Good morale is the bedrock of good organisational performance.
High performing organisations have highly engaged staff and that means satisfied customers. The NHS is no different.
Highly motivated staff means better patient care, better outcomes, fewer complaints, less sickness absences and higher staff retention.
Every member of the organisation counts.
The Fab-O-Meter is a tool which creates an opportunity to monitor morale, recognising hot-spots of low morale in departments or groups of staff and gives management the opportunity to ask why, engage and nip problems in the bud… before they come a major performance headache.
Staff working in pressurised environments can easily become emotionally depleted; now it is possible to see problems in the making.
Our CEO at Lincolnshire Community Health Services Andrew Morgan passionately believes that motivated and engaged staff with high morale directly improve outcomes for patients.
Happy staff = Happy patients
On September 28th last year a group of Lincolnshire Community Health Services staff were brought together by Dusty from our Organisational Department in order to discuss how we could implement the fab-o-meter morale monitoring tool across the trust.
From this the 'morale innovators' were born
Our group pledge was that we rolled out the implementation during FAB Change week.
This is what we have achieved since then.
The morale innovators pledged to sign up 5 people each and excelled in this.
A what's app group was formed to help the group communicate and support each other and share ideas.
All staff on trust induction have an information session on the fab-o-meter and are all encouraged to download the app on the day.
All staff on annual mandatory training have an information session and if are not signed up for the fab-o-meter are encouraged to do so.
A small group of the innovators attended the senior leadership team to get their commitment to help with sign ups. It has become part of the leadership programme.
The matrons all agreed to promote at their meetings. The clinical educators are promoting it in their training and preceptorship courses. It has been promoted in team meetings and supervision sessions.
We have developed a web page on our intranet with fab-o-meter information. We have developed a frequently asked question section on the website.
Computer screen savers have been developed to remind staff about the fab-o-meter. A shortcut to the website has been added to every trust computer and laptop. Posters have been developed and circulated.
Custom pull up banners were made and are displayed in our trust headquarters and the training and education rooms. Displaying the message 'push the button, say it don't think it' 'have a voice'
We have set up a LCHS Fab-o-meter Twitter and Instagram site to share our journey @LCHSFabometer
Within the first 3 months 500 staff are now signed up to the fab-o-meter (This is approximately a third of our staff) 100-120 staff are voting on a daily basis.
We have in the last few weeks opened the data dashboard access up to every single trust member so as they can see the trends in every area of the trust.
This gives a key message that all staff are responsible for their own areas morale and can be empowered to do something about it.
What we have achieved so far has absolutely excelled our expectations.
Our next step is to meet and formulate how we can demonstrate to staff that we are listening to what they are saying and acting upon their feedback in order to improve morale .This is arranged for the first week in February.