leaders or managers, we should actively encourage wellbeing to decrease work-related stress and have a culture where our people are expected to take breaks, manage their work demands together and take regular time away from the workplace.

Action: Think about how you are role-modelling this now, or how you could do more to develop or nurture this in your team or organisation’s culture.