Robertson Cooper and consortium partners BDP Media Group have been successful in gaining supplier status to provide Health and Welfare services to the public sector via the Buying Solutions Learning & Development and E-Learning Solutions Framework. 

We are delighted at this success which enables the UK's public sector organisations to tap into our experience and online tools to help meet their targets in terms of improving employee engagement and well-being. As well as resilience training for staff and managers, the public sector can access resources to build a well-being business case, measure levels of well-being in the workplace and implement interventions that will make improvements sustainable. All of the consortium's services are designed to impact business level outcomes like sickness absence, customer satisfaction and ultimately, productivity.

Our Managing Director, Ivan Robertson, commented "Our inclusion on this Framework will enable organisations to respond to the recommendations being made by recent key government initiatives. It opens the way for measurable improvements in employee engagement and well-being in the public sector and we are delighted with this success."

Over the last year we have been working with Mersey Care NHS Trust, one of just three UK mental health trusts with high secure units. As such, these can be demanding environments in which to work. At the beginning of the project the Trust was facing a number of significant strategic challenges, such as the pursuit of Foundation Trust equivalence (FTe) status and an organisational restructuring into new Clinical Business Units (CBUs). 

Mersey Care's Chief Executive commissioned us to help ensure staff were as ready as possible to meet these challenges. The focus was their levels of engagement and well-being, supported by effective leadership at the top of the organisation.

Our Approach
A unique programme was designed to integrate management and leadership development with the change process. This involved carrying out a survey of all staff using our market-leading tool ASSET to measure staff engagement and well-being levels. The results were used to help managers to think about how to address areas that staff had identified as priorities.  Following the survey an extensive programme of Development Centres was designed around the established NHS Leadership Qualities Framework to help senior managers reflect on their career stage and development needs. This ensured they were all individually ready to meet the challenges of the organisational change process and to support their staff.

The Outcomes
The results from the organisation-wide well-being survey were used to build action plans with managers as they settled into new roles in the restructured CBUs. This, together with the developmental feedback and reports that managers received, is providing a firm foundation for building strong staff engagement in the restructured organisation.

Kim Crowe, Executive Director of Service Development and Delivery commented:

"Like many NHS Trusts, we are undergoing major changes that are placing new demands on our staff. We appointed Robertson Cooper because they offered a unique way of incorporating well-being & managment development.."
 

The network now has over 90 organisational members and this year it has been more active than ever. It was recently invited by The Macleod Employee Engagement Review team to be part of their consultation process. This is a major national review commissioned by Lord Mandelson at the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). Leading engagement expert David Macleod briefed network members at our last meeting in London and facilitated sessions to draw upon their knowledge and experience. The outcomes, as well as the thoughts of our MD Ivan Robertson, were fed into the review.

We were delighted that the network now has the kind of profile that stimulates invitations to be involved in such reviews and the membership looks forward to continuing to influence well-being policy in this way in the coming year.

The next big event in the Network calendar is the Annual Conference taking place in Central London on 11th November. We're confident that this year's conference will again be a rewarding experience for delegates with excellent speakers and interactive workshops. We'll be publishing the agenda soon and look out for special early bird offers for non-members.

If you would like more information on the Business Well-Being Network please visit our website or email our Network Manager
Vikkie Buxton.