So how important is it do you think for staff to have a compassionate workplace?
I think its hugely important, I think its massively important if you want staff to be
engaged in your workplace
if you want people to be really productive, if you want to focus on wellbeing.
I think its massively important around our partnership working, creating a solution focused
atmosphere
One where the staff really really own the organization, all of that has stemmed from
being a compassionate workplace.
So, it’s at the core?
Its absolutely at the core of it, and at the core of that then is the kindness
you know, which takes and awful lot of courage, and indeed is not a weakness as most people
think.
So how do you go about creating all of that?
It’s a definite business model and we took this model from many other places,
we took it from Panasonic, we took it from Hewlett Packard, from innocent, Toyota,
I went and visited all those places and learnt about their models and its all part of the
wellbeing culture that is creating the most productive culture.
So, we started with staff engagement, we started with staff knowledge and awareness of each
other.
Understanding what it’s like to be human,
and removing the barriers so we allow people to be human.
So, good days, bad days, a kind of level of understanding of that.
Followed on by communication, we created the phrase ‘No Dark Corners’ because its catchy
and everybody knows it.
So, we make sure everybody knows everything, warts and all, good, bad, where we are, what’s
going right what’s going wrong, what we’ve got to deliver.
And then moving through that we involved everybody in developing our vision, our values, our
behaviors.
And our behaviors are crucially important,
we’ve got them all over our offices as a reminder.
And alongside creating your behaviors you got to allow people to challenge you
when they feel you’re not behaving within that value set or in that way that you’ve
agreed.
And it can work if it’s just the staff in smaller groups but it really works well when
you’ve got the leadership buy in,
then you’ve got the whole organization, but the leaders have to agree to amend their
behavior because they have to behave the same as everybody else, it has to be role modeled.
It’s not just the add on positive staff experience, it’s at the core of what you
do, and its business driven for you?
Its total business acumen, it’s in our business planning process, it’s a business model
the governing body signed off,
every member of staff could sit here in this seat now and tell you about that business
model and why it’s so important to us, and how its increased our success.
And our partners say to me that they know where our staff have come from before they
even introduce themselves
So, what do they see in your staff?
They see total solutions focused people, they see calm responses, they see the Sunao mind
that Matsushita talked about from Panasonic.
That calmness, that being able to think and see widely, see strategically without judgement,
not bringing any personal baggage to those kinds of conversations.
So, your feeling that this approach that you’ve engendered from the very start, you see it
in your staff and you see it in your relationships with other providers and other organizations.
We see it all the way through, we see it from the successful business that we run,
we see it from the innovations that our staff of all grades, you know, grades 4 and up go
out and find innovations, they find pots of money,
they bid, they partner with other organizations, partner with patient groups.
And that’s nots because I’ve said go forth and do that
they go and do that because they feel that sense of distributed leadership, they feel
that compassionate workplace has given them that courage to go out and do that,
and they come back and try it because that’s the other part of it, in a compassionate workplace
there is no blame.