Joe Ryan, National Director of Public Involvement, Culture and Risk Management and Chief Risk Officer for the HSE, gave a presentation to the conference on “Organisational Culture supporting transformation. His initial pronouncement that there was “no grand plan,” both surprised and pleased those in the room. Having taken on the Organisational Culture function since July of this year, Joe and the Organisational Culture team have been working with colleagues across the system on developing and renewing efforts aimed at enabling all areas of the health service to promote and grow a culture that nurtures the best of ourselves and demonstrates our core values in everything we do to deliver our services to the public.
Utilising a maritime image and analogy of a storm, Joe posited the view that all of the change that was ongoing in the health service, whether from the move to Regions, to Enhanced Community Care teams and pathways to increasing regulation, the disruption to the system and those working in it is enormous. These all came together to impact upon our stability as a service organisation, clarity around what was required of us in terms of priorities, the ability for our teams to focus on these priorities and ultimately impacted our ability to provide assurance to our key stakeholders that we were focused on the organisational priorities and delivering on these safely and effectively.
Continuing on the nautical theme, he introduced the audience to an image of Fastnet Rock Lighthouse which he said represented the central Organisational Culture function. The idea being that the lighthouse doesn’t tell you where you should go, it acts as a beacon that helps to orientate you and keep you safe on your journey. This was in recognition that there were many existing cultural initiatives in progress across the system, of which he noted in particular, Values in Action, Compassionate Leadership, Kindness Programme amongst others. In place of a grand plan of one central dictate and methodology, there would instead be clear guiderails that defined the desired core aspects of culture that should be evident in all of these different approaches, namely, values, attitudes and behaviours that were consistent with the HSE core cultural elements.
Supporting this approach Joe outlined the key points to the emerging plan (albeit not a grand one!)
- Identify the golden threads of culture work already being delivered across the system and ensure core alignment
- Deploy simplified, more accessible toolsets for the renewal and initiation of Values In Action across all Regions, IHAs and the Centre, making the programme more accessible and implementable.
- Support and Leverage work already in progress delivering Compassionate Leadership content in leadership development and ensure that this is rolled out across our leadership and management development programmes
- Expand the capacity of the National Healthcare Communications Programme delivered to staff across the system, support how they communicate with patients and service users and each other by developing new ways to achieve wider coverage and access to the programme
- Identify, Spotlight and Promote good leadership culture through existing and developing practices and initiatives across the service, to which Joe called out some examples including Waterford Regional Hospital’s senior executive intentional rounding where the patient is not asked how are they but rather how are we doing for you
- Promote and monitor Patient and Public Involvement, working in collaboration with the PSUE Office. Patient and Public Partnership will underpin, promote and accelerate positive cultural development.
In summary, Joe said that, culture improvement could not be achieved by people working at a national level pushing dictates into the system. Teams and leaders across our system must have a practical set of resources and a clear message about what our cultural paradigm is, what we wished it to be and a simple but effective set of steps to get us there. He announced that there would be an organisational culture workshop with all of the departments, programmes and projects directly impacting on culture in November, followed by a public engagement initiative to ensure that our culture was guided by our most important stakeholder, the public. We will watch closely as this progresses.”
