Speaking up when things don’t feel right is a responsibility we all share. Team Derbyshire Healthcare colleagues are encouraged and supported to speak up. Our Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, Tam Howard, talks more about speaking up during the pandemic and how it is linked with our own wellbeing.
Speaking up and staff wellbeing: Ensuring staff have a voice
Tam Howard, Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, DHCFT
We all need to feel safe and confident when expressing our views. If something concerns us, we should feel able to speak up. If we find a better way of doing something, we should feel free to share it. We must use our voices to shape our roles, workplace, the NHS, and our communities, to improve the health and care of the nation. (We are the NHS: People Plan for 2020/21 – action for us all)
Every NHS trust in England now has a Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, part of a national network led by the national guardian, Dr Henrietta Hughes.
Freedom to Speak Up Guardians, supported by a number of local champions, enable staff to speak up about patient care or experiences in the workplace, without suffering detriment. Speaking up concerns can then be taken, with the consent of the person speaking up, to the appropriate person for action. The identity of the individual who has spoken up can be kept confidential unless they are willing to have this made known.
Since ‘lockdown’ was implemented on 23 March, the themes of concerns coming to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians have, as might be expected, changed somewhat often with a focus on staff safety and wellbeing and specific issues around COVID-19. In our Trust, staff speaking up about these concerns; have usually seen their concerns swiftly escalated, responded to, and actioned by the Incident Management Team and other leaders.
Many concerns brought to Freedom to Speak Up Guardians, see colleagues concerned about raising them and what this might mean. There can be a real fear around speaking up and its impact on an individual including concerns about career prospects, or around micro-aggressive behaviours from colleagues.
However, staff often find that speaking up brings about a resolution to their concerns. Colleagues who have spoken up will often tell me that they feel empowered, and that there is a sense of relief after having spoken up about something that has been worrying them, either for a short time, but sometimes for longer. This is particularly relevant if the issues are relational as the impact of bullying and harassment on an individual can have such a negative impact on staff wellbeing.
Often freedom to speak up focuses on the wider culture across trusts and its impact on workplace wellbeing. The individual stories of workers supported by Guardians are showcased in the National Guardians 100 Voices published in February 2020. Our Trust features on page 22-23 with ‘Making policies fairer for all’. It contains an individual story about one of our staff members who came to speak up to myself and it is a really positive story focusing on the impact of changing a policy for the wellbeing of not just one but many of our staff members. The other stories from a range of trusts are also well worth a read!
Learn more about Tam's work on the freedom to speak up page on Focus.
