What is Mersey Care doing about flexible working?
At Mersey Care, we want to take steps towards making the NHS People Plan commitments a reality. Our aim is to ensure that we have a common understanding about flexible working, and the need to achieve a fair and equitable practice.
We know from our NHS Staff Survey results (2022) that many people feel unsatisfied with our flexible working options and others feel that there is a lack of balance between their work and life commitments. The 2023 NHS Staff survey results indicates that overall, at Mersey Care, there are room for improvements in the flexible working domain. We need to start conversations and embrace flexible working in the organisation.
We have listened to your feedback and launched Work Life Flex in October 2024 - an ongoing workstream that focuses on flexible working initiatives at our Trust.
Since October 2023, we have started working with some initiatives on how we can raise awareness of flexible working. It was great to meet colleagues during the road show and start conversations about flexible working - thank you for all your comments and feedback.
You said, we listened
Themes from the roadshow, flexible working survey (October to November 2023) and Sprint listening sessions:
| You said | We will |
|
Increase understanding on flexible working options |
Developing Flexible Working Your Space page for resources, case studies and more. Future webinars will be announced soon. |
| Promote flexible working conversations in 1:1s and team meetings |
Flexible Working will be incorporated into the team canvas to promote a friendly flexible working conversations at team level. |
|
Clearer systems and processes. Not capturing and recording flexible working anywhere |
Recent changes to the policy to reflect April 2024 Flexible working legislation. A working group has started to look at using ESR as a tool to capture flexible working requests and recording. The flexible working policy will be updated in due course to reflect this. |
|
Supporting managers and colleagues - ensuring resources available |
Introducing ‘Flexperts’ to support colleagues and managers and increase flexible working understanding and awareness. |
| Change project – be bold and innovative to try something different |
A team based rostering pilot approach has commenced in Medicines Management and Southport CMHT – Older Adults. Click this link to find out more about a team-based rostering approach to enhance flexible working in your team. |
Last year, we held pop-ups throughout the Trust to discuss all things Work, Life, Flex!
Visit YourSpace to see more pictures and what we got up to.
