A New Deal for staff – are we ready to deliver on sustainability and transformation plans? Findings from the 5th annual NSP Workforce Wellbeing Survey
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out the challenge of establishing a new deal for staff, where they feel supported and respected for the valuable work they do. It aims to build an NHS where ‘the values we seek to achieve for our patients - kindness, compassion, and professionalism - are the same values we demonstrate towards one another’.
An ambition for ‘a consistently great place to work’ is proposed, where ‘there is more flexible working, enhanced wellbeing and career development, and greater efforts to reduce discrimination, violence, bullying and harassment’.
This resonates with the aims of the New Savoy Conference initiative on Workforce Wellbeing. The importance of wellbeing has been repeatedly affirmed through research and policy guidance over the years, and chimes with what our members have been telling us.The commission’s recommendations, then, are welcomed, and investment in workforce planning and development will be key to deliver on the NHS Long Term Plan - which can’t be done in a sustainable way without commitment to workforce wellbeing. We anticipate that a range of measures will be put in place to support staff and learners’ mental wellbeing through the working groups implementing the plan.With this shifting landscape the question we must ask is - are we ready to take up the challenge of a new deal for staff? A joint initiative on workplace wellbeing has been in place since 2014, and a Charter for Wellbeing and Resilience was launched in 2016 followed by the formation of a Collaborative Learning Network.
As part of this joint initiative, an annual wellbeing survey has been running since 2014 in order to raise awareness of the importance of wellbeing, and to engage with key stakeholders. The fourth annual survey in 2017 highlighted concerns indicating that sustainability and transformation plans in mental health will be undeliverable unless staff wellbeing, capacity and retention issues are urgently addressed.