Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 - Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

72 4. Our Governance
Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13
Board effectiveness
and evaluation
The RD&E Board has continued on its
development journey during the year.
Collectively, the Board understands
that to conduct its business effectively
and to ensure that it fulfils its
obligations as the body responsible
for all aspects of the performance
of the Trust, it needs to maintain an
approach of continuous improvement
in what it does, how it does it and the
culture and behaviours that underpin
performance.
Over the year, the Board uses the
time it has available to transact its
core business as a Board but also to
spend time ensuring that it has the
opportunity to consider, reflect on
and improve its own performance; to
have more wide-ranging discussions
about issues that are impacting on
the Trust within the context of the
Trust’s corporate strategy; and to
receive briefings on key issues or
developments in the NHS and in
healthcare more generally.
To enable this to happen, the Board
held four development/strategy days
during the year (as well as a joint
session with the Council of Governors).
In addition to this, the Board agreed
that from May 2012 it would move
its Board meetings to the afternoon
to enable the whole of the morning
sessions to be devoted to strategic
discussions and Board development.
This has undoubtedly helped the Board
focus its attention on maintaining a
strategic approach to its work and
reasonable balance with the necessary
work it undertakes on performance,
operational issues and compliance. As
well as re-balancing its schedule, the
Board has tried out different ways of
operating – for example by keeping
verbal introductions to Board papers to
a minimum, and adopting a new Board
paper template – to ensure that it is
being as effective as possible.
Over the year, the Board has also
focused its attention on developing
the Board Assurance Framework (BAF)
in order to focus on understanding
and mitigating risks to the corporate
strategy as well as using the BAF to
drive the Board agenda.
Some of the issues the Board
addressed in these development/
strategy sessions included:
• Annual Plan and contracting issues
• Changes to the compliance
framework and implications
• Developing the Trust’s Corporate
Strategy
• The Board Assurance Framework
• Board effectiveness
• A seminar on E-Notes.
In January 2013 the Board
commissioned a consultancy (Board
Intelligence) to undertake an external
evaluation of Board effectiveness and
what lessons could be learned to
continue the ongoing development of
the Board.
The review focused on a collective
analysis of the effectiveness of the
main Board (rather than committees
and other governance structures)
using feedback forms the Board itself
had undertaken through an online
self-evaluation survey, independent
observation of the Board meeting,
seminar and a review of its key
materials, and a seminar conducted
with Board Members. The purpose of
undertaking an external evaluation
was based on good practice drawn
from the direction set out in the UK
Corporate Governance Code (2010)
which recommends that all FTSE 350
companies undertake an externally
facilitated Board evaluation at least
every third year.
The evaluation concluded that the
Board compares well with similar
organisations: “The RD&E Board is an
engaged and well-functioning Board
that compares favourably to its peers
within the NHS and other listed or
privately owned organisations. We
were struck by the how well the Board
works together as a team, with the
Board Members all having air-time
to question and provide constructive
input to agenda items. There was
a positive atmosphere in the Board
meeting and we observed a healthy
dynamic between Board members."
"The RD&E Board
is an engaged and
well-functioning Board"