Health and social care staff experience: report 2019

Ministerial Foreword for Staff Experience Report 2019

This report is a detailed analysis of the iMatter Continuous Improvement Model, carried out by Webropol Ltd, an independent company commissioned by the Scottish Government. All 22 Health Boards and 28 Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland participated in iMatter in 2019. I would like to personally thank every one of you that took part, and in particular, those of you who helped develop your teams’ Action Plans.  

Our staff, across Health and Social Care are our biggest asset and good staff experience is key to good patient care and delivering quality services. iMatter means that teams, managers and employers can measure and understand, improve and evidence staff experience. An independent evaluation of iMatter and Dignity at Work, carried out by Strathclyde University in 2018/19 found that staff, managers and trade unions viewed iMatter as an effective tool for promoting staff engagement. This is key to effective team working and empowering staff to take action to improve their experience in the workplace. 

I was encouraged by the stories of innovations shared by teams covering a wide range of areas including health and wellbeing, team values, celebrating diversity, improved communication and visible leadership. These are all vital to creating healthy workplace cultures. This is a collective effort and we all have equally important roles to play, whether that is as a team member, line manager, or senior leader. I expect senior leaders and managers across health and social care to reflect on this report, celebrate staff achievements and champion our shared aim of improving staff experience. 

iMatter is our shared journey to continuously improve our workplace cultures. Moving forward this will be supported by the roll-out of refreshed workforce policies that put staff at the centre, and which are applied consistently across NHS Scotland. I have also convened a Ministerial Short Life Working Group on Culture and Wellbeing, with representation from across Health and Social Care. This group is considering impactful ways of engaging staff to shape and embed cultures where staff work in open, fair, supportive and responsive environments, whatever their role and wherever they might be based. This group will report back to me with its proposals for delivering workplace improvements before the summer recess. Work is also underway to co-produce a new Dignity at Work measurement tool to make sure health and social care staff feel valued, listened to and treated with respect. Crucially this will be developed by staff for staff, using a similar methodology to that adopted to develop iMatter.  

The roll out of 2020 iMatter questionnaires will begin this February. Your views matter, so thank you again for participating in 2019 and please take the opportunity to have your say, as we move forward into 2020.

Jeane Freeman OBE, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport