Chief Executive Fortnightly Blog to NHS Orkney Staff - 24 February 2025

Message for All NHSO Staff 

Dear all

First, very many congratulations to all of our nominees for this year’s Team Orkney Awards. We had 189 nominations, across 13 categories for 157 individuals/teams – and 50 more nominations than last year. This is a fantastic response. Thanks to everyone who took time to nominate. Our shortlisting panel will meet today and we look forward to announcing our 2025 shortlist week commencing 3 March 2025.

A few other congratulations from me to start the week – including to Georgie Green, our Practice Educator in Nursing and Midwifery, for receiving her Queen’s Nurse certificate and medal and to Thisbe Sinclair, School Nurse, who has been successful in securing a place on the prestigious Queen’s Nurse programme.

There are some important areas that I want to point to where our performance is deteriorating – despite many efforts to achieve the opposite – and where we now need a different approach.

This includes appraisals (which have dipped to 36%), mandatory training (violence and aggression training is at just 64%) and sickness absence which is at 6.05%.

I have called a meeting for all line managers tomorrow to set out my expectations of all senior leaders at NHS Orkney and to ask you what support you now need in order to drive improvements. There are also opportunities to learn from the areas who are performing well and to share good practice across the organisation.

We cannot and will not be accepting of this deteriorating position – because these things matter to the experience of our staff and in the case of statutory and mandatory training, keep us safe.

A few reminders:

• Every member of staff should have at least an annual appraisal (appraisals don’t need to be done by line managers – it can be delegated)
• People must be rostered to attend statutory and mandatory training – in line with protected learning time
• Please complete return to work discussions with your staff as soon as they return from sickness absence, to maximise your support

Our Corporate Teams, including People and Culture Team, have put together an enhanced support offer for priority areas. This includes additional support for managers and teams, sharing of good practice advice, lists readily available to managers of staff that have not had an appraisal or completed their mandatory training and HR reminder emails where action is needed for you to appropriately manage sickness absence, consistent with policy.

I look forward to the conversations we will have together and to hearing your ideas for what more we now need to do differently to improve our position in these vital areas in order that we ensure our staff get the best experience at work.

Best wishes

Laura Skaife-Knight

CEO