Workplace Improvement Team

Quality Improvement Poster Download

Background & Problem

Historically, the trust has tried to allow facilitated time for staff to perform Health and safety duties. However, usually operational commitments always took priority over health and safety. The main catalyst of the problem was the trust wide facility time agreement that stated that staff was allowed 6 hours a month for Health and safety duties. This was a constant barrier between both reps and managers in allowing suitable time.

Aim

Not only was the QIP aiming to allow for better time it was also aiming for more supportive ways of helping people perform Health and Safety duties. This includes increasing awareness and helping staff in general feel more confident in performing H&S duties. This involved changing a lot of behaviour, so it was important to utilise a recognised behaviour change module to assist the QIP, as such the Theory of planned behaviour was used as it recognises all the psychological elements that are relevant to staff and managers for this QIP.

Method

In order to understand the antecedents for not performing H&S duties, a vast scoping exercise occurred with a variety of stakeholders. This involved both meetings with key staff (18 different team/divisional or Trust wide meetings were attended) and getting information from interested people. This information was factored into the Driver diagram and the whole QIP. One of the reasons why staff said that they never completed H&S duties was the fact that H&S reps title was boring and negative. As such, the name of H&S reps was disbanded and replaced with a different way to reflect the duties of an H&S rep does around quality. This new title was called, Workplace Improvement Team.

Results

Outcome measures:

Never had an up to date database of existing members before the QIP started. Created a database of 268 people who perform Health and Safety duties in trust. This means that consistent communication can be had with central safety team direct to reps, rather than go through an additional person in the division.

Process measures:

• Developed an annual day for reps, in June 2017
• Created a Role Description for WIT
• Developed, and trailed, an agreement form for staff and managers to agree a designated time to perform Health and Safety duties
• Attended 12 internal trust wide and governance meetings to promote role
• Developed monthly bite sized training for WIT, one on each site, to expand on the topic of the month requirements.
• 9 further staff volunteered to be a WIT

Balancing Measures:

The negative affect on staff that are working in areas whilst the WIT are performing Health and Safety duties.

Implications

The QIP proves that in general staff that performs health and safety duties do so because they realise that it is important to protect people from harm, despite this there was pressures in the system for support for existing and new reps. This increase in staff take up on safety will, if implemented correctly, reduce the risk of staff, patient and visitors coming to harm, the associated increase in quality for patients, staff satisfaction and increase in engagement throughout the Trust.