Tell us a bit about your career background and how you ended up in North Central London?
I joined the NHS in 2002 as a general management trainee in the North West of England. My career spanned operational management in mental health, acute and specialist services (regional clinical genetics) before I decided to challenge myself, leave the NHS, and join one of the Big Four consultancy firms to develop a greater level of business acumen. I led their whole system redesign work for several years and then rejoined the NHS on the Board of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust in 2013.
I’m always curious and I hadn’t worked in policy development so when an opportunity came up to lead a national review, I joined the Department for Health and Social Care for a year to be the Head of the Dalton Review which looked at the future of the provider sector and recommended Group models. From there I became the Director of Organisational Development for Guy’s and St Thomas’ (GSTT) and led the development of their Group model and set up the Association of Groups nationally, which Royal Free London were a founding member of.
While at GSTT, I led the Vanguard programme which was an acute care collaborative with Dartford and Gravesham, and I also led the South East London ICS Workforce Programme. Realising that I loved the system work and I had a history with NCL, when the Chief People Officer job came up I was excited to apply. I joined the ICB on 1 July 2022 and I have really enjoyed being back in the NCL system!
What is your role in the ICB?
My role as ICB Chief People Officer spans both the internal HR and Organisational Development (OD) function within the ICB as well as being responsible for leading the Workforce and People agenda across the ICS. We have over 100,000 staff across providers, social care, primary care, local authority, charity and voluntary sector, and also over 100,000 informal carers who support our residents and patients on a day to day basis.
What are the biggest priorities for you and your teams over the coming months?
My biggest priority is moving the new People and Culture directorate team into working as a high performing team both for the ICB and across the ICS. We have a huge remit for a small (but beautifully formed) team, and we are ambitious for what we can achieve both internally for the ICB – making it a great place to work – as well as across the system to ensure we have a sustainable health and care system from the workforce perspective.
We have also just taken our Staff Survey Results and Annual Report for the ICS People Strategy to the public Board in May and now we are in the process of taking forward delivery of all of the priorities we agreed. Within the ICB, I am keen to start addressing some of the key issues for staff that we haven’t been able to get to as we’ve been focussed on the change programme. Learning and development is a key priority as well as leadership development and supporting managers to have the core skills they need to lead their teams well.
What are the biggest challenges for your directorate?
The biggest challenge is to match our ambition with our capacity. We have an ambitious plan for all the things we want to achieve within the team, for the organisation and for the system, however we must phase this to ensure we don’t try and do too much, too quickly. The other challenge will be bringing together the system team and the ICB HR and OD team together to develop a people and culture directorate as this will be new for all of us. We are looking forward to going through the High Performing Teams programme to start us off well.
From a system perspective, our biggest challenges are delivering on the People Strategy and supporting our partner organisations across NCL to have enough permanent workforce to maintain a sustainable health and care system. The high impact areas for the People Strategy are in the fourth purpose of an ICS which is to make a social and economic contribution. This is where I see our biggest opportunity and our most exciting work. We have recently won a bid for the DWP WorkWell Partnership Programme to develop a model to support people with long term conditions, mental health issues and physical and learning disabilities back into work. As a result, we are now one of just 15 vanguard sites in England, and this programme aligns perfectly with our population health outcomes within Live Well.
Tell us a bit more about the People Strategy
The ICS People Strategy was signed off by the Board in May 2023 and we have started delivering the first year of priorities. I am most proud of our Care Leavers Programme. We were one of 10 pathfinders nationally, supporting care experience young people into careers in the NHS. This has been a partnership with our local authorities, the NCL Health and Social Care Academy, the charity sector, our mental health and acute trusts and Middlesex University and is an important part of our strategy to contribute to social and economic development.