Thursday 19th August - Leadership message from Bob Champion, Interim Director of Workforce

I want to thank you again for all of your hard work in delivering services to our patients, colleagues and communities. We are continuing to face unprecedented levels of demand, so please remember to take some time to look after yourselves, check on your colleagues and ask for support if you need to.

Responding to these pressures is challenging enough without also having to tolerate verbal abuse while at work. One thing we are absolutely clear about is that no-one should have to put up with this, which is why we are reminding the public of our “don’t choose to abuse” campaign while reinforcing the message that it is simply not appropriate or acceptable to shout or swear at our people in any circumstances. We are also increasing the support which is available to anyone who has experienced a difficult or traumatic event by training more than 30 additional Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) practitioners. This means that we will have over 100 staff who are able to support colleagues to decompress after difficult events. Added to this, we are recruiting to our wellbeing team so that we can continue to develop our on-going well-being support for people.

As you know, work has been taking place for some time to tackle bullying at the Trust and we are keen to measure its impact to date. Please take a few moments to fill out the Pulse survey so that we can hear about your experiences of working for EEAST. Our thanks go to everyone who has responded so far.

We want to be in the best possible position to tackle the next few months and the challenges they will bring. This will include progressing our improvement plans. This month sees the launch of the Trust’s ‘Fit for the Future’ programme, which focuses on the improvements we need to put in place to ensure we deliver consistently high quality, safe and effective care, with a culture which makes the Trust an exceptional place to work and volunteer. This work will span the next few years, while the first 12 months will focus on getting the foundations and basics right.

We will share more information with you as the programme gets going while also giving you plenty of opportunities to get involved.

In the meantime, look after yourselves and stay safe.

Bob Champion
Interim Director of Workforce

 

 

Published 19th August 2021