Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation

Creation of a leadership development & transformation programme for Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation

Impact

• A total of 119 people from the Trust took part in the Leadership Development Programme including Senior managers, consultants and nurses
• 39% of those on the Leadership Development Programme were consultants
• Leadership development is an on-going process and current results show an average impact score of 90%

Situation

The NHS faces many challenges to meet the demands placed on it today. Effective leadership at managerial and Board level is essential to maintain and improve the quality of care offered to patients.

Challenges

The NHS is always headline news and the challenges its faces include an aging population, lifestyle factors, an increase in public expectations, and rising costs. Radical changes are proposed that will deal with the demands being made on the NHS now and put it in a good position to adapt to changes in the future.

Hillingdon Hospitals NHS foundation required an effective Leadership Programme aligned to its business strategy along with a work transformation programme to re-engage and re-energise their HR team.

What we did

Our fully integrated approach ensured the whole team was included in helping to work towards the Trust’s vision “Putting patient care, safety and quality at the heart of everything we do”. 

Going back to basics we consulted with more than 80 people including patients, staff and key partners and built a bespoke leadership programme around their responses, business challenges and operational requirements. 

Acting on evidence based data, we developed a toolkit to equip teams to lead both themselves and their teams. We ensured that all outcomes were linked back to the key business objectives so that all activities had a clear, measurable impact. We harnessed internal capacity and capability wherever possible to contain costs. 

Cultural change is a key part of any leadership development programme and this is embedded in our processes from the outset. This means that we can build changes into areas that need development with the right people during the development programme. For example, Hillingdon NHS Trust needed to address some risk aversion mechanisms to allow innovation to flourish. Following our recommendations, the Trust has paved the way for more key individuals to be involved in development activities aimed at strengthening commercial acumen and innovation within the Trust itself. Harnessing internal skills and knowledge is proving a great way to build capacity at low or no cost.