Local health and care leaders driving forward workforce transformation

Health and care leaders in the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership have been recognised by the Institute for Leadership for work to “drive forward health and care workforce transformation”.

The Humber and North Yorkshire (HNY) Dispersed Leadership Team for People – a unique and ground-breaking alliance of leaders from across our diverse and multi-sector health and care system – was named runner-up in The Leadership Excellence Award for Organisations category.

The Institute award acknowledges how the team is “breaking boundaries and demonstrating excellence in leadership” through collaboration as equal partners across organisational boundaries, creating “a social movement for workforce change that can address health inequalities in Humber and North Yorkshire communities”.

The award is also recognition for the high-level People Strategy, which sets the framework for leaders to work effectively together, as well as the approach to delivery, described as “bottom-up problem-solving: creating organic, ‘all welcome’ task and finish groups that enable unexpected and creative connections between colleagues from across the system, both generating and relying on high levels of trust between partners”.

Stephen Eames CBE, Chief Executive of Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), said: “This is a feather in our partnership’s cap and is just reward for the incredibly hard work that has gone on over the last 12 to 18 months to reshaping our collective approach to recruitment, retention and developing talent across our health and care system.

“We are seeing a real impact. We now have an established way of working for change, based on common improvement goals and a shared commitment to inclusion of every part of our complex system. We have achieved a step change in the quality of relationships among system partners which cannot be understated.

“I want to pay tribute to everyone involved for their dedication and ongoing commitment that has brought about meaningful change and I’m delighted this has been recognised by the Institute for Leadership.”

In its award submission, the Humber and North Yorkshire Dispersed Leadership Team describes how it has developed and successfully implemented an “innovative methodology for workforce transformation which shares leadership and control across our partnership and is building a social movement for change which colleagues from across our workforce are joining”.

It is “demonstrating excellence in leadership in every dimension”, with a particular focus on collaboration, a shared vision and being able to tell a powerful story about the urgency for change, while achieving measurable differences, particularly in the quality of relationships that are the building blocks for transformation.

As well as closer working and collaboration among colleagues in different health and care organisations, the joint leadership approach has brought about positive workforce change against eight priority domains as part of the 180 Days programme and through its successor programme, Breakthrough HNY.