Adopting new ways of working through Working Together Agreements

Giving colleagues a say in how they work

HCRG Care Group asked all colleagues to take part in a future ways of working survey, to ensure everyone’s involvement from the start. This focused on the following:

• How to maintain some of the benefits achieved whilst adopting new ways of working in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Enabled the organisation to understand colleagues’ perspectives on how they worked and how they wanted to work in the future.

Following the survey, focus groups were held to gather more in-depth information, making sure to cover all types of roles, including:

• Clinic based roles
• Ward based roles
• District nursing
• Support workers
• Central services (support teams)

The research exercise revealed that:

• 4/5 of colleagues wanted to incorporate a level of choice and flexibility in their day-to-day roles so they could pick when and where they do their best work.
• Almost 3/4 of colleagues would welcome continuing to deliver some services virtually where it was safe and appropriate to do so.
• The vast majority of colleagues stated they wanted to use office space for collaborative working with colleagues.

In response to the feedback, a number of steps were taken to implement new ways of working.

Introducing flexible working

As a health and care organisation, guidance was followed from Public Health England to ensure the organisation remained aligned with its counterparts in other organisations. To successfully achieve the objective of introducing flexible working, colleagues needed to progress at a pace that worked for the business and them.

To develop our future practices, teams were encouraged to make Working Together Agreements face-to-face to allow collaboration and discussion to enable all staff members to contribute. These were mutual commitments made by individuals in a team about how they wanted to work together. This allowed colleagues to identify potential areas for flexibility without affecting contractual requirements and impacting on service user needs, though, this was not a contractual agreement. These continue to be ‘live documents’ and should be reviewed periodically, adjustments made as necessary, to ensure that they reflect the ever-changing environment in which we work in.

Furthermore, HCRG Care Group supported colleagues by delivering workshops to assist with planning their working together agreements, reiterating core policy principles and providing an open forum for discussion. In addition, working together agreement examples, activity sheets and templates were made accessible on the intranet to help aid staff.

Creating a happier workforce

We took the opportunity to focus on how we could best re-design traditional working practices longer-term, to maximise flexibility for colleagues, whilst continuing to deliver high quality services and colleague safety.

As a result of the changes, colleagues were empowered to have more choice over how, when and where they are more productive.

In turn, this has allowed the organisation to be able to offer more choice for the services offer and availability, along with allowing service users more options on how they receive their care. In the colleague survey conducted in January 2023, colleagues’ satisfaction for the organisation had increased to 65% in comparison to Jun 2022, where the results were only 48%. In addition, the colleague survey results recorded pre-pandemic in 2019 showed that only 44% of colleagues either strongly agreed or agreed they would recommend the organisation as a place to work, in comparison to 62% of colleagues in Jan 2023.

Feedback from colleagues has included the following:

“HCRG Care Group is a great organisation and provides the perfect work life balance. They offer a flexible working pattern which works wonders for the family.” “HCRG is a great organisation and provides the perfect work life balance. They offer a flexible working pattern which works wonders for the family.”