Improving employee engagement and wellbeing in an NHS trust
| Published date | 23 February 2010 |
| Pages | 19-24 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754391011022226 |
| Date | 23 February 2010 |
| Author | Gordon Tinline,Kim Crowe |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Improving employee engagement and
wellbeing in an NHS trust
Gordon Tinline and Kim Crowe
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present how Mersey Care NHS Trust introduced a unique
integrated leadership development and employee wellbeing programme from UK business
psychologists, Robertson Cooper, to help it prepare for Foundation Trust equivalent (FTe) status.
A priority for the Trustwas to ensure that staff felt involved and supported throughout the restructure and
felt good about coming to work and engaged by their roles.
Design/methodology/approach – Robertson Cooper designed a programme to integrate
management and leadership development with work to assess and improve levels of employee
engagement and wellbeing. It used its employee survey ASSET to measure the levels of psychological
wellbeing, engagement and productivity of employees in Mersey Care NHS Trustand assess the impact
of the change.
Findings – Using the results, individual employee action plans were designed to improve wellbeing and
engagement, and inform managers about how to address staff priorities and become more effective
leaders. Of the senior managers and clinicians who completed the evaluation, 83 percent agreed that
the content of the development centres met their expectations.
Originality/value – The paper describes a concrete example of how Mersey Care NHS Trust is
improving employee engagement by focusing on wellbeing.
Keywords Employee involvement, Leadership, National Health Service, Change management
Paper type Case study
Improving employee engagement is a challenge that many organizations now
recognize as critical to their performance and reputation. Its importance has been
acknowledged on a number of fronts, including the major report on employee
engagement recently commissioned by the UK government’s Department of Business
Innovation and Skills (BIS) from David MacLeod (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009). This article
describes a concrete example of how one organization, Mersey Care NHS Trust – a UK
public sector provider of health services that is part of the National Health Service (NHS) – is
improving employee engagement by focusing on wellbeing.
Definitions of employee engagement vary but at the core of the concept is the idea that
employees are connected to the organization in such a way that their discretionary effort is
willingly released and they are prepared to ‘‘go the extra mile’ ’ for their organization. A core
argument here is that this can only be achieved and sustained when employee wellbeing,
particularly psychological wellbeing, is positive. The relationship between wellbeing and
engagement is explored in Robertson Cooper’s 2008 wellbeing report and associated
research (Robertson Cooper, 2008), as discussed below.
The relationship between employee engagement and wellbeing
Robertson Cooper has collected more than 80,000 cases of data using ASSET, its measure
of psychological employee engagement andwellbeing. ASSETalso measures the enablers
DOI 10.1108/14754391011022226 VOL. 9 NO. 2 2010, pp. 19-24, QEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398
j
STRATEGIC HR REVIEW
j
PAGE 19
Gordon Tinline is Director of
Robertson Cooper Limited,
Manchester, UK. Kim
Crowe is an Executive
Director of Service
Development and Delivery,
Merseycare NHS Trust,
Parkbourn, UK.
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