Corporate Development

Promoting a positive culture within NHS Ayrshire and Arran

NHS Ayrshire and Arran has embarked on a pioneering, ambitious and visionary programme of reform in order to deliver, excellent, sustainable services to our citizens.

As leaders, every one of us plays a vital role in taking our work forward and keeping our focus on what really matters. Every one of us counts and our leaders have a critical role in helping to communicate our vision and engage with local teams to enable them to get involved in contributing their ideas, suggestions and encourage a culture in which feel able to speak up, be open and honest and provide constructive challenge to how we do things.

Building psychological safety in our teams is a core leadership responsibility and we have developed a range of interventions and resources to provide an understanding of what this is, together with some materials to help our leaders develop local action plans to promote and encourage an effective culture for all of our staff.

23 sessions on Psychological Safety were delivered during November and December 2020 attended by over 450 clinical and non-clinical leaders from supervisory to director level.

The session promoted the concept of psychological safety and explored what this means for staff.  Leaders developed local actions plans and personal pledges to improve engagement, encourage openness and diversity of views in support of the reform agenda.

In addition, a Leaders Guide was developed and issued to all leaders providing additional reading and tips on Psychological Safety

Between January and February 2020, 18 culture workshops were locally facilitated across all Directorates and HSCPs open to all staff to engage in discussions about the culture and values within NHSAA and gain feedback on what is working well and areas for improvement.  The output from the workshops was reported to the Corporate Management Team and will inform the Board’s overall culture framework and improvement activity as we strive to be an exemplar employer. 

Read our document for more details and insights into some of the ways we're promoting staff experience.