Thursday 16th December - Leadership message from the Executive Team

The impact of the Omicron variant

You will have seen in the news and in our communications, that on Monday 13^th December the Government brought forward measures to tackle the Omicron variant of COVID given the evidence that this new variant is significantly more transmissible than the Delta variant. In response to these concerns NHS England has now declared a Level 4 national incident across the whole NHS. This means there is significant risk to the NHS being able to provide care to patients unless the spread of infection is slowed.

This is clearly very concerning, and we have seen a 50% rise in the number of our colleagues and family members who are testing positive over recent days compared to a month ago. This special Leadership Message sets out the additional actions we are taking now to help protect you and to minimise the risk of service disruption over the coming weeks.

The executive team Q&A session on Thursday 16 December will focus on COVID. Please attend if you can.

Protecting our people and patients

Therefore with immediate effect the following additional actions are being put in place:

All of our AOCs and stations will be placed on lock-down with access for essential personnel only.

Anyone who does not need to be on a site to undertake their role should work from home whenever possible. If for essential business or other reasons you need to be in the workplace you should be discuss and agree this with your line manager in advance, following and documenting the COVID risk assessment process.

We are reviewing our PPE guidance and risk assessments and will publish revised guidance very soon. In the meantime, clinical staff should undertake a dynamic risk assessment and use appropriate PPE.

These steps are in addition to our existing guidance on COVID precautions (available here), all of which will be next reviewed on 7^th January 2021.

We are also asking you to consider whether you should be attending any large parties or other celebrations this Christmas, given that a significant factor in the increase of COVID related absence we have seen is because of these types of parties. If you do choose to celebrate, we have provided guidance on how you can so as safely as possible.

Christmas day pay and annual leave buy back

In light of the declaration of the level 4 incident, following staff feedback and having reviewed resourcing levels across the coming weeks we have decided to give all staff who are working Christmas Day (as part of their regular hours) a one-off ‘thank-you’ payment of between £125-£150 depending on length of shift.

We will also be introducing an annual leave buy back scheme for staff members who may not wish to take all their leave this year.

Further information on these two areas will be published in the coming days.

Update on mandatory COVID vaccinations

The regulations regarding mandatory COVID vaccinations for anyone undertaking CQC regulated activities passed their first stage of parliamentary approval on 14^th December, with final approval expected in early January 2022.

These regulations require anyone undertaking a CQC regulated activity (which includes our activities) must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no later than 1 April 2022. If you have not already done so, please book your vaccine here.

Annual leave overtime payments

Yesterday, we published an update on annual leave overtime payments. This update provides an update on how payments will work over the coming months.

The update also sets out that the Trust will also include the following regular payments that our people receive will be included within holiday pay calculations:

Emergency work payments
Meal break compensation payments

12 Days of EEASTmas

One of the ways we are saying thank you to everyone across our Trust is through our 12 Days of EEASTmas prize draw. All of you as staff and volunteers have been entered into the draw, and each day we announce a winner. Good luck!

Our executive recruitment continues

We are pleased to announce that recruitment of our new Executive Directors is now nearly complete. The next member of the team – Kate Vaughton – will join us as Executive Director of Integration in February 2022. Joining the Trust from West Suffolk CCG, Kate will be responsible for working with external partners within the six Integrated Care Systems in our region to develop joint working to benefit our patients.

This leaves the recruitment of our permanent Director of Nursing as the final post to complete our executive team with interviews scheduled for late January 2022.

Raising our awareness of hidden disability

Disability History Month ends this week (18^th December) and we would like to thank all of our colleagues who allowed us to share their stories about living with hidden disabilities on Need to Know and the Trust’s Twitter feed. The stories were very eye-opening and moving. If you haven’t already done so, please do take the time to read some of the stories.

The Executive Team

16th December 2021