Board Administration Team

Improving, Delivering, Involving, Developing

We are the team of Administrators who support the Corporate Directorate at NHS Grampian. This includes comprehensive support to the Board Members, Chairman, Chief Executive, Senior Leadership Team, Corporate Legal, Advisory Committees and Civil Contingencies. We first took part in iMatter in 2015, as a new team with a new manager and were part of the very first iMatter cohort in NHS Grampian, so it was new to everyone.

2015

Initially we were quite apprehensive about iMatter, as we thought it was going to be a huge piece of work, when we were already extremely busy. But once we received and discussed our report, it became part of our practice and a good framework for how we work. We agreed to always keep iMatter current by making it a standing agenda item at our monthly team meetings. As part of our action plan monthly meetings were introduced along with quarterly 1:1’s with our manager, to support us to feel more involved in decisions. In the first year iMatter helped us to think about our development as a team. For example, as a team we undertook training to increase confidence when dealing with less positive behaviours and also participated in a team development event, which used the Jigsaw personality measurement tool, to improve communication and team working.

2016

With the team making good progress the previous year and working well together, in 2016 our focus was not to become complacent about improving our experiences. Being involved in decisions was still an area we wanted to improve on and agreed a further action building from the previous year. We also wanted to continue our development as a team and one of our iMatter actions was to use the Aston Team Journey development tool to enhance ways of working as a team. We also agreed to have regular protected learning time by extending team meetings on a bi-monthly basis and include an annual development workshop, which in 2016 included the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Peronality Assessment Tool, to raise awareness of own preferences and of others. All activities worked well together and iMatter blended with our regular team discussions.

2017
Now in our third year of using iMatter, we have recently agreed our action plan  for this year. We feel we work better as a team and can now look at our roles and working practices in more detail, to ensure we are working efficiently to meet current needs. We are also thinking more about how we work with other teams and how we become more involved in forums such as the Corporate Partnership. We are facing significant challenges due to change in the demands on our team, and we understand our need to change in order to adapt to this. We recognise that what we required and agreed two years ago no longer meets current demand, therefore we need to continually reflect and agree how we must operate now. Without iMatter we would still have implemented regular team meetings , as it is best practice to support team working. However, iMatter was the catalyst for us to establish what was best practice for us as a team including monthly team meetings and a yearly team development workshop.

Top Tip Be realistic and do not become complacent as priorities change, and your iMatter actions need to reflect that each year.