The problem

Each year the national staff survey provides our finance team with an indication of where we are in terms of strengths and areas for improvement across the various categories of the survey. When results are shared, we compare ourselves against the trust average and focus on previous years trends. Prior to using the team engagement and development tool (TED), ‘big conversations’ were undertaken at team level and department level. However, we found more localised issues at a team level were difficult to identify through the staff survey alone and we couldn’t get under the skin to explore the differences within finance teams.

The challenges

• How might we really get under the skin of why some scores were worse in some categories than others?
• How might we embrace better ways of working so that we have a culture of continuous improvement across the finance department?
• How might we create the motivation to the department to always strive for more so that we could achieve our ambition of working smarter and leaner and gain satisfaction in every job being well done?

The outputs

• Transactional finance teams became engaged.
• TED training was provided as a management tool for leadership and team engagement.
• Actions are in place to improve the way we deliver our services and how the team functions.

The outcomes

The outcomes are:

• open and transparent conversations
• staff engaged in making improvement to develop the team
• embedded culture of continuous improvement
• an opportunity to focus on what we do well.