In a recently published article from Safety and Health Practitioner, Sara Brown, Deputy Chief Officer for Workforce Development at Birmingham Children’ s Hospital, explains how BCH’ s strategic partnership with CiC has helped to reduce the risk of serious stress-related and psychological problems amongst hospital employees.
Looking at the findings from a 2012 BCH National Staff Survey there was evidence of a rising number of people experiencing stress relating to work. While employees were admitting to suffering from stress, actual sickness absence rates at the hospital continued to be low (running at levels just above 3%, compared with 4% in the NHS nationally), suggesting that committed employees were fighting through their issues, while also potentially bottling up the stress.
BCH’ s Sara Brown describes how, in 2014, the organisation put together a revamped package of health and wellbeing activities to tackle the disparity between stress levels and those seeking help; an integral part of this fresh approach was a new service with CiC that offered a 24/7 expert telephone support service and face-to-face counselling.
“Most important was the level of responsiveness and flexibility we’ ve seen from CiC. We have to be certain our employees get the right response when they need it. We’ ve found the same attitude in our requests for updates and reporting. They have come in to deliver briefings when we have asked and have been responsive to our needs. CiC also provides an additional service for line managers, providing advice and guidance on how they can best identify and support their staff who are struggling with stress”, said Sara.
You can read the full article here. http://www.shponline.co.uk/diffusing-hospital-stress/?cid=homepage_3rd