Staff praise Kent community trust as one of the best in the country to work for

Not only did the trust have its highest response rate in five years at 62.4 per cent, staff gave feedback that meant in five areas – equality, diversity and inclusion, health and wellbeing, immediate managers, morale and safety culture, KCHFT was the highest performing community trust in the country that it was benchmarked against.

The response rate was also significantly higher than the 15 community trusts across the country that KCHFT, which holds an ‘outstanding’ rating with the Care Quality Commission, was benchmarked against.

Survey questions were grouped into 10 themes and in the majority of these; the trust scored significantly higher than other community health trusts.

The themes were:

• equality, diversity and inclusion
• health and wellbeing
• immediate managers
• morale
• quality of care
• safe environment – bullying and harassment
• safe environment – violence
• safety culture
• staff engagement
• team working.

Chief Executive Paul Bentley said: “I am really pleased that in a year that has seen our trust and the NHS in general under enormous pressure that our colleagues took the time to feedback how they feel about working at KCHFT.

“While it’s important to be able to compare to other community health trusts, what we really want to see is improvement at KCHFT each year and in four of the 10 themes we have significantly improved since 2019, which during 12 months of a pandemic is such a testament to the hard work of the our team members.

“Our workforce is the heart of KCHFT and without them and the first-class care they provide, we would not be able to do what we do so well. They have been extraordinary throughout the pandemic and these results say a lot about the team of people who make up KCHFT and why they make me proud every single day.”

KCHFT employs more than 5,000 staff, including doctors, community nurses, physiotherapists, dietitians and many other healthcare professionals. It is one of the largest NHS community health providers in England, serving a population of about 1.4 million across Kent and 600,000 in East Sussex and London.

Despite its size, the report praises the trust for maintaining high staff engagement, which is “well above average”. The results also showed there were significant improvements in four of the themes from the previous year, including staff health and wellbeing, safe environment, bullying and harassment and violence and safety culture.

Director of Workforce, Organisational Development and Communications Louise Norris said: “The health and wellbeing of our workforce is a top priority for us and we’ve worked particularly hard to increase the levels of support available for staff during the pandemic. We know that if we can care for our staff and support their health and wellbeing, they can provide even better care for our patients who are at the heart of what we do and that’s exactly what they do.’’

The trust, which provides wide-ranging NHS care for people in the community, in a range of settings including people’s own homes; nursing homes; health clinics; community hospitals; urgent treatment centres and in mobile units, is currently leading the coordination of the five large-scale public vaccination centres across Kent and Medway.

KCHFT also offers degree-level apprenticeships to train the nurses and therapists of the future, through our Academy.

You can read the full NHS staff survey results here, www.NHSstaffsurveyresults.com. The survey ran for 11 weeks from September to November 2020.