SWYFT: Employee engagement, putting people at the heart of what we do
The South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SWYFT) provides specialist community, mental health and learning disability services in Yorkshire. With a staff of over 4,400, SWYFT faced the challenge of how to truly engage with its people and thereby ‘live’ its core value of ‘putting people at the heart of what we do’.
Flattened hierarchies
SWYFT knew that success relied on ensuring every person was given the opportunity and the means to be involved and to contribute their own ideas. Since launching their Crowdicity platform (i-Hub) over 15 months ago, the community has helped SWYFT to flatten hierarchies and connect people from all parts of the Trust, as well as find new efficiencies and ways of improving patient care.
Whether you are a staff nurse on a ward, the chief exec, a porter, someone who works in finance, whoever... the vision was that you can actually have a conversation together about something of shared interest and value. It's the flattened hierarchy and that access to other people that is really, really powerful.
Since one of the trust’s key values is to ‘put people at the centre’ it was a clear decision for SWYFT to use their Crowdicity platform to crowdsource ideas from the organisation’s front line. With ‘i-Hub’, SWYFT wanted to give people permission to make change happen, to collaborate, innovate and try new things together, and the initiative was embraced by all.
A network for co-creation
SWYFT’s i-Hub platform provides a network for people from all over the organisation to co-create solutions to Trust priorities. Everyone is involved. The executive team regularly post ideas alongside nurses and volunteers and anyone else who is associated with the Trust, giving staff both a voice and a way to collaborate on meaningful goals.
Then, the innovation team work through a process of approval and fast recognition to feed back to their community members and progress ideas.
157 Ideas Adopted in one year
In the first year of using the crowdsourcing platform, SWYFT adopted an impressive 157 ideas by either developing them or finding them a natural home. With staff and volunteers accessing the system daily on their phones, tablets and laptops, collaboration around set challenges sparked constant discussion across locations and departments, and people began to meet and work together both on and off-line.
Being involved in, and instigating change is truly within the reach of the staff and volunteers at SWYFT, and the innovation platform is embedded into their daily routine.
This platform enables people to connect in a way that wasn't possible before. I've never seen a tool like this, I think it's a really positive tool that's made a real difference. We want to generate ideas, we want to make change happen and we want to make staff feel connected and to really help us drive what the future in this Trust looks like.
