Introduction and purpose

The Trust aims to ensure that patients are at the heart of what we do. The purpose of the People Plan is to set how we will develop, engage and empower our workforce to deliver our vision to be ‘The best ambulance service in the UK, by providing the right care, at the right time, in the right place every time’. The People Plan sets out our strategic workforce priorities and our approach to enabling the changes required in our workforce to support delivery of the Trust’s strategic objectives. The People Plan is a rolling 3 year Plan which will be reviewed annually to ensure that it adapts to the changing needs of the organisation and remains fit for purpose.

We are operating in a challenging time with key national drivers such as the Five Year Forward View, Long Term Plan and the Integrated Care System changes, providing a complex operating environment. Responding to this environment requires innovative leadership, an agile workforce and the necessity to collaborate in new ways of working to deliver safe, effective and patient centred care.

The needs of our workforce are also changing. Shortages of key clinical staff, changing educational pathways and the changing demands of the new workforce and longer working, requires flexibility across the employee lifecycle. We also have a number of workforce challenges around workforce engagement, culture and staff safety; diversity and inclusion; productivity and workforce modernisation. It is therefore important that the People Plan is a framework that we can utilise to enable our response to these challenges.

The impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of the strategic objectives outlined in this People Plan has been significant. The People Directorate have focussed on improving resources and capacity during the pandemic whilst ensuring that Health and Wellbeing and changes to Terms and Conditions of employment have been implemented effectively and fairly and that staff have had access to the best possible support to keep them safe.

However, moving forward, during 2021/22, the People Directorate will strive to deliver its recovery plan following the impact of COVID-19 on the strategic objectives within this Plan, focusing on both recovery of our foundations of success and resuming delivery of key improvement goals within the context of a reset of the overall implementation plan. There is a 1 year programme of delivery which is designed to focus on key recovery items and objectives.

Workforce vision

Achieving our strategic goals and making our vision a reality will not be possible without our staff. Our greatest asset is our staff and in order to fulfil our vision and meet the key drivers we need a highly skilled, committed and engaged workforce that can modernise and grow.

We have a workforce vision to develop, engage and empower our staff. This starts at the point of recruitment and continues throughout the employee lifecycle. Our leaders are key to enabling our staff to be motivated, caring and proud to work for the Trust.

The role of a leader is becoming ever more challenging in the current healthcare climate which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. How we lead in these environments is therefore equally important as what we achieve.

Leadership is key to delivering the Trust vision and there needs to be a recognition and investment in the development of great leaders who are able to inspire people to act and who can nurture a positive culture. Effective people management is the starting block to creating a motivated, engaged and committed workforce.

The People Directorate plays a vital role in enabling leadership accountability through the creation of a best practice framework of policy and practice; through expertise in workforce management and organisational design; planning and delivery of effective transactional services; leadership development and support.

The principles of the Trust’s Be Think Do Leadership Framework aims to get leaders to be a positive role model by understanding who they are and the type of leader they can be and seeks to support them through their leadership journey.

It is key for leaders to be accessible and prepared to engage with staff, leading through the uncertainty with compassion and interest. Effective leaders need to be authentic and healthy role models ; to think critically and creatively to deliver longer term change; and to act with integrity in what they do to challenge, influence and invest in others.

Leadership has also been a key theme arising from the Staff Survey results for 2020 and the Culture and Wellbeing Audit undertaken by Zeal Solutions in 2020/1. As part of the People Plan refresh and the development of a 1 year focussed action plan, the local staff survey data has been shared and will be combined with the outcomes of the Culture and wellbeing audit and with workforce intelligence to ensure a wide reaching view of local culture to continue to inform plans. Key areas of improvement and development which have emerged from the Culture and Wellbeing audit are enabling the psychological safety of the workforce and the importance of improving Volition, Inclusion and Proficiency.

Enabling our leaders to create psychologically safe and inclusive environments and to focus on the extent to which staff feel empowered, valued and competent to carry out their work is a critical focus.

Trust vision and values

The Workforce Strategy is an enabler to support the Trust’s overall ambition to be ‘The best ambulance service in the UK, by providing the right care at the right time, in the right place, every time’. Workforce forms one of the key priorities in the Trust Strategy:

Workforce: Engaging and empowering our leaders and staff to develop, adapt and embrace new ways of delivering care.

The Workforce Strategy does not operate in isolation, but exists to enable the delivery of the Trust’s Vision and to support the implementation of other key enabling strategies, including the Right Care Strategy (Quality) and the Right Time, Right Place Strategy (Urgent and Emergency Care). The Workforce Strategy enables ‘every time’ delivery of high quality patient care. As such it provides a core foundation on which future success is built.

Values refresh

Our values form the foundation of, and drive the whole organisation, ensuring we lead by example and create the right culture and conditions for patients to receive safe and effective care every time. These values can only be achieved if we have the staff in place who share the Trust’s values and feel supported to deliver them. We need to ensure that we recruit, develop and support our staff to feel engaged and proud to work for the Trust.

The review of the Trust values continued in 2020/21, despite the pandemic, with engagement activities and feedback from staff on what they valued working in NWAS directly informing the final values and their underpinning behaviours. The new NWAS Values recognise the fundamental importance of inclusion, respect and striving to deliver our best for patients, colleagues and ourselves. The refreshed values are:

External key drivers

This People Plan is shaped by key drivers in both the local and national health economy and these assist in identifying the key workforce priorities.

The NHS Five Year Forward View and Long Term Plan set out why improvements are required to support the triple aim of better health, better care, and better value. The plans set out the need to review the provision of urgent and emergency care, as well as recognising the need to develop an ambulance service which is empowered to make decisions based on the best possible outcome for the patient. The result of this is a move away from the respond-and-convey model of the traditional ambulance service. Instead, the Trust is working innovatively to transform the way in which we respond to patients’ needs and make clinical decisions as far forward in the patient journey as possible.

The NHS People Plan was developed collaboratively with national leaders and partners, setting a vision for how people working in the NHS will be supported to deliver care and identifies the actions NHS organisations should take to help them. The NWAS People Plan has been mapped against the key themes identified in the plan to ensure that our planned improvement goals will deliver the expectations set out nationally for people management in the NHS. In particular, the focus on making the NHS the best place to work; improving leadership culture; addressing workforce shortages; and developing 21st century care, especially through support of the digital agenda. The challenging objectives within the NHS People Plan now form part of the People Directorate’s strategic priorities and the following key themes map to the NWAS People Plan key themes.

• Looking after our people – with quality health and wellbeing support for everyone
• Belonging in the NHS – with a particular focus on the discrimination that some staff face
• New ways of working – capturing innovation, led by NHS people
• Growing for the future – how we recruit, train and keep our people, and welcome back colleagues who want to return.

The NHS People plan also incorporates the NHS People Promise setting out our commitments to our staff. It has been developed to help embed a consistent and enduring offer to all staff in the NHS. From 2021, the annual Staff Survey will be redesigned and aligned to the Promise.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health & social care in England and they oversee the Trust’s compliance with the provision of high quality care and patient safety. Our workforce clearly has a significant role in ensuring that we achieve outstanding assessment against the CQC standards and this Plan will support improvements and ongoing developments in this area, ensuring that we respond to emerging recommendations from inspections. Following CQC assessment in 2020, the Trust has been rated ‘Good’ by the CQC with some areas of outstanding practice identified. We will seek to build on these areas and to work towards an overall outstanding assessment in the future.

The Carter Review into Operational Productivity and Performance in English Ambulance Trusts was published in 2018. This looks at the comparative performance of ambulance services and identifies unwarranted variation to help services to learn from each other. The report recognised that ambulance staff do hugely challenging jobs day in, day out and that the right level of support is critical. It highlights that levels of sickness and engagement across ambulance staff are some of the most problematic in the NHS and need to be addressed culturally. It also reinforced the underpinning workforce vision set out in this Plan to ensure that staff have effective clinical and managerial support to ensure they feel confident in treating a patient over the phone or on scene.

The proposals relating to the reform of the GP contract also sets out a challenging context for ambulances service. These proposals identify the value of the Paramedic workforce in addressing skills shortages within primary care and provides a funding model through the GP contract to support the recruitment of Paramedics. This poses challenges to workforce supply but also to the loss of experienced Paramedics from the ambulance workforce, which could impact on the delivery of improved non-conveyance rates and mentoring and support of the newly qualified workforce. The Trust is working to respond positively and recognise the opportunities of these developments for our workforce, engaging in pilot rotational working models.

The Government has also issued the Policy Paper on Integration and Innovation which sets out a blueprint for reform of NHS governance. The legislative changes as a result of this will mean that every part of England will be covered by an Integrated Care System (ICS).

This builds on the work the system has been doing since the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan, and is in line with NHS England’s recommendation in their recent document, formally recognising the need to bring together NHS organisations, local government and wider partners at a system level to deliver more joined up approaches to improving health and care outcomes. The changes will formalise the requirement to collaborate in a patient centred and co-productive approach.

The changes are also likely to devolve key workforce responsibilities, particularly around planning, workforce development and transformation of services. As a Trust we need to be responsive to the changing healthcare system to ensure that we engage effectively as a system partner in transformative change, whilst ensuring opportunities are developed, best practice is shared and risks are mitigated. This will impact on the way we deliver our services and how we use resources in line with the strategic intent of the plans.

The external environment creates both pressure and opportunities and we have structured our workforce vision and People Plan to support the Trust and our workforce in meeting these challenges and opportunities, whilst remaining true to our values.

Workforce challenges

The Trust vision and external environment creates a numbers of workforce challenges. The People Plan aims to address these key challenges and provide a tool to measure our progress in addressing them.

Workforce engagement and Culture

We need to ensure that the behaviours and attitudes that our leaders and staff share and use on a daily basis, reflect our values consistently. Culture determines how our staff feel about the organisation, how they understand and interpret the vision and how engaged and motivated they feel in their work. The Trust refreshed its Values in April 2021 following engagement activities and feedback from staff on what they valued working in NWAS. The vales set out clear expectations of behaviours in the workplace and we need to continue to embed these values into the way we lead and deliver services.

The Trust also undertook a culture and wellbeing audit in 2020/21. This has helped to provide a more in depth understanding of how the work environment, its systems, processes and behaviours impact both positively and negatively on our staff. What this identifies is that there is a high correlation between strong, supportive leadership and positive experiences of work. Where our staff experience this consistently they thrive and report a strong sense of being valued and supported but equally where this is inconsistent, staff report the opposite.

The key recommendations emerging from this audit, combined with staff survey results, freedom to speak up and other indicators identify leadership development as a continuing priority. Leadership focused on supporting psychological safety and also on enhancing:

• Volition – the extent to which staff feel they have some control, autonomy and choice over what they do
• Inclusion – the sense of contribution, belonging, recognition and value
• Proficiency – the extent to which staff feel competent to deliver to their best

Effective workforce engagement is key to staff feeling both valued and empowered. We recognise that we need to improve the way in which we engage with our staff and how they engage with each other.

Good engagement starts with managers and our leadership development framework, Be Think Do and is predicated on managers being prepared to engage with staff and form effective working relationships.

The extent to which staff feel valued and treated fairly is critical to the sense of wellbeing and productivity in work. Staff survey results and feedback around our investigation processes suggest that there is further work to do to embed the principles of Just Culture and to support the ongoing development of a learning culture.

Diversity and inclusion

Creating an inclusive culture where staff feel supported to fulfil their potential, are valued and welcomed for the diversity they bring to their role and feel that the organisation around them reflects the diversity of the communities we serve, is essential in delivering our values and encouraging innovation.

The impact of the pandemic, alongside world events highlighting the ongoing disproportionate impact of racism and discrimination, has caused many organisations to pause and reflect on the experiences that BAME colleagues face on a daily basis. In turn this has led the Trust to reflect on our own efforts to support and progress the diversity and inclusion agenda.

Alongside our own internal efforts and measurement of progress, there are external drivers inducing an enhanced focus. The NHS People Plan published in 2020 set out a need for Trusts to create an organisational culture where everyone feels they belong and with this to improve the experience of BAME employees.

There also remain challenges in the diversity of our workforce representation. Again positive progress is being made in improving levels of representation from diverse groups, there is still a long way to go for this to be representative of our communities and adequately reflected in our leadership and management roles. This is confirmed through both our WRES, WDES and gender pay gap data which also reflects the particular challenges in the operational and clinical workforce.

As a Trust we have recognised the need to change our approach to Diversity and Inclusion. Whilst acknowledging that good incremental progress has been made over recent years to improve representation and staff experience, it is recognised that there is a need to increase our ambition and provide a clear and resourced commitment to make a step change in the experience of staff and patients.

In January 2021 the Trust agreed to a set of three ED&I priorities, the first two of which are key priorities in the NWAS People Plan:

• We will ensure our current employees and future talent have fair opportunities and access to jobs and career progression resulting in improved representation of diverse groups at all levels of the organisation, including Board.
• We will educate and develop our leaders and staff to improve understanding of racism, discrimination and cultural competence to deliver a step change in the experience of our staff and patient.
• We will improve our use of patient data and patient experience to drive improvements in access and health inequalities, for patients from diverse communities.

Evidence shows that diversity in leadership is associated with more patient centred care, greater innovation, higher staff morale and access to a wider talent pool and to deliver the ambitions of this strategy we need to ensure that we can deliver leadership diversity.

COVID 19 has brought into very sharp focus the disproportionate health outcomes resulting from COVID 19 disease faced by our BAME and many disabled colleagues particularly in the Healthcare Sector. The Trust will continue to ensure that at all levels; nationally, regionally and locally we will take all necessary measures to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of our BAME colleagues.

Workforce productivity

The optimisation of the workforce is a key response to the external and internal demands upon the Trust. Traditionally, changes to the workforce have been in reaction to internal developments and have been undertaken in isolation from the wider health economy. Moving forward, the Trust needs to shape the emergency and urgent care workforce for both 999 and 111 based on new models of care across the wider health economy, working closely with primary and acute providers. The changes in the landscape with the impact of statutory ICS on the wider health economy requires a workforce which is flexible and has a rich mix of skills.

The Trust’s Urgent and Emergency Care Strategy and supporting transformation programme has a clear objective to support the development of an integrated urgent and emergency care model of service delivery. This will see the Trust continue to build its clinical workforce and increase the utilisation of non-paramedic clinical roles such as nurses, pharmacists and mental health specialists across our service lines, including enabling clinical support in our Emergency Operations Centre environments. This combines with digital developments such as Single Primary Triage which will open up the opportunity to develop and use our workforce in different ways, creating new career pathways and opportunities.

The demand and capacity review of 999 services will also help to inform how our future delivery model is shaped and this will directly correlate to how we utilise and develop our workforce. Changes to our models of delivery prompts reassessment of traditional policies and operational processes to ensure that they remain fit for purpose to meet the needs of patients and staff welfare and to improve productivity and efficiency. Clear workforce planning is required to translate the recommendations in a way which is meets the requirements of the future service delivery model with clear engagement with the workforce.

Performance against our commercial contracts in 111 and PTS challenges us to review workforce structures, career pathways and improve efficiency and productivity. The Trust Strategy recognises the value of both 111 and PTS to the future development of integrated urgent care and this strategy will support the Trust and workforce to prepare for contract change, improvement and retendering processes, if required.

Keeping staff safe

Our staff work in challenging environments and also face difficult personal pressures during the employee lifecycle. Engaging and supporting staff to face those challenges and to provide a holistic approach to supporting their wellbeing and psychological safety is crucial to ensure staff can provide the best possible care to their patients.

Staff can experience unacceptable violence and aggression when carrying out their role. As a trust we need to ensure staff have confidence in our zero tolerance approach to violence and aggression and that our prevention and support strategies focus effectively on keeping staff safe. Body Worn cameras have been launched as an additional measure to keep staff safe.

Unplanned absence can have a significant impact upon the Trust’s ability to manage resources and deliver care. The Trust continues to take a targeted and supportive approach to ensuring that attendance is managed effectively using workforce information, Trust policies and procedures, alongside the Occupational Health Services.

The Trust also takes a holistic approach, recognising the clear correlation between health and wellbeing and staff attendance. A number of initiatives have been introduced over the last 12 months to support wellbeing. In recognition of the fact that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’, managers are taking a localised approach to managing wellbeing, looking at the local needs of staff based on the staff survey responses.

Responding proactively to the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on staff safety and wellbeing will need to be a continuing focus. The Trust has had a safety first approach and has been proactively undertaking risk assessment for those clinically vulnerable staff and also BAME colleagues where emerging data has shown greater risk of disease. The Trust has had a significant impact regarding the vaccination programme for staff and we will need to continue to engage and evaluate our wellbeing response as we move out of the Pandemic.

Maintaining a COVID safe working environment will continue to be a challenge for the Trust as we develop new ways of working in order to protect our staff on the front line providing direct patient care and social distancing requirements in the workplace.

Recruitment and retention

The People Plan will seek to map out the employee lifecycle and identify areas for improvement which in turn will improve our attraction and retention of staff.

The development of new and different roles within the wider health economy has led to an increased turnover amongst clinical staff and this contributes to existing skills shortages, particularly in nursing and Paramedic roles across 999, urgent care and 111 services. The impact of the GP contract reform could accelerate these risks. Whilst this is a common issue throughout the health sector, we want to develop our relationships with our partner organisations to develop new and innovative roles to meet the needs of patients, but also provide clear career pathways for our staff and in turn attract applicants to the Trust. A rotational pilot programme commenced in April 2021 and the Trust will continue to work at a system and PCN level to identify opportunities to collaboration.

The main challenges for retention are in our call centre environments and the projected risks to our Paramedic workforce arising from the GP contract reform in 2021. We have comprehensive action plans for our call centres focusing on 3 key areas: improving onboarding; supporting career development and early intervention to encourage staff to stay and improving exit intelligence. In EOC and 111 plans are focusing on improving the recruitment process to ensure we are attracting the right candidates; reviewing the support offered to staff in post and improving the health and wellbeing offer.

COVID-19

The Coronavirus pandemic continues to have a profound impact on society, the economy and the work environment. The Trust mobilised significant additional capacity in the main waves of the virus and will continue to remain agile in its planning and response to be able to take action to meet the challenges of the immediate response, long term strategic transformation and emerging national plans for service changes.

The impact of the pandemic on staff wellbeing is likely to have long term implications for the mental health of our people and we need to continue to build a framework of long term wellbeing support to enable self-help, identify early interventions and provide continued support. This will need to be supported through effective engagement and leadership, often in circumstances where traditional methods of engagement have become more problematic with social distancing and a more dispersed workforce, with higher levels of home working.

The crisis has also produced positive innovations and changes in ways of working and we need to harness those changes and rapidly learn from them to embed these improvements.

Workforce themes

The key priorities for the People Plan are organised into three key themes: develop, engage and empower.

Develop

We aim to ensure that our staff have the Right Skills, at the Right Time and in the Right Place through effective recruitment and retention based on our core values, where everyone has the chance to develop their full potential and to grow with the needs of the service.

We want to create a learning culture which enables staff to continue to develop and adapt throughout their employee lifecycle, creating positive opportunities for career progression, talent management and enrichment.

Engage

We recognise that to be the best ambulance service in the UK, we need our staff to actively engage in shaping that future. Listening to our staff and asking them feel part of what we do is crucial to achieving the Trust’s vision.

We believe that leaders are more than just line managers, and understand the importance of how to engage with staff to support their wellbeing and to ensure they stay safe and by creating an inclusive culture where staff are able to recognise and speak out against discrimination and value the rich diversity amongst their workforce and the patients they care for.

Empower

Our staff should feel empowered to lead with confidence and drive through improvement and innovation to support the ultimate aim of providing safe, effective and patient centred care every time.

Each theme has two key priorities and overall these six workforce priorities provide a framework through which the People Directorate will lead and support our staff to achieve the Trust’s vision.

For each priority we outline our foundations of success. These are the core foundations that we already have in place to support these priorities but which we commit to continuing to improve and develop over the next three years.

We also set out our key goals which are the key areas of improvement to deliver our workforce vision. The plans for delivering these goals will be set out in our annual business objectives to ensure that the strategy remains both a relevant and useful tool to measure our progress and success.

Recruitment and retention

We will deliver the Right Skills, in the Right Place at the Right Time through effective workforce planning, recruitment and retention of staff.

Foundations of success

• Effective workforce planning and modelling to ensure that short, medium and long term plans accurately reflect organisation needs and address changes in workforce supply and demand. ï‚·
• Developing excellence in recruitment processes. Continuously reflecting on our recruitment approaches by listening to candidates, recruiting managers and staff and using this to improve the quality of processes, innovation in attraction, improvements in onboarding, reducing the time to hire and by consistently meeting recruitment targets and reducing vacancy gaps.
• Using quantitative and qualitative data effectively to identify and manage risk, to drive improvement and to support the elimination of discrimination in our recruitment processes and improve the likelihood of appointment from shortlisting in underrepresented groups.
• Embedding the Be Think Do leadership principles and values into appraisal, recruitment and progression into leadership posts across the trust delivering ongoing improvements in staff experience measured through the staff survey.

Key improvement goals

• Reducing areas of high turnover through engagement with staff and managers to deliver positive changes in the work environment, improvements to data and intelligence gathering and the development of attractive career pathways and role design which enable our staff to continue to grow professionally.
• We will ensure our current employees and future talent have fair opportunities and access to jobs and career progression resulting in improved representation of diverse groups at all levels of the organisation, including Board.
  • We will use targets to drive improvements in both recruitment and progression
  • We will proactively seek to attract candidates from under-represented groups
  • We will support applicants who may face barriers in our recruitment process
  • We will diversify selection processes o We will work with partners to improve representation
  • We will ensure our progression processes are fair for all
  • We will learn from the experience of staff and applicants and make changes in response

Developing potential

We will develop a high performing, competent, safe, quality workforce – able to do the job and displaying the right values and behaviours.

Foundations of success:

• Developing an education and learning approach where continuous improvement is informed by patient and learner needs and experiences, best practice is reflected in provision and which remain relevant to organisation and workforce needs.
• Ensuring mandatory and core induction training supports people to deliver better and safer patient care and is completed by all.
• Creating an environment where staff are able to access education, training and development to allow them to develop based on individual needs and the vision of the Trust.
• Ensuring that all staff receive a quality appraisal, enabling all managers to support the delivery of high quality appraisal conversations to engage staff in discussions about their achievement, inform training needs and enable talent management.
• Responding positively to the changing education framework and working with partners in innovative and new ways to ensure continuing workforce supply.
• Delivering an appropriate range of high quality apprenticeships to enhance core induction training and enable personal and professional development. Ensuring that the supporting infrastructure enables us to embed effective and sustainable work-based learning.

Key improvement goals

• Meeting the needs of new and emerging roles and ways of working by developing infrastructure to support development pathways, designing appropriate training interventions and working with partners to develop appropriate educational frameworks.
• Improving the use of technology to enhance training delivery, simulation and continuing professional development.
• Enabling the organisation to build its improvement skills and capacity in line with the Right Care Strategy.
• Enabling the organisation to build its digital skills and capability to embrace digital innovation in line with the Digital Strategy.

Wellbeing

To ensure that we nurture a positive culture of openness where staff are engaged, safe, healthy and well.

Foundations of success:

• Improving attendance through effective monitoring, management and occupational health support to deliver continuous improvement in levels of attendance and ensure that performance remains better than sector average.
• Encouraging the continual increase of the uptake of the annual flu and COVID immunisation vaccine accompanied by a comprehensive communications strategy to help staff to understand the benefits to them, their families and patients.
• Improving available support for staff by providing a suite of flexible working options that can be discussed and tailored to staff, based on their role and individual needs.
• Continuing to improve staff survey response rates and outcomes, using the data to proactively improve the Trust health and wellbeing offering and ensuring local accountability for staff wellbeing through localised plans.
• Encouraging staff to be healthy through a range of health and wellbeing support initiatives and signposting staff to nutrition, fitness and mental health advice.

Key improvement goals

• Reducing staff experience of bullying and harassment, through development of a culture which consistently reflects our values and through effective management and support.
• Development of Service Line dashboards using with a range of workforce intelligence, to enable targeted interventions.
• Implementation measures to support suicide prevention and post-vention in the workplace.
• Keeping staff safe through Trust wide initiatives to tackle violence and aggression, improving resilience, reducing mental health stigma, health and wellbeing conversations and developing support for good mental health across the employee lifecycle.
• Enhancing our welfare support for those impacted by investigations and supporting procedures to support us in moving to a Just and Learning Culture where speaking up, honesty and learning become the norm.
• Moving towards an outstanding culture by delivering a range of interventions building on the recommendations of the Culture and wellbeing audit.

Inclusion

To develop a diverse workforce representative of our communities, culturally competent and where all are able to reach their potential.

Foundations of success:

• Using self-assessment and data measurement through the Workforce Race Equality Scheme (WRES), Workforce Disability Equality Scheme (WDES), Equality Delivery System (EDS) and gender pay gap reporting to inform robust plans to tackle discrimination and deliver continuous improvement.
• Listening to staff experiences and responding with improvements.
• Delivering diversity training through core induction, mandatory training and leadership induction.

Key improvement goals:

• We will Educate and develop our leaders and staff to improve understanding of racism, discrimination and cultural competence to deliver step change in the experience of our staff and patients.
  • We will educate our workforce to develop cultural competence and confidence in adopting anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices at work
  • We will develop sustainable platforms for the voice of under-represented groups to shape decision making
  • We will develop inclusive Boards for organisational resilience optimisation
  • We will improve experiences of care for under-represented groups
  • We will recognise and reward talent within under-represented groups to facilitate positive action programmes for progression and promotion
• Improving the experience of BAME, LGBT+, female and disabled staff through increased engagement, supportive networks and greater development opportunities.
• Developing services that support the multi-faith chaplaincy needs of our workforce.
• Improving the visibility of leadership of the diversity agenda within the Trust to inspire confidence in staff and patients of the importance of inclusivity to high quality people management and patient care.

Leadership

Enabling our leaders to create a positive culture, which empowers, supports and motivates staff to innovate and deliver safe and effective patient centred care in a changing environment.

Foundations of success:

• Maintaining a comprehensive approach to continuing management and leadership development aligned to the needs of the business
• Continuing and improving the development of clinical leaders through education pathways and clinical practice developments.
• Continuing to develop and mature the Trust’s approach to coaching enabling NWAS leaders to improve people practices.
• Developing bespoke interventions to enable teams and individuals to maximise their potential for the benefit of the trust and themselves.
• Embedding the Be Think Do leadership principles into appraisal, recruitment and progression into leadership posts across the trust delivering ongoing improvements in staff experience measured through the staff survey.

Key improvement goals:

• Guaranteeing that all new managers / team leaders have access to a comprehensive induction programme and ongoing essential learning programme to develop their skills, knowledge and behaviours in people management.
• Embedding the Trust Values of Working Together, Being at Our Best and Making a Difference into our practice and leadership approach.
• Implementing a strategic approach to talent management and succession planning.
• Optimising the effectiveness of the Board through a comprehensive Board Development programme.
• Ensuring that managers are culturally competent and are able to create an environment that values and promotes diversity in the delivery of patient care.

Improvement and innovation

To develop and implement robust transformational change management programmes to deliver the Trust objectives in a way which reflects our values and supports staff and to respond proactively to rapidly changing external environments.

Foundations of success:

• Create a framework of effective and positive partnership working with trade unions and staff to ensure effective change can flourish. Working in partnership to support reviews of working practices and associated policies and procedures.
• Facilitating delivery of effective organisational change.
• Supporting change through effective organisational development, maintaining and continuing to improve the policy and procedural framework in which the workforce operates to reflect best practice, enable change and eliminate discrimination.

Key improvement goals:

• Developing innovative workforce solutions to respond to the changing healthcare landscape, including the ongoing development of the multi-disciplinary workforce which includes undertaking pilot rotational working models with PCN providers.
• Designing roles and career pathways to support and enable the Trust’s vision and to enrich roles to address challenges of attraction and retention.
• Supporting and enabling the Service Delivery Model Review, developing management / leadership arrangements that are fit for purpose to lead a multidisciplinary urgent and emergency care environment.
• Supporting and developing the delivery of People Services by improved use of technology.
• Supporting the optimisation of system wide interoperability and digitalisation to develop new ways of working for frontline staff.
• Seeking to embed the principles of Just Culture through our investigations and supporting procedures to promote a culture of speaking up, honesty and learning.
• Refreshing our Partnership commitment through a review of our working arrangements and core principles in line with our values.

Delivering the strategy

The core function of the People Directorate is to facilitate the delivery of a fully engaged workforce, which supports the achievement of the Trust’s strategic aims and ultimately meets the needs of patients and the wider community. Whilst the People Directorate will take ultimate responsibility for delivery, the strategy belongs to the whole Trust. As such the development of the strategy has been done in partnership with the Board, service lines, other supporting directorates and our Trade Union partners.

Measurement

Achievement of the People Plan will be measured through improvement in the range of key workforce indicators and qualitative feedback from staff via the staff survey. Annual objectives will be established from the Plan and will enable the progress of individual initiatives to be measured across the three year period covered by the Plan. The People Plan will be reviewed at least annually to ensure it adapts to emerging priorities.

Key responsibilities

The Board of Directors are required, as the most senior leaders and managers within the organisation, to demonstrate excellence in leadership and management practice and to be appropriate and visible roles models. They are also required to ensure the effective performance of the managers that they are ultimately responsible for, through performance measures that reflect the full range of organisational responsibilities.

Directors and senior managers are required to demonstrate effective leadership and management of the workforce through appropriate Trust processes and are also required to ensure that managers and leaders within their teams are competent in role and performing to expected standards.

The Director of People is accountable to the Board of Directors for the development and delivery of the People Plan, providing the necessary assurances to the Board of Directors and the Resources Committee. The Deputy Director of People is responsible for the development, delivery and monitoring of the strategy.

All managers are required to perform the full range of management and leadership duties expected of their role, to the required standards and values of the Trust.

Governance

Delivery of the NWAS People Plan will be monitored through the governance structure outlined below with assurance being provided through the Resources Committee to the Board of Directors.

Appendix 1: Workforce Indicators

The Trust already has in place a range of workforce indicators which link with many of the foundations of success set out within the People Plan and can also provide some measures against key improvement goals. This appendix therefore sets out the expectations for improvement in terms of these key indicators and this aligns with the aspirations set to deliver the vision within the overall Trust strategy to be the best ambulance service in the UK. It also establishes benchmark positions where appropriate.

Recruitment and retention

Inclusion

Developing potential

Wellbeing

Inclusion

Leadership

Download