Impact on staff

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While the primary focus of this strategy is on delivering high quality patient care, the trust recognises that, without the right staff, it would not be possible to live up to the ambition of providing outstanding care and treatment people can be confident in. One way to value staff is to provide a pleasant and supportive working environment. KMPT is therefore focussed on how estate can help to make the trust an excellent place to work across all its services and location.

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KMPT’s most valuable resource is its workforce, the staff involved in delivering services to people living in Kent and Medway, or in supporting others to do so. The trust is committed to recruiting, retaining and supporting staff to ensure they have productive, healthy and happy working lives. It is recognised that staff work best when they have a healthy work-life balance.

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The trust is committed to supporting flexible working, which can bring benefits to patients, staff and the trust. By deploying technology effectively the trust can enable improvements in staff productivity, reduce unnecessary journeys and offer greater flexibility to planning clinical rotas etc. The trust estate can also contribute to staff morale, wellbeing and health, in turn supporting performance and productivity.

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KMPT staff should expect to be comfortable and well-equipped within the workplace. There are many examples of what the trust does to ensure fit-for-purpose workplaces:

• An attractive workplace - clean, modern, well-designed, well-maintained and equipped workplaces should be the trust’s aspiration. The attractiveness of the working environment sends a strong signal about how valued the staff group is
• Well-lit workplaces - ideally all working environments should afford good levels of natural lighting, but where this is not possible, work patterns should limit the time staff are working in rooms without natural light
• Compliance with all legislative requirements, whether these are focussed on safety, disability or other equalities legislation
• The trust’s staff survey demonstrated the importance of environmental controls, particularly temperature and ventilation
• Staff need a range of amenities and should have access to beverage and rest areas in or very near the workplace.

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There are also a number of ways that estates and facilities can contribute to assisting staff through the working day beyond their own work-base:

• The trust already promotes active travel, such as the provision of cycle storage and showers etc. for its main sites
• Provision of teleconferencing, video-conferencing, Skype, virtual (cloud) desktops and other solutions which aid staff to optimise use of their time in the working day
• Even though work-life balance means different things to different people, the trust has an important part to play in this, and estate has a contribution to make through the provision of a network of flexible office hubs across its geography with touchdown facilities (“hot desks”), to increase the flexibility available to staff to manage their working day efficiently. The trust is working with partner organisations to explore how this network could be further extended by accessing each other’s buildings appropriately.