Compassion & Inclusivity

Worries about using the ‘right’ terminology 

• Worrying about saying the wrong thing or not wanting to offend people. 
• Getting the terminology correct – as it is constantly changing. 
• Fear of offending but needing to feel empowered and to not ignore issues that need to be raised. 
• Landscape is changing, so being mindful and inclusive is forever changing and language is complex.

Managing differences 

• How do we account for different cultures especially those who feel they can’t challenge the hierarchy? We need to facilitate giving people a voice. 
• Accounting for different personality traits. 
• Sometimes it is best to go with your gut feeling instead of worrying about how to approach different cultures. Getting to know people will enable you to know if something may be wrong with someone. 
• Qualified international staff but with learning from different environment including within the NHS and UK. Linking with support such as understanding skill differences e.g., variation in equipment use expectations. 
• Unconscious bias, defensiveness. 

Speaking up 

• Having challenging conversations course has been useful. 
• Having the courage to say something, not doing anything is not an option. 
• Making time for difficult conversation could save time in the long run. 
• The challenge of challenging behaviours in the moment that are not compassionate to others. Challenging compassionately but not having a private space to discuss. 
• Communicating with people in a compassionate way for everyone, especially if that other person is experiencing pressure. 

Compassionate leadership 

• It’s ok not to have all the answers. It’s ok as a manager to say, ‘I don’t know’ and it’s ok to ask. 
• Not validating how you feel as a manager when having a challenging conversation – self-reflection and emotional awareness. 
• Sometimes it is just about someone walking on the ward to offer support to have the compassionate leadership. 
• How do we engage with everyone so that managers are able to hear how people feel? Visibility of senior managers in attending these sessions. 

Operational pressures 

• Lack of flexible working and fixed rotas – challenge of having control over hours and impact on fairness. 
• Compassion fatigue – makes being compassionate very challenging. 
• Managing expectations of team members with new staff – preparation and support for this key need effective support. 
• Compassionate towards yourself and having the psychological safety to do so.

Focus on equality, diversity and inclusion  

• Moving towards anti-racist organisation. 
• Remembering your journey as a member of staff – remembering where you came from. 
• More promotion of the champions groups. 
• Asking for people’s lived experiences (not assuming its known) involve informing actions, so needs can be met. 

Training and support 

• More robust training for anyone with leadership or line management responsibilities. 
• More support for internationally qualified staff – better communication with IENs and slang or colloquialisms. 
• Cultural awareness training – in different cultures challenging your seniors is not acceptable – yet in this country is expected. Also fear of losing visa if you challenge. 
• Language and terminology training for staff. 
• The OD team to offer the human factors training as part of their catalogue. 
• Promoting human factors training could use as a team meeting discussion. 

Compassionate leadership from all staff 

• Connecting with everyone helps the compassionate leadership in all areas. 
• Important that visibility is not just exec. Even line managers checking in would help people's morale. 
• Little and often visibility of execs staff and senior managers. 
• Listen to and learn from student experiences in our organisation (report available – Jack student physio HIOW student council). 
• Having the courage to walk the talk and talk the walk. 

Being courageous and living HHFT CARE values 

• Taking courage to act in line with compassionate values – and overcoming fear associated with this 
• Lead by example. 
• Challenge behaviours not the individual. 
• Having the courage to walk the talk and talk the walk. 
• Having the courage to be innovative. 

Creating the time and space to connect with all team members 

• Space and time to talk with team members and to listen. 
• MS team calls for anyone who work remotely. 
• Time is a compassionate act and means a lot. 
• MS team meeting for 5-10 minutes asking staff to grab a coffee will help people connect. 
• Acknowledging the individual and seeing staff as individuals. 
• Visibility of line managers rather than a planned session. 
• Treating all as an individual and acknowledging the whole person and their other demands, responsibilities and commitments. 
• Making time and prioritising time to meet with their team. This needs to be a standard. 

Awareness and appreciation of all roles 

• Working a day with their team members. Gain insight into their role, pressures etc. E.g., shadowing an HCA (important for all roles). 
• Shadowing a range of roles (focus on unseen / unappreciated roles) as part of induction across all roles. 
• Valuing health care assistants’ roles. 
• Respectful communication and not overlooking staff for development opportunities (across all roles and bands). 
• Knowing your team well will help managers being more empathetic. 

Creating a culture of psychological safety 

• Understanding the full story – there's no story without data and no data without a story. 
• Being open to other people's perspectives, reflecting of the lived experiences of others. 
• Managers should not value the lived experience of a patient over a staff member – bad behaviour always should be addressed whether from patient/ family member or staff. 
• Supporting a norm of healthy challenge and speaking up. 
• Reducing fear of repercussions and build trust that action is taken when issues are raised. 

Challenging behaviours that do not support our values and promoting behaviours that do 

• Being anti-racist. 
• Challenging ingrained behaviours with longstanding members of staff. 
• Challenging banter – especially when it is uncomfortable and outdated opinions. 
• Shining a light on the good things – employee of the month to highlight those people who are giving the recognition they deserve. 
• Involving people who are impacted across decisions that are important to them. 
• Encouraging conversation and to speak up through preceptorship programme, to feel equipped to communicate issues clearly and develop the skills needed.  

Promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion  

• More promotion of champions groups especially IEN workforce champions. 
• Educating ourselves on EDI, incivility training etc so they know what is expected of them. 
• Encourage more 60 seconds video from people with protected characteristics. 
• Normalise disabilities in the workplace. 
• Have allocated individual to each ward/department who is someone they can share/talk to about any EDI issues – they can support / escalate/ promote reporting. 

Build compassionate relationships with colleagues 

• Even using the toilet facilities further away to enable you to see different people will help. 
• All trust coffee break. 
• Walking in other people's shoes. 
• Be kind because you don’t know the kind of day that another person is having.  
• Say sorry, show forgiveness and take a moment to reflect when confronted with emotive situations. 
• Remember it is ‘nice to be important but more important to be nice’ this includes constructive feedback. 

Prioritising own wellbeing, learning and development 

• Protected time to develop within their roles. 
• Induction process to allow periods of learning and practical activities and experiences. 
• Refresher and mandatory training to be done as teams with allocated time. 
• Appreciative enquiry and feedback on our own actions and behaviours. 
• Being reflective of interactions with colleagues and peers. 
• Walking 1-2-1s – the wood or the ark. 
• 10 minutes once a week to be offline. 
• To be compassionate to yourself with permission. 

We heard you share your worries around using the right terminology, the importance of learning from lived experience and requests to promote our champions groups. 

• Have you thought about joining HHFT’s inclusivity network? It aims to provide a compassionate, safe and supportive space for HHFT staff to discuss and express their views, lived experience and concerns. 
• To support the inclusivity network, we have LGBT+, BAME, Disability and International Workforce champions groups. Champions groups have an executive sponsor who they meet across the year. Find out more about joining the groups here. 
• We regularly celebrate our identities and organise events to share the experiences of our communities including LGBT+ month, Disability History Month and Black History Month. Black History Month is coming up in October 2022 and we would love you to get involved, please contact culturechange@hhft.nhs.uk if you are interested. 
• Access our updated level 2 equality, diversity and inclusion training here. 

You said you would value information on the training and development resources that are available to help with compassion and inclusivity. 

• Our skill booster videos are coming soon to Green Brain. The short films, micro-courses and longer courses provide key learning points for topics and are a great resource for compassionate leadership. Topics include how to give feedback, difficult conversations on body odour and guidance on how to challenge. You can visit TrustNet to see a full list of videos that will be coming soon. 
• We offer Leadership Development for staff of all levels through our map to management. If you are worried about challenging someone in a compassionate way, we will be offering training on ‘getting assertiveness right’ coming soon. 
• NHS Elect offer webinars and workshops including topics such as compassionate conversations. View our guidance here and top tips here on support for managers to have supportive, sensitive and compassionate conversations with their team. 
• The Civility Saves Lives podcast is a series of conversations with people who aim to make healthcare a better place to work covering topics such as workplace culture and appreciative inquiry. 
• Our Improving Human Factors for Patient Safety training is available on Green Brain. Human Factors is a scientific discipline that ‘makes it easy to do the right thing and difficult, or ideally impossible, to do the wrong thing’. 

You had lots of suggestions of ways we could all individually take some ownership for actions to improve compassion and inclusivity across the trust. 

• Become a culture change champion to support the culture change work including reverse mentoring, taste series, culture week, culture coffees, culture club and staff focus weeks. Click here to find out more. 
• Join HHFTs culture club where a new book, podcast or documentary is chosen every 4-6 weeks to give everyone an opportunity to engage with it, then culture clubbers meet in person or virtually to have a chat and a beverage. 
• Join the inclusivity network or one of our BAME, Disability, International Workforce or LGBT+ champions groups to improve and promote outcomes for staff and help HHFT achieve its equality, diversity and inclusion aspirations. 
• Our leadership support circles are an opportunity to have a safe space to talk with other managers who have shared similar experiences and faced the same challenges. Keep checking this page on TrustNet to find out the dates of our next set of circles starting in September. 

You shared the difference celebrating your successes can make to contributing to a compassionate and inclusive culture at HHFT. There are lots of ways you can celebrate including: 

• Nominating colleagues for a WOW award. The WOW! Awards is the UK's only national award scheme in recognising excellent customer service based on customer and colleague nominations. HHFT has now received more than 20,000 WOW nominations since joining the programme, with more than 600 received so far this year! 
• Each Thursday, staff are encouraged to say thank you to other HHFT staff members, both in person and online via the HHFT internal Facebook page – this is a great way to recognise colleagues and be recognised. 
• Sending a CARE value thank you card to a colleague – you can request them from organisationaldevelopment@hhft.nhs.uk.  
• Our executive team would love to come and visit your team or area through Back to the Floor Fridays – contact their PA to arrange a visit. 
• Our communications team have recently revamped the HHFT news bulletin, and their Friday edition focuses on staff celebrations. If you would like to submit something to celebrate, please complete this form.