Bullying and a Blame Culture reported at the NHS
Where does your NHS Trust stand with the recent findings of 'Bullying' and 'Institutional Inadequacy' within the NHS?
2020 NHS Wales staff survey found:
16% of workers had experienced bullying, harrassment or abuse by another colleague
10% said they had experienced bullying or harrassment from their manager
14% said their Health Board did not take effective action if staff were bullied or harassed by other members of staff, or the public
The NHS remains under huge pressure following the pandemic with the ever-increasing backlog of patients needing to be seen, and added to that, higher performance targets being set.
With continuing workload pressures; managers and clinicians are experiencing cognitive overload, stress and burnout resulting in them often operating on a short fuse to ensure that targets are being achieved or at least met – often to the detriment of their staffs’ wellbeing, and to the public.
This week, Sajid Javid, Health Secretary, announced the findings of a Health Management Review report which disclosed that there has been a widespread increase in bullying with blame cultures found throughout the NHS. He believes a culture change is needed from the top of the system to the frontline to address poor behavioural cultures and incidences of discrimination, bullying, blame cultures and responsibility avoidance.
The report comes as the NHS is under pressure to ensure that a £12 billion-a-year cash injection to deal with the backlog that has built up during the covid pandemic is spent efficiently.
So, just who is managing the purse strings to ensure funding is put in place to support the issues raised in the report findings?
Sajid Javid has accepted that action to improve equality, diversity and inclusion, and development of consistent management standards through accredited training, and clear routes to progression and promotion is needed to ensure a “strong pipeline of future talent.”
His statement followed that of General Sir Gordon Messenger, commissioned by the Government, who concluded that there was an “institutional inadequacy” in the way leadership and management in the sector was trained, developed and valued.
The report findings have highlighted that NHS managers are leading with a lack of empathy or compassion due to the pressures of work overload and the NHS being a target driven environment, and that more needs to be done to support their staff wellbeing overall.
The themes highlighted in the report included poor team collaboration amongst senior leaders and clinicians with personality clashes, structural problems and a lack of communication as just some of the key issues identified. These issues left staff feeling downtrodden and demoralised, impacting on their behaviours in the workplace and directly affecting their performance overall.
"Accidental Bullying or Determined Bullying - Subtle Bullying or Micro-aggressive Bullying, however it is labeled it is still Bullying and this behaviour in the NHS needs to stop."
NHS Consultant
So how is the NHS presently addressing bullying and cultures of blame in its organisation?
A spokesperson for the NHS said, “we have a stringent freedom to speak up process for staff to raise any concerns with the knowledge that action will be taken as a result.”
But is this just lip-service? Are these processes genuinely in place and if so, are they communicated clearly to NHS staff to encourage them to Stand Up and Speak Out? Are the actions as a result of the issues raised being properly addressed, and with the outcomes properly reported back to the staff or team member who initially raised the complaint?
By all accounts this awareness and action is not happening. From the NHS whistleblower statements which contributed to the report findings, it’s evident that the role of the Active Bystander or Allyship is not being actively encouraged and department leaders and their teams are not receiving the appropriate training support.
With NHS leaders ignoring the issues of poor interaction with bullying and a blame culture, the NHS is inadvertently making this behaviour acceptable.
Additionally, the report found that staff who attempted to report incidences of racism, sexism and bullying were faced with obstacles as achieving targets was seen to be more important than staff wellbeing. And that those colleagues who did successfully report incidences were, in turn, bullied by being “excluded”. These barriers staff face when attempting to report incidences have left them feeling too “afraid” to speak up for fear of the same retribution.
Staff at the NHS believe that the existing NHS culture doesn’t “allow” people to safely speak up and say when things are wrong, and especially around patient safety.
These issues of bullying, racism, sexism and lack of diversity within the NHS are huge concerns that need to be addressed if its goal, according to Sir Messenger, is to ‘transform its health and social care leadership and management, and to ensure that it is an environment which is well-led, motivated, valued, collaborative, inclusive, with a resilient workforce - all of which is key to the priority of better patient and public health outcomes.’
The Oakridge Centre’s Embracing Difference Programme offers a broad range of packaged support solutions for the NHS and Healthcare industries to help address the most pressing issues that your Trust or organisation might need to pay attention to, as highlighted in the Government’s Health Management Review report.
The Embracing Difference Programme includes workshops on:
• Active Bystander
• Active Allyship and supporting Minority Groups
• Banter vs Bullying
• Conflict Handling
• Mental Health, Wellbeing and Stress Management
• Neuro-Diversity – Thinking Differently Together
• Human Performance and Error Management
• Coaching Skills for Managers and Frontline Managers
…to name only a few of the Example Programmes we provide.
Please download the brochures below for more information about The Oakridge Centre’s Embracing Difference Package Support Programme and a detailed list of the Example Programmes we offer.
Please do get in touch if you would like to talk through the programme options in more detail by emailing [email protected] or telephone 0161 327 2031.
Article references: BBC TV and online, BBC Wales online, and The Independent online
Where does your NHS Trust stand with the recent findings of ‘Bullying’ and ‘Institutional Inadequacy’ within the NHS?
