Recruiting for change

Bringing about organic cultural change.

I think it’s widely understood that for change to happen successfully and to be self sustaining there needs to be a cultural shift for any 5 year plan for the NHS to work.

Clearly one way is via SHCR reaching out to NHS staff to create change agents. This has a finite limit, only those who want to learn about being change makers will engage.

What has been abundantly clear observing this term of students is that there is one defining quality common to all no matter of status, role or location. That is their underlying caring nature, what is in their hearts and what underpins their personal satisfaction and rewards is helping people.

I don’t think these qualities are or should be the exclusive domain of those directly involved in delivering care. No matter what your role in the NHS, you, patients and the NHS will benefit directly from your passion to help, you will do a better job because it matters to you.

For that reason as part of every recruitment process, be it for book keepers, IT people, lab technicians, senior management or maintenance staff, identifying those who genuinely care and have a compassionate nature will be the ones who will stay in post because of the job rewards.

I would encourage management to ensure all those “behind the scenes” people get to spend some time closer to the patient experience so they can engage in that feeling of reward and making a difference. This would do much for the sense of cultural cohesion around a trust and would break down barriers and hierachies.  

The staff churn rate in care and in some areas in health runs as high as 19%. The cost in terms of recruitment and training that is lost to the NHS is hundreds of millions per year. People who have found their vocation and get the job rewards mean retention levels go up and the depth of experience is retained by way of organisational wisdom.  

So if at the recruitment phase measuring compassion was possible, this would improve retention, it would also be drawing the right kind of people into the NHS, so over time, perhaps 5 years the ”workforce” has been revitalised with more of the right kind of people.

A change in how the NHS recruits and the values it seeks, which might carry more weight than qualifications in some roles, is how longer term the NHS can organically change and bring about sustainable change in my view.

The recruitment tool I made for the care sector, that are already tried and tested on 1000’s of people can easily be modified to also identify those who will be open to change as well as having that special something.

As we have seen from SHCR it is the caring nature that has driven the desire to bring about change…

The cost of doing this is tiny, compared to the year on year savings via improved retention. If you can't think of a downside then you do have to ask yourself why it shouldn't be piloted:) or have I oversimplified things again?