Today we launched a new how-to guide to support people leading major change in health and care systems to effectively engage staff. It shares 10 co-created principles, as well as flexible survey and planning tools that you can use to measure engagement in the change projects you’re delivering.

The health and care system is facing multiple severe challenges, from record waits to chronic staff shortages, growing inequalities to low patient satisfaction. Addressing these challenges will require ‘major change’: system and service changes that are broad in scope and scale, with collaborative improvement across teams, systems and silos.

Engaging staff in the changes that affect them and their work can make a real difference to success. The new, single, shared NHS improvement approach – NHS IMPACT (Improving Patient Care Together) – includes a strong emphasis on investing time and effort in engagement. But what underpins good engagement in major change and how can we measure if we’re achieving that?

Led by Q, working with Thiscovery – an online platform for collaboration, innovation and improvement – the guide presents an answer to that question, co-created with more than 300 people working across the health and care sector. Participants from a wide range of roles saw the importance of sharing their experiences. They helped shape our understanding of how we can collectively improve our approaches to major change and the principles and tools that can support this.

“At the moment staff do not feel that they have the control over the services that they provide and are under immense pressure. Purposefully involving them in any major change and giving them the power to use their expertise and creativity to shape that change will engage them at their best.”
– Participant

Our collaborative, task-based research with participants showed that:

• There is a need for a fresh understanding of what is required to engage staff well in major change.
• A good approach to engagement of staff should prioritise the ‘foundations of change’, including sharing a clear rationale for change, allowing shared ownership, and investing in the capacity and capabilities of staff.
• Good engagement also needs a supportive culture and environment around it: there needs to be psychological safety for staff; the change, and those leading it, to be seen as honest and transparent.
• To improve engagement you should be measuring it. Measurement should be proportionate, targeted and actionable, which a ‘Measurement for Improvement’ approach can enable.
• There is strong potential for collaborative online methods and platforms, including Thiscovery, to connect researchers with expert audiences and achieve high quality engagement.

Our guide and measurement tools are designed to help you apply these findings in your day-to-day work. Download and use them to help you understand, measure and improve engagement to support more sustainable and successful delivery of major change.

You can download the survey and planning tools separately in editable formats for your use. Refer to the how-to guide for wider information on the generation of the tools, how to use them and supporting content on topics that research participants found valuable. Our insight report gives greater detail on the project, its methodology and our findings.

Please share feedback on your experiences of using the principles and tools to q@health.org.uk