Great Place to Work

As a Trust, we aspire to be a Great Place to Work and attract and retain talented clinical and non-clinical staff. It takes every single member of staff to provide the best possible care for our patients.

Our workforce is central to everything we do. The people who work in our organisation are our greatest asset and are key to delivering high-quality care. We have continued to make significant improvements in creating a stable and valued workforce, focusing on active anti-racism, co-production and improvement. This is helping us to drive down our use of agency staff and temporary workers.

Increasing recruitment and reducing our vacancy rate has been an important area of focus across our services, and we have seen important improvements. As part of this work we developed proactive recruitment resources, with our new ‘Proud to Belong’ recruitment brand (developed based on patient and staff feedback), with new materials, new messages, new website pages and advertising which has supported a number of recruitment days.

Our focus on local community recruitment has seen us be present at a number of recruitment fairs, culminating in our own community and internal recruitment events. We are also seeing success from the direct recruitment of student nurses.

This focus on recruitment has seen our overall vacancy rate reduce a further two percentage points (from 15.1% last year to 13.1% in 2024/25). We have also seen our medical vacancies reduce from 11.1% in 2023/24 to 8.8% in 2024/25.

And we know there is more to do. Our focus now is on supporting those teams and services with critical, hard-to-recruit posts. This is being driven by our workforce planning.

We believe that a significant part of this improvement is due to our growing reputation as a Trust that values anti-racism, co-production, and continuous improvement. We also know that our transformation journey is supporting recruitment and retention. The opening of new modern mental healthcare facilities at Springfield University Hospital and developments at Tolworth, Barnes, and Richmond are gaining national attention. 

Case Study: Value of apprenticeships

I completed the CMI Level 3: Principles of Management and Leadership apprenticeship. Having managed teams in the past, I saw this as an opportunity to gain a formal qualification in management while also expanding my experience within the NHS, as I was new to the Trust at the time. 

The apprenticeship was offered as part of my role, and I felt it would be a valuable way to develop my leadership skills and understanding of the organisation.

One of the most significant takeaways from this experience has been learning about management theory, which has given me new insights into organisational structures and team dynamics. Connecting with other apprentices from different Trusts and service areas has also been enlightening, particularly in understanding the perspectives of clinical staff. These interactions have broadened my view of how management practices vary across different parts of the NHS.

Looking ahead, I plan to use the knowledge and experience gained from this apprenticeship to progress further in my NHS career. For anyone considering an apprenticeship, I’d advise discussing it with your manager and team, as it requires a significant time commitment. 

Having a supportive team makes a huge difference, and I encourage managers to be flexible and recognise the long-term benefits of developing staff through apprenticeships.

A large agency and temporary workforce does not support good quality care, it also increases costs. We know that consistency in staffing offers better care and a better experience for teams. We have undertaken focused work to drive down our agency workforce, which has included a focus on substantive recruitment and reducing turnover. At the end of the year, our spend on agency workforce was below the national target of agency costs, at below 2.9% of the pay bill. Towards the end of the year, the Government announced further targets to reduce overall temporary workforce (including Bank) which we are currently taking pro-active steps to work through.

We have seen a significant reduction in turnover (from 13.1% last year to 12% this year). Our retention rates for staff who have been with us under 12 months, however, remain higher than we would want, although they have reduced since last year (from 23.9% last year to 21.8% this year). This continues to be an area of focus. We have put in place a series of initiatives to further reduce turnover, including leadership development, celebration and recognition, health and wellbeing support, career conversations and stay conversations. Our service lines developed workforce plans, which have helped us to better understand hotspots and support retention.

Leadership Development: A full leadership offer is now in place for front line to senior leaders, and a new front line leaders programme designed with operational leads has been put in place. Our Inspire Programme, aimed at our most senior leaders, completed with 10 graduating from the programme. Over 60 middle managers (Band 7 and 8a) have completed the middle manager STEPS Programme with a new STEPS alumni forum in progress. 10 of our Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic Leaders graduated from the South West London leadership course. 

Coaching and Mentoring Hub: We launched our Coaching and Mentoring Hub for members of staff to access coaching and mentoring opportunities. We have recruited 22 coaches and 58 coachees, and have established 57 coaching relationships.

What our staff tell us – annual staff survey

The NHS Staff Survey 2024 took place between October and November 2023. We achieved our third consecutive year of improvements in the national NHS staff survey.   

1,930 (63%) of colleagues completed the survey and we achieved very high engagement with traditionally difficult to reach colleagues such as forensic teams and adult inpatient teams.   

Our results showed improvements in three People Promise themes – ‘We are compassionate and inclusive', ‘We are always learning' and 'Morale'.

91% of colleagues say ‘my role makes a difference to patients’ – which is the highest of all trusts in the country.

More of us are also saying that:  

• We would recommend our organisation as a place to work  
• We would recommend our organisation as a place to receive care  
• There are enough staff to do our jobs  
• Care is our top priority and that our roles make a difference to patients  
• We have access to career and development opportunities  

More of us also say that our organisation has opportunities for development, takes positive action on health and wellbeing, report feeling safe to report concerns, and that we’ll receive feedback on changes.

We also looked at the data in detail by demographics, allowing us to see and understand the staff experience from each of the protected characteristics. 

However, we saw deteriorations or not as much progress as we would have liked in three key areas, which form the basis of our work over the coming two years. These themes are reflected in the new annual delivery plans.

Our Making Life Better Together Programme is our continuous cultural improvement programme. It brings together staff engagement and organisational development, health and wellbeing, anti-racism, co-production and quality improvement in one place. We know that engaged, well looked-after staff who are recognised and valued provide even better care to our communities. This is why we have developed our Making Life Better Together culture change programme to work with our people (our staff, patients and our community) to create a positive culture where our values are linked to our behaviours. 

We have focused on organisational development, anti-racism, inclusion and diversity and bringing your whole self to work, psychological safety (see Better Care section) and speaking up, and health and wellbeing. 

MLBT Development Centre 

This year we established our MLBT Development Centre (MLBT DC) to be the primary vehicle for Organisational Development (OD) in the Trust.   Its remit is to enable the changes, identified through the MLBT OD Framework, that are required to shift our organisational culture and reflect our values and strategic goals.

The service has evolved in the past year to meet the demands of teams to adapt to change, grow, and thrive. Its primary aim is to improve team effectiveness, psychological safety (and to address closed cultures) and multi-disciplinary working.  

The long-term vision for the Making Life Better Together (MLBT) Development Centre is to serve as a catalyst for continuous cultural improvement within our organisation. Supporting individual and team development will help shape an evolving culture that enhances both patient care and staff experience.  Through this work, we have identified several cultural patterns, and alongside this, the cultural patterns to which we aspire. 

Organisational Development Framework

Over the last year the MLBT Development Centre has undertaken a number of team interventions, developed a series of self-help resources for line managers, supported facilitator training to expand capability and offered 30 OD clinics for members of staff to seek specific advice and support. 

MLBT Senior leadership Seminars: This is the third year of our quarterly MLBT Leadership Seminars, which are now well-established events offering our Trust’s top 100 leaders the opportunity to come together to develop and learn together while discussing important topics, share best practice and develop as a community of leaders. Our MLBT Development Centre has led these sessions and they include a series on leading change and team effectiveness.

Recognition and reward: Through our MLBT programme we also work to recognise our amazing teams and reflect the value we place on their work. We have supported a number of activities:

·        MLBTeam launch. We launched our MLBTeam Ambassadors network, creating a network of over 135 staff members from teams across the Trust to share knowledge and information across all of our teams.

·         Exceptional People Award: We continued to promote our monthly Exceptional People Award recognition program. This is awarded monthly, to someone who is making significant contributions to the community and helping colleagues and patients while putting the Trust values at the forefront. This year over 150 people were nominated for an award. Winners are awarded a certificate, badge, and gift for their hard work.

·        Long Service Awards: We recognised 200 people who have celebrated their 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25+ anniversaries with us. Members of staff received a hand signed certificate and badge, while those who are our longest serving staff receive a voucher.

·        The 2024 Quality Awards: In February 2025, 160 staff from across our Trust came together for our annual Quality Awards. The event celebrates the fantastic work done by our incredible communities on a daily basis. Last year, we received more than 300 high-quality nominations for teams and individuals – an increase on 2023 nominations. The judging panel, which was made up of our patients, staff networks and members of our Board, found it extremely difficult to choose from such a strong cohort of nominations. In total there were 14 awards presented to staff and teams.

·        Village summer celebrations: We saw over 2000 members of the community, patients and staff take part in two summer celebrations at Springfield and Tolworth and three roadshows at community sites. The goal of these events is to break down barriers and bring our communities together to celebrate inclusivity and connect with local people. Patients supported the events by curating the playlist and showing art and poetry. We are grateful to our sponsors for funding these events.

 MLBT health and wellbeing support

We know that staff who report a better experience, form better work relationships and report being happier and healthier. And happier, healthier staff provide better care. There is also a financial cost to poor staff experience with increased sickness, vacancies, turnover and lost productivity.

Part of our focus has been to place a greater emphasis on our data, particularly triangulating wellbeing data, to establish themes and improve and target our interventions. We reassessed ourselves against the NHSE Health And Wellbeing (HWB) Self-Assessment in early 2025. The process has identified strengths around our HWB arrangements and provision, and informed a gap analysis. 

Specific support on offer included:

·        Psychological safety and speaking up: complementing the Quality Improvement and Innovation (QII) team’s Psychological Safety Programme (more in the Better Care section), we ran a number of well attended sessions to support psychologically safe services and teams. We reviewed and publicised our speaking up policies to ensure that all staff are aware of the support available and that we encourage people to speak up. We worked with our independent Speak-Up Guardian to support a better understanding of the service which offers staff the ability to confidentially discuss matters relating to patient care and safety, whistleblowing, bullying and harassment, and work grievances.

·        Menopause support – a new policy was developed as a collaboration with the Women’s Network which seeks to normalise conversations about the menopause in the workplace by raising awareness about menopause and support available for employees struggling to manage menopause symptoms at work. A network of menopause champions has been developed, providing support to staff. To help normalise conversations around menopause and support staff wellbeing, 40 managers - including 10 men - attended our ‘Supporting People During Menopause’ programme, aimed at equipping line managers to provide informed, compassionate support, contributing to individual wellbeing, productivity, sickness absence reduction and retention.   

·        Health and Wellbeing Training programme – we have coordinated the delivery of a suite of training comprising short modules on Wellbeing and Mental Health, Stress Management, Mindfulness course and Tasters. 

·        Mindful Employer Charter: Our Mental Health Network and health and wellbeing team worked jointly to renew our Mindful Employer Charter, signaling our commitment as an employer to being ‘Positive about Mental Health’. This will also enable new resources to be made available to support awareness around managing mental health in the workplace.

·         Beyond Bullying: Towards Civility and Respect Training: We have continued to deliver Beyond Bullying: Towards Civility and Respect training to staff and line managers throughout the year. 

·         Carer Support: we are working jointly with the Involvement Team to review support arrangements for staff who are carers. This is informing proposals that are being shared with an external carer advisory organisation for their views and informing Trust workplans around carer support. 

§  Post Incident Support: The newly formed Staff Support Framework (which was co-produced with our patients and staff) is leading efforts to enhance support for staff experiencing violence and aggression at work. A key initiative is the pilot Staff Support Incident Careline providing a compassionate and timely response to queries about available support following incidents, including physical assaults, abuse from relatives, racism, inquest support, and moral injury. Managers can now also easily arrange individualised support to affected staff. The task group has identified priorities to better respond to racial abuse experienced by staff in clinical settings.

·        Treat me with Kindness:  We have developed a co-produced framework to help reduce violence and aggression. This included the launch of two quality improvement pilots to reduce violence and aggression across two wards. We also co-designed a new campaign aimed at reducing incidents of violence and aggression (including racism). The campaign focuses on mutual respect and treating each other with kindness.

·        Sexual safety for all of our people: In March, we launched the Sexual Misconduct Policy and accompanying resources, which aim to help staff and patients know how to recognise and address incidents of sexual harassment. 

·        Men’s health: We supported Men’s MOT health checks which enabled 30 male colleagues to receive free comprehensive health checkups on site. The MOT assessed blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI and sugar levels. A small number of staff required onwards referral to their GPs.

We have refreshed our intranet wellbeing pages to provide clearer, more accessible, information and resources for staff. The updated pages now include tools, guidance, and links to support services, making it easier for staff to find the help they need and stay informed about wellbeing initiatives across the Trust.

We also redefined and communicated our staff support offer and have seen an increase in the use of almost all services including Hastee Pay (financial draw down offer), cycle to work scheme, employee assistance service, occupational health, physiotherapy and general health and wellbeing advice and guidance.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

We are proud to be one of the most diverse organisations within the NHS and remain firmly committed to anti-racism and advancing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) across all areas of our work. While many challenges remain, over the past year, we have made important progress in improving workforce equity and anti-racism.

Six High-Impact Actions Delivery Plan

Building on our work over the last five years, we developed delivery plans to implement the NHS Six High Impact Actions. A key focus of this plan is creating psychological safety, ensuring that all staff feel secure in voicing their concerns and experiences and continuous commitment to anti-racism and inclusion.