Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust
Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust (LHCH) are a specialist heart and chest care organisation in the North West region. They serve a catchment area of 2.8 million people. They have an ambition to “Be the Best” and have an Outstanding CQC rating. They are single-sited and employ approximately 1,900 people.
Performance through people
LHCH had an ambition to be the best, including in terms of their engagement and culture metrics. Their journey started 3 years ago where the executive team sponsored creation of their initial plan and ambition. They understood that they needed to drive performance through their people, by providing psychological safety and a sense of purpose and belonging.
Leading for change
The response was purposeful and followed their People Strategy, although they have been agile based on needs and resources. Highlights of their journey have been as follows:
- Creating a strong sense of purpose and vision, their people strategy is visible on walls and clearly understood. Communication is done through a cascade approach, starting with the executive team and cascading through to teams.
- Creating strong and visible leadership – executive teams do formal and informal walkarounds regularly. The previous CEO did regular videos for the organisation, which included people and culture updates. The organisation has a strategic HR business partner model, and they are also visible and regularly visit areas.
- Significant focus on leadership development; a full training catalogue is in place for leaders and aspiring leaders, including Mary Seacole. The organisation used feedback from appraisals to design their development offer. There is good use of the Apprenticeship Levy with various Level 7 courses in progress
- Increasing Staff Survey response rates to over 60%, through regular HR business partner walkarounds and a “Have a Break, Have a KitKat” campaign with chocolate bars and time for people to complete their survey.
- Regular You Said We Did communication so people can see how feedback has been acted on.
- Launch and embedding of a “Be Civil, Be Kind” behavioural campaign, including working with Afta Thought to deliver drama-based training designed through lived experience.
- Creating a preventative health and wellbeing approach, twice a year, Live Well Work Well health checks in place. In addition, there is psychological support offered at hot and cold debriefs.
- Launching a programme of work around Sexual Safety – while this has not been a specific area of concern for the organisation, they have taken the opportunity to raise the profile of acceptable behaviour.
They have also worked to create local divisional leadership ownership through:
- Creating governance where divisions report action plans to People Delivery Group, which also go through to Divisional Boards and People Committee.
- Creating template action plans and communication posters to enable easier local ownership.
Measuring success
LHCH have seen significantly improved Staff Survey results since 2021 and is now one of the highest-scoring organisations in the country. They benchmark positively in terms of turnover and sickness absence.
They remain a high-performing organisation and have a twice “Outstanding” CQC rating.
Key learnings
You can’t fix everything overnight. Be purposeful and have a plan. It can be agile over time, but you need a vision.
Hold yourself and others to account. Create governance which allows for constructive challenge.
Speak to colleagues and be visible, go into clinical areas. Staff side can be a really useful stakeholder in terms of getting realistic feedback.
Next Steps
LHCH are due to go through a period of organisational change. This will naturally create uncertainty, but they feel in a good position to start this journey.
They have an ambition to focus on flexible working, based on feedback from their 2024 Staff Survey results. They acknowledge that lots of people do work flexibly, but potentially more is needed to promote this.
They are increasing their work across systems rather than as an individual organisation, which they intend to continue.
They have started an anti-racism campaign but would like to accelerate this, especially with service users to colleague behaviour.
Contact Information
Rachael McDonald,
Deputy Chief People Officer,
Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust