Staff involvement in the NHS
June 23, 2008
I was visiting a relative in hospital yesterday, and I noticed on one of the notice boards that the NHS Trust was operating a staff involvement scheme through the use of employee ‘communications champions’. The purpose of these champions is to ensure that information is passed effectively between senior management and front line staff on the wards, and that staff are able to make suggestions where appropriate.
The types of activities that the communications champions carry out are maintaining the notice boards, such as printing and displaying global emails, organising regular meetings in the ward or department to share important information, attending champions meetings and keeping an eye out for good stories to be passed onto the communications team.
These types of schemes are a fantastic way of getting staff involved in very large organisations where communications can be a challenge, especially in a hospital environment where staff work shift patterns and may not all have access to electronic communications such as email and intranet. Where I work this is not such a big problem as it is a 9-5 environment and there is a manager within each department that attends management meetings and can therefore pass information between staff and executive level. However in both scenarios, the structure is only as good as the person responsible for managing communications. The notice I saw in the hospital didn’t say, but I imagine that communications champions receive support and training in their role to ensure all wards and departments receive the same level of communication, and likewise it shouldn’t be assumed that just because someone is in a management position they are automatically capable of skills such as team briefing, presenting or summarising. Part of any communications plan needs to be the development of those responsible for carrying it out, and this is where HR has a role to play.
Things to consider:QPCR
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