Annual Report and Accounts - The Great Western Hospital

3. To ensure that staff are proud to work for the Trust and would recommend the Trust as a
place to work and to receive treatment.
• Over the summer the Trust launched new values, as part of a three year Organisational
Development Programme to embed a strong customer service culture within the Trust.
The new values were developed by staff as the key characteristics and traits they felt
the Trust embodies and that all staff should aspire to.
The values are represented by four simple but powerful words: Service, Teamwork,
Ambition and Respect (STAR) and as part of the process to embed these values
across the enlarged Trust, a new employee of the month scheme was launched in
August. The STAR of the Month scheme has been well received and the Trust receives
a wide variety of nominations from across the organisation.
The Trust host an annual Staff Excellence Award in June each year which was
established to recognise, reward and celebrate the achievements of staff. This event is
well supported by staff.
In the future the values will underpin management standards, recruitment processes,
induction and appraisals to ensure the Trust has the right calibre of staff delivering not
only the best clinical care, but the best customer service too.
• Towards the end of 2011 the Trust took part in the annual national NHS Staff Survey.
The results, published in March 2012 place the Trust in the top five Acute Trusts in the
South West in terms of overall performance and the best response rate in the region.
The results show that overall staff consider the Trust to be a good place to work. As a
comparison to the previous survey in 2010 when GWH NHS FT was in the top 20% of
Trusts in 12/38 of the measures, this year the Trust is in the top 20% of Trusts in 17/38
of the indicators.
With staff being more engaged than before, this has clear benefits for patients as
research suggests that a well engaged workforce leads to better care. Despite the good
results, we are not complacent and recognise there is more work to do on some of the
indicators to see further improvements in the year ahead, such we would like to see a
bigger improvement in staff recommending the Trust as a place to receive treatment.
The Executive Committee has set four priorities for 2012/13 and plans are being worked
up to achieve them: -
o ensuring staff feel that patient care is the Trust’s priority;
o staff feeling happy with the standard of care if their relatives needed treatment;
o improving staff satisfaction with the way the Trust values their work; and
o ensuring staff feel involved in decisions on changes that affect work.
An overview of 2011 Staff Survey results is contained elsewhere in this report (section 9.3
refers).
4. To secure the long term financial health of the Trust.
The financial environment remains challenging and this challenge is set to grow in the years
ahead as the Trust seeks to reduce costs and maintain a high standard of care.
The merger with WCHS in June 2011 provides a good opportunity to be more in control of
some of the changes. Being a Trust which provides both acute and community services, as
more care is transferred out into the community, we will be better placed than most
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