I’m sure I can’t be the only NHS employee who wonders what happened to Improving Working Lives. I was fortunate enough to have been involved in the Practice Plus project as a staff side representative, and I found it fascinating to go into other NHS organisations and to look at how they worked, what they did, and how they treated their staff. It also gave me a marvellous opportunity to meet senior managers and Chief Executives, and other NHS workers, and to discuss working practices with them. (I can’t say that I disliked all the feting and fawning either; just joking….)
I also went to meetings at the Strategic Health Authority to discuss the reports the team I was part of had written. As the Americans say, “It was, like, WOW!”
It was mooted that the next (and final) stage of the process was something called “Model Employer”.
Well what happened to that then?
Now it just seems that IWL has been pushed to the margins of the NHS, as if somebody realised, “Oops! It’s a bit expensive isn’t it? Can we really afford this?” Instead of great organisation-reforming strategies, IWL fiddles about fatuously with things like palming off overpriced computer laptops onto technophobic NHS staff, encouraging them to cycle to work instead of driving (how are you going to drop off two small children on the school run from a pushbike and then do the weekly Tesco shop after work?), and congratulating itself on acquiring negligible discounts on shabby ersatz designer clothes that were extravagantly priced in the first place.
It is unarguable that the working conditions (if not the pay) in the NHS are often much better and more advantageous than in the private sector. But why still trumpet IWL, when IWL is now viewed by many NHS staff as just mere tinkering, trivial and even a bit sad? Like tawdry baubles on a Christmas tree. Like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
It was a great idea to link IWL to the acquisition of NHS foundation status, as I believe was the original idea of IWL i.e., no IWL no foundation status. As it has turned out the irony is that due to the harsh strictures imposed upon foundation trusts by the Regulator, Monitor, most foundation trusts can’t even afford IWL anyway.
Like a lot of things in the NHS, so it seems, IWL seemed like a good idea at the time….
