Hospitals named in top 100 best places to work in the NHS

WARRINGTON and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been named as one of the top 100 places to work in the NHS by the Health Service Journal national magazine.
HSJ’s Best Places to Work is an independent assessment of public sector healthcare employers and identifies organisations that have proven that they know what it takes to create environments where staff are looked after.
Identifying and recognising the top 100 is a joint effort of HSJ and Best Companies Group – an independent workplace research firm specialising in identifying and recognising great places to work throughout the US, Canada and the UK. Each year, all healthcare trusts are required to conduct an employee engagement and satisfaction survey. This is compiled into NHS Staff Survey reports about trusts that are made public by the NHS and the Picker Institute at www.nhsstaffsurvey.com
Best Companies Group used the staff survey information and other information and evidence to analyse the organisations, determine who was in the top 100, and to create benchmark reports used by HSJ.
It’s the first time Warrington and Halton Hospitals have been named in the top 100 and follows a year where staff survey results at the trust saw its staff survey results improve across the board in the annual barometer of staff opinion in the NHS. The survey is carried out independently and asked a series of questions to a sample of 830 staff from Warrington Hospital and Halton General who were selected at random.
The trust scored above the national average in terms of engaging with its staff, with employees ranking the hospitals amongst the best 20% of hospitals in the NHS for them being able to contribute towards improvements at work and for staff motivation.
It scored above the national average for developing staff and for support from immediate managers and equality in terms of career progression and development.
The trust also improved its score for staff feeling satisfied with the quality of work and patient care that they deliver and recommending the trust as a place to work or receive treatment which rates alongside the national average across the NHS.
There are more than 470 NHS organisations in the country, with only the top 10 indentified.
Mel Pickup, chief executive of Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:“We’re delighted to have been named in the top 100 employers in the NHS. We put a staff health and wellbeing strategy in place nearly two years ago and a framework that puts staff in the centre of everything that we do. We’ve worked hard to improve engagement with our staff and put in place initiatives to improve work life balance. The staff survey this year showed we’re improving in this area and changing the culture of the hospitals.
“We also have a range of things in place to support our teams, from flexible working and childcare and other staff benefits through to exercise classes run by our physio team. Our staff are our greatest asset and it is important that we do everything we can to support them. We still want to do more but this is great recognition for what we are trying to achieve at the trust and has a positive impact on the care that patients receive.”