Trust creates an ambassador role to avoid any cultural bias and discrimination towards staff at work increasing fairness in grievance processes and boosting staff confidence

Synopsis

The Cultural Ambassador programme was an opportunity to make a difference and challenge any unconscious bias and discrimination that may occur for those BAME employees entering or during formal HR processes.

The Cultural Ambassador’s project in partnership with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) provided the Trust the opportunity to demonstrate the Trusts commitment to BAME staff. The partnership between the RCN, Trust HR, Staff Side and E&D were crucial in the successful delivery of this programme.

Ambition

The programme offered an opportunity for BAME employees with an interest in Equality & Diversity and the passion to make a difference, to train as a Cultural Ambassador and potentially reduce the number of BAME employees entering/during formal HR process and to influence those process and reduce the level of sanctions potentially at stake.

The benefits realisation is that the Trust aims to have fewer BAME employees entering formal HR process and to ensure that formal HR processes are fair and consistent for all employees across the entire workforce. The overall ambition of the CA programme was/is to:

• To reduce the number of BAME staff entering formal processes
• To reduce the level of sanction of BAME subject to formal processes
• To ensure that there is a fair and consistent application for all staff entering formal processes
• Cultural Ambassadors are trained to see and explore concerns through a different lens and to ’interrupt the process’ where there are questions to answered around unconscious bias, cultures or otherwise related to BAME staff during the formal process.
• To reduce the impact that formal HR processes have on BAME employees
• Improve the staff experience for BAME employees, support wellbeing, increase morale, attract and retain BAME employees in a culture that is one free from blame and bias, unconscious or otherwise, in order to Improve and continue to provide outstanding patient care.

The Trust recognised that the potential benefits and differences the CA pilot could impact on would be aligned to and support the Trusts Strategic Objectives to:

• We will nurture a culture which provides: safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led services’
• We will be a leading provider of specialist mental health, learning disability and children’s services, proactively seeking opportunities to develop our services building partnerships with others, to strengthen and expand the services we provide’
• ‘Attract and retain a well-trained, diverse, flexible, empowered and valued workforce’

Outcome

The pilot has already demonstrated increased confidence in relation to fairness of disciplinary and grievance processes amongst our staff. This was evidenced by feedback from a member of BME staff that shared, the introduction of the CA role gave them more confidence to submit a grievance and that it would be dealt with fairly.

The Trust believes if staff feel that they are treated fairly at work this may have positive benefits for their health and wellbeing, which has been identified as a key component to the delivery of high quality care.

We have seen an improved recording and reporting of employee relations data through the introduction of the (ESR) employee relations module and it is expected that the introduction of the role CA will result in fewer cases progressing to formal disciplinary hearings and lesser sanctions being applied to those staff where formal processes are applied.

An analysis has been undertaken in respect of the Trust’s Employee Relations Casework activity over a 3 year period which evidences that there has been a significant reduction in the number of disciplinary investigations within the Trust between the years 16/17 to 18/19 (42 to 28). In addition there have been fewer summary dismissal/dismissals, collectively reducing from 8 to 2 between 16/17 to end of year 18/19. The number of cases with the outcome being ‘no case to answer’ has also reduced from 11 to 1. This intelligence supports view that there has been a positive shift and change in cultures and behaviours as to how decisions are made when dealing with employee disciplinary matters.

Whilst the Trust’s workforce data suggests the number of cases involving BAME members of staff is not disproportionate to those White British cases, there is a variance when compared to the Trusts WRES data in terms of the proportion of the overall workforce

CA’s have disseminated their learning amongst colleagues to enable a better understanding of the nature and effect of discrimination, cultural bias and the impact of cultural behaviour. Issues of a cultural nature and/or any acts of cultural bias will be identified and challenged during formal processes.

We were delighted that one of our active CA’s won the RCN award for outstanding contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Health and Social Care recently at the RCN Black History Month event in October 2019.

Spread

Whilst this was an initiative that was taken up by a number of Trusts in the region, we took the pilot and made it our own. We saw the vision and value that the programme could bring and how this would support wider cultural changes. The RCN have coined the Trust as ‘trailblazers’ for leading the way with a successful launch and pilot and fully embedding the programme at BCPFT.

The Trust have been and are still actively involved in support the RCN and network of Trusts involved in the programme to support and develop the programme in those organisations. This has included the sharing of information, support for other leads, support for other HR/E&D teams with the implementation and development of the programme and to offer support where there have been challenges and share and advice on best practice.

The Trust also have and continue to support the RCN at regular local and national events, including speakers and workshops run by Trust leads at Black History Month events, National events and conferences including the Midlands and East Partnership Conference held in May 2019. The Trust were also asked to support in a national publication in the RCN national magazine in October/November 2019, on the CA programme, whereby CA’s and leads within the Trust were interviewed about the success and experiences of the programme.

Spread across Trust - other agendas including;

• The implementation of Just and Learning Culture
• Areas identified for the expansion of the programme include Bullying & Harassment, exit interviews, recruitment and policy work in the short-term with longer term ambitions
• Culture shift in HR practices and influence on how decisions are made when considering formal processes or otherwise and also training
• Influence on Culture across Trust

Value

The introduction of the CA programme has enabled the Trust to develop fairer disciplinary and grievance procedures, which supports the development of more effective policies that will remain applicable as the organisation develops.

The partnership working between the 4 leads has played a key part to the successful implementation of the CA role within the Trust. This has been a key lesson learnt from this programme and will shape any future projects where this approach may also benefit.

The programme of work that has been undertaken to embed the CA role within the Trusts policy and procedures has ensured its sustainability and paved the way for transferability across other work streams of the Trust i.e. Recruitment and Bullying and Harassment cases.

The CA programme will support the Trust to be an employer of choice and increase the retention of staff through improved staff experience and health and wellbeing.

The CA programme will also support succession planning through the development of internal staff and their ability to disseminate their learning amongst colleagues.

To support the implementation of this programme we designed an internal training package for our new CA’s and shared this with the wider HR team so that from the beginning we had a united approach and understanding.

From the offset we were keen to integrate the CA role into our practices rather than it being an ‘add on’, we did this by creating an addendum to our policies, amending disciplinary and grievance documentation and developed a strong communications strategy.

CA’s are supported to develop both personally and professionally and will experience the value of their role in influencing fairer outcomes for BME staff.

Involvement

Partnership working was a key component of the implementation of the CA pilot and was essential to ensure mutual understanding of the aims and benefits of the project. Leads were identified within the Trust including HR, staffside/trade union and equality and diversity. All leads were involved in the planning of the pilot, attending the RCN training programme and supporting the internal training for CA’s.

Throughout the pilot and to date regular meetings are held with all leads involved to support the partnership working approach, this has enabled challenges to be identified early and creative solutions to be developed that all were signed up to. This approach also supported with the pilot being successfully embedded across the Trust as all partners worked together to communicate the pilot effectively to staff and trade unions.

Collectively the leads identified a detailed project plan, which included a schedule for implementation and allocating owners for key tasks. In addition the leads jointly developed an internal system for case allocation, a communication campaign, in house training, peer support system for CA’s and changes to relevant policies and supporting documentation.

This partnership approach proved successful throughout the planning and implementation stages as has been commended by the RCN.