Engagement of Staff: Team working and
structured problem solving
Within Pottery there was a mixed response to team
working. There was better clarity of team working in
some departments and better interdependence within
some departments. However there is still some doubt
about team working across departments. In some
departments, it was stated that it was too early to tell
whether the RIEs had had an impact on team working.
However, there was an understanding amongst staff
that teams need to develop further and that they need
to work together more to bridge the gap between
departments.
In terms of structured problem solving in Pottery it
became clear that other than RIEs, staff had not been
exposed to other problem solving techniques. There
appeared to be no understanding of what other
techniques could be employed.
In Iron there was a range of views regarding the solving
of problems. It was felt that some staff were able to
identify problems or were aware of the problems that
existed, but were unable or were not supported in
making changes. In these cases, it was felt that
managerial staff were unwilling to delegate operational
responsibility to make the relevant changes. A need
was expressed to empower and educate all staff in
allowing changes to occur. “In general, problem solving
is happening at different levels in different departments
and is very much down to line managers. Some
activities are working well such as the RIE and process
mapping exercises.”
In summary staff highlighted that they were doing some
things differently as a result of the service improvement
activities; directors felt they were no longer taking knee
jerk reactions and were moving away from short to
medium term planning to long term planning, the culture
was moving from one of fire fighting and responding
immediately to one of cause and effect with a focus on
the patient and, staff were no longer just talking about
service improvement they were actually doing it.
Overall, many interviewees felt that the service
improvement activity had been ‘done with’ not ‘done to’
them. This view was supported by the senior
management, who mentioned that they had made an
effort to take an “evolution not revolution approach.”
For Ring the majority of the staff did recognise that their
behaviours had; one service manager highlighted that
they were more able to challenge staff, staff had tried to
take more responsibility for making changes and
actively looked to try and change processes, time was
taken to met with clinicians, nursing staff and
operational staff to discuss service improvement and,
several team managers in a focus group highlighted
that had become motivated to make improvements in
their own teams.
However, within Ring “some staff are behaving
differently as a result of getting involved in this project.
There is talk about how things can be done differently
and in terms of the day to day job there is talk about
adding value but the whole language of Lean is not
used by everybody”.