Building a Culture of Respect (Issues in Occupational Health) by TEHRANI NOREEN

Author:TEHRANI, NOREEN [TEHRANI, NOREEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS
Published: 2007-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

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PART FOUR

The way forward

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CHAPTER EIGHT

A proactive approach

VIVIENNE WALKER

Introduction

In this chapter I will be looking at the way that work on culture and values has contributed to organisational life in a health and social services trust (HSS). Particular emphasis will be given on how the dignity of employees in the workplace is protected.

South and East Belfast HSS Trust is one of 19 trusts in Northern Ireland which provide health and social care to the population. Social care is integrated with health services. As such it is different from NHS trusts in the rest of the United Kingdom where social care is the responsibility of local authorities. The South and East Belfast HSS Trust was formed from a management unit which brought together, for the first time, the areas of south Belfast, east Belfast, Castlereagh and an acute psychiatric hospital. Each area had its distinctive culture and way of working.

The trust currently provides services to a local population of 209,000 people and employs around 3,600 staff based in a range of locations throughout its area. Its responsibility includes the provision and management of community health and social care services to its population through a wide range of facilities including a psychiatric hospital, residential homes for the elderly, hostels for people with learning disabilities, a young people's centre, health centres and clinics.

In this chapter I will describe three pieces of work, which together make up a proactive approach to building a culture, which supports dignity and respect for employees of the South and East Belfast HSS Trust. This has two elements – one relates to respect for the trust as an organisation and the other, respect for the diverse range of people who work in it. They are component parts of a holistic approach which is still developing and changing in the light of experience and feedback from people involved in the processes.

The first piece of culture change work, which I will describe in this chapter, relates to the work on developing and communicating the trust's mission. The main reason for this was a determination to pull the units of management together as a cohesive unit. The other two pieces of work described in the chapter build on the promise made in the mission statement to value staff. The second piece relates to the trust's research study on approaches to making values and expected standards of behaviour clear in a health and personal social services (HPSS) organisation. Finally the chapter deals with the trust's work on dignity in the workplace. While I will go into more detail when describing the trust's work on dignity and diversity I want to make it clear that I do not believe that this could have taken place without the foundation of the work on the mission or the understanding gained through probity work.

I would not want any reader to feel that work in the trust was a tidy process clearly thought out from the beginning. The mission work was the beginning. Implementing supporting

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