Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust.
BSUH is an acute teaching hospital working across the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath. Staff from BME backgrounds and other groups with protected characteristics reported that bullying, harassment and discrimination were rife within the organisation.
In 2017 Wellbeing With Cari (version 1.0) was brought in to support an ambitious programme of operational and cultural change at the Trust after it was put into special measures following its CQC inspection report in 2016. (In 2019 a new artificial intelligence version of Cari was launched.)
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Interview.
Deputy HR Director.
Reflections.
5 years on.
Our Approach
Any culture change project must start by getting to know the underlying problems that the organisation is trying to solve. However, one of the challenges of gathering this kind of information is that employees are often unwilling to openly discuss when they are struggling, for fear of reprisals.
Wellbeing With Cari is an award winning, purpose-built tool designed to evaluate and measure wellbeing and happiness. Unlike any other survey of its kind, Wellbeing With Cari measures both the cognitive and emotional responses from individuals, giving a clearer picture of the cultural challenges beneath the data.
The results from BSUH suggested that working conditions presented a serious challenge, with 70% of staff coming into work at a level below effective functioning – with decision making, teamwork and problem solving skills negatively impacted. Initial feedback to these anonymised personal reports was extremely positive, with 4 in 5 staff saying that their contents and the recommended interventions were ‘spot on’
The Outcomes.
As news spread of the innovative approach the BSUH Trust was taking to address its challenges, the survey process was featured on the regional BBC news. Analysing the responses enabled the Wellbeing with Cari team to deliver confidential, targeted interventions for every employee, triaging every issue based on the urgency of the situation. This included a range of counselling, coaching and resilience workshops.
In all, some form of support has now been offered to more than 4,800 of the Trust’s 8,000 employees, in an ongoing effort to instil a permanent culture change. The Trust’s internal Learning and Development team were so impressed by the content of the wellbeing and resilience coaching sessions delivered by the Wellbeing with Cari team, that they are now training to administer the questionnaire and deliver the ‘NeuChem’ coaching techniques themselves.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust has seen sickness absence rates drop for eight consecutive months since the implementation of the wellbeing programme. A significant factor in this is the direct reduction in the rate of absences due to stress, depression or other psychiatric complaints (8.6% reduction), with the knock-on benefits to general health and wellbeing also having a likely impact on muscular-skeletal complaints, and the likelihood of other conditions being worsened by presenteeism.
Overall, the Trust saw a forecast saving of £2.9 million per annum – equivalent to a minimum of 7.8x ROI.
“What I love about Wellbeing with Cari is that it gives something back to every employee and helps us drive more ROI, because it’s proactive and preventative. It’s allowed us to empower our staff and help them target the support they need and best suits them from our broad range of existing wellbeing investments.”
Lorissa Page, Deputy Director of HR
“The results are personal to each individual and highlight areas where we can take better care of ourselves or need to ask for help… All 8,000 staff across the Trust have access to the Cari survey, enabling them to develop their own personal wellbeing profile and access support to improve individual wellbeing”
Marianne Griffiths, Chief Executive
This case study was independently written by the University of Sussex Innovation Centre.