Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust used a staged approach to seek feedback and implement the Health and Wellbeing Framework

What we’ve done

Who we are

Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital care, diagnostic services, specialist cancer care and adult community services in Surrey, South East England. We employ over 4,500 people and have more than 400 volunteers. We serve a population of 330,000.

What we did

We took a phased approach to using the Health and Wellbeing Framework. We are working through the Framework’s diagnostic tool section by section, rather than covering everything at once.

We wanted to complete the entire diagnostic tool, but we knew we would not be able to do everything in a short space of time. The tool is divided into sections, so it was easy to break up the work. We started with the sections where our wellbeing lead was familiar with the support available and where we thought we could develop most.

A wellbeing lead coordinated the process and sought information from other departments. Once we have completed a full draft, we will ask some of our Health and Wellbeing Champions to review the tool to get different perspectives.

What we’ve achieved so far

Using the diagnostic tool highlighted areas in which we are excelling as well as where we could develop our wellbeing provision. For example, we identified that our healthy lifestyle provision was fairly limited. In response, we have been exploring using in-house staff to bolster our offerings, such as providing exercise sessions and monthly smoking cessation sessions specifically for staff, promoting our sleep team and increasing promotion of the staff gym.

Using the diagnostic tool showed us that we need to train managers to spot the signs of musculoskeletal issues among staff and for staff to have tools to improve musculoskeletal resilience.

We are also working on improving staff rest areas. Ward staff have fed back that they do not want to spend a lot of time walking to and from rest areas. We are looking at ways to provide rest areas closer to wards, with the support of the Royal Surrey Charity. We hope this will help staff to take their scheduled breaks.

“It was refreshing to go through the diagnostic tool and draw out successes. It highlighted that we are doing well with mental health offers but have more work to communicate so staff know what is available. There are a number of initiatives listed under each tab of the spreadsheet which provide much more detail and suggestions than we would have thought of ourselves. This provides ideas to try.” – Trust representative

What we’ve learnt so far

Focus on what is important to staff

Before looking at the diagnostic tool, it might help to ask staff what they think of the wellbeing support available and where there are gaps. This will help you target which elements of the tool to focus on first. It will give you a clear purpose for using the tool.

Be realistic about what you can achieve

We advise others to use the tool as a way to brainstorm and get suggestions or new areas to consider. It is important not to view the tool as a list of things that everyone must do, otherwise it would be easy to get disheartened and think that there is a lot we are not doing. We are focusing on doing things bit by bit.

Get input from a wide range of staff when completing the diagnostic tool

We focused first on gaining feedback from leads providing health and wellbeing services at the Trust. Then we moved on to engage Wellbeing Champions who are frontline staff. Next we will seek input from wider groups such as a Health and Wellbeing Forum that any staff can attend.