Barts Health enables 24/7 peer-to-peer staff recognition programme
The customer
Barts Health NHS Trust is a group of hospitals providing a huge range of clinical services to people in East London and beyond. They operate from four major hospitals across London and cover a number of community locations; serving 2.5 million people.
Across the Barts Health portfolio is a network of 24,000 employees who span various shift patterns and roles, and are made up of full time staff, volunteers, agency staff and trainees. However the engagement of this employee base has changed in a post-pandemic world and after receiving funding from the Barts Charity to support employee well-being, Barts Health identified the need for a new programme to drive employee engagement.
As the provider of their staff intranet platform ‘WeShare’, Barts Health approached VerseOne to help bring this new initiative to life.
Barts Hearts has been incredibly successful in nurturing a culture of kindness and appreciation across the Trust. The platform’s automation has been a game-changer, allowing it to be effectively managed by our small team of just two while still making a big impact on staff engagement and wellbeing.
George McKenzie-Hurry, Recognition Engagement Manager, Barts Health NHS Trust
- 9,840 active users on the staff recognition platform
- 4,924 employees have reached five Barts Hearts
- 1 message of appreciation sent every 5 minutes
The challenge
With 24,000 employees across multiple sites, Barts Health needed a comprehensive plan to gain an accurate picture of the employee view around engagement and wellbeing. They conducted staff surveys, a series of focus groups and had face-to-face feedback discussions around what staff recognition means to employees and the ways in which Barts Health can improve employee wellbeing. Off the back of this feedback they identified that Barts Health current initiatives already excelled when it comes to formal recognition such as national awards ceremonies, as well as informal recognition which could be manager led or centre around specific individual achievements. However, the need for everyday, instant peer-to-peer recognition was identified as needing improvement.
The feedback concluded that staff wanted visible and public recognition in the form of a simple thank you. They wanted more recognition from their managers as well as their peers, and they wanted a quick and easy forum to be able to share their own thanks and appreciation as well as receive it.
To address this, Barts Health needed to implement a new initiative which would be cost effective and involve digital automation to ensure scalability, as well as being easily managed by a small internal team. The solution would also need to be easy-to-access for a variety of employees, transcending roles and employment type to ensure that permanent staff, volunteers, and contract staff can also benefit from the programme. This would also serve to help reduce inequalities amongst staff recognition initiatives, and provide a fair and inclusive employee experience for all.
The solution
Working with VerseOne to build a staff recognition platform that integrates with their current staff intranet solution, the ‘Barts Hearts’ programme was born. The new platform allows instantaneous peer-to-peer recognition from staff at all levels, empowering employees to spread the love and show their appreciation for people who go out of their way in their role or demonstrate acts of kindness.
Using the active directory already integrated with their staff intranet platform ‘WeShare’, users can search for a colleague they want to thank and send a quick message along with a token - which in this case is a ‘Barts Heart’. This message is sent in real-time, and the employee is notified that they have received a heart and a message. These messages can be viewed by all employees, with the ability to like and comment on other peoples messages to show further support.
Each month, staff members receive five hearts to distribute among colleagues. There is no obligation to use all of them, and they reset monthly. Hearts given do not expire, and once a staff member collects five, they can choose a reward from a selection of ‘Barts Hearts’ branded merchandise. As the messages are sent electronically, the solution is scalable and can be utilised no matter the time of day, which empowers night staff and shift workers to also take part in the programme.
Plus, to build, amend, control and access the programme Barts Health simply need to log into their existing CMS platform, ensuring ease of use and consistency of branding across their internal systems.
The results
Seven months on since the launch of the platform and the team at Barts Health have been overwhelmed with the success of their staff recognition initiative. With over 63,000 messages shared on the platform, staff have been recognising the hard work of their colleagues once every 5 minutes, seven days a week. Over 5,889 rewards have been claimed, with 4,924 users achieving five heart status.
The diversity amongst users has also been a big success. Previously Barts Health found that clinical staff were the most infrequent users of the staff intranet platform, however with the launch of this new feature, 36% of nursing and midwifery staff have been sharing the love through Barts Hearts.
As the inclusion of volunteers and contract staff in all recognition activities was crucial, the Trust invited them to join the Barts Hearts recognition platform, granting them access to the staff intranet. This not only increased intranet activity from a wider pool of staff members, but the ease of access for full time employees also drove an increase in intranet usage and allowed more staff to access other reward and retention offerings from Barts Health.
This level of reach and scalability surpassed all expectations and has led to a larger number of rewards and branded gifts being distributed than expected. Something that without an automated approach and a secure and easy-to-use platform, would not be possible.
We never imagined Barts Hearts would become so popular. Its success prompted a few revisions to keep things equitable, and it’s great to see platform usage remain strong. Even after seven months, messages keep pouring in, far exceeding our expectations. The platform has truly transcended roles and locations, bringing together colleagues from across the Trust.
George McKenzie-Hurry, Recognition Engagement Manager, Barts Health NHS Trust
To understand how your organisation could benefit from a peer-to-peer, instantaneous staff recognition platform, get in touch with the team today.