Transcription
hello my name is michael west. i am professor of organizational psychology at lancaster university and senior visiting fellow with the kings fund and had the pleasure also of being an adviser to athena od. i want to talk a little bit about our experience of team working during the kovit 19 crisis and the implications of that for teamworking beyond the worst of the crisis.
um but it's worth beginning with saying a little bit about where we were in our health and care system before the crisis began. the level of staff stress in the health service was at the highest level it had ever been. there were a hundred thousand vacancies in the nhs in england, 40 odd thousand nurse vacancies, very high levels of staff intention to quit and a huge shortfall of nurses coming from particularly the european union and other places overseas.
and then the pandemic struck. and what we've seen during the pandemic has been the most extraordinary response from nhs staff in terms of commitment, innovation, courage and reaching out across boundaries to work with people from different teams, different backgrounds, different care sectors. some staff have been redeployed and willingly gone to work in quite novel settings for them. and what we've seen particularly is the emergence of really effective teamworking. so teams have come together and have had a really clear purpose, an inspiring purpose, protecting the lives of people across our communities. and that's translated also into really clear objectives for every team because of the pressures that that we're up we have been under.
teams have also communicated really effectively. there's been an increasing frequency in many teams of communication coming together for short focused periods of communication to learn in the here and now about what needs to be adapted and what needs to be changed. and teams have been very supportive and cohesive and have been committed to developing new and improved ways of doing things. and there has been enormous compassion. team members have listened to each other, they've been present with each other, they've understood understood the challenges their colleagues are facing, they've been empathic and they have also really sought to help each other.
and so we've seen the development of relatively stable teams that people have been part of over many weeks. and that's in some contrast to what we saw before where people were being shifted from one team to another depending on rotors or work schedules or the particular occupational group within health services that and care services that people worked in. actually, the data we have suggests that only about 40 percent of staff across the healthcare system were working in what we would call real teams, that is teams that have clear shared objectives and that meet regularly to review performance. and that something like 60 percent of staff were working in what we call pseudo teams that didn't have those very simple characteristics.
and the more people who work in real teams, the lower the numbers of areas that can harm staff staff or patients, the higher the levels of staff well-being, higher the quality of care in the acute sector, the lower levels of patient mortality, higher levels of patient satisfaction.
so what can we learn from this going forward? i think it's vital that we learn from the crisis and develop effective teamwork in the future. learning from the lessons of the crisis, the importance of building teams with a clear sense of an inspiring purpose which is translated into four or five really clear shared objectives for the team, where team members are clear about their own roles and roles of others in the team, and where teams regularly take time out to review what it is they're trying to achieve, how they're going about it, and what do they need to change. indeed, the evidence we have from many published studies is that teams that take time out on a regular basis to review, to reflect, to adapt, to innovate are on average between 35 and 40 percent more productive than teams that just keep spinning the hamster wheel constantly and ever faster. and it's about teams really taking the time to communicate and to be supportive and compassionate.
so what we've seen is the development of more compassionate teamwork where people value every member of the multidisciplinary team, unidisciplinary team, valuing all contributions, or opinions, or reflections, or ideas for new and improved ways of doing things. working in teams is what we are really effective at as humans. we've been working in teams for hundreds of thousands of years and our challenge is to develop effective team working in our health and care services going forward, learning from the lessons of the crisis of the pandemic so that we embed team working, effective team working into all we do. and that's about building stable and effective home teams for everyone so that everyone has a home team they can come back to where they do their learning, when they get their support, where quality improvement projects are pursued.
but everyone developed the skills of teaming, the skills of setting team and individual objectives, the skills of ensuring that we're clear about our roles and others roles, ensuring that we are taking time out as teams to reflect on and learn about how we can improve our performance. when we build effective teams and effective teaming skills across our organizations, then we build effectiveness in terms of our ability to deliver high quality care. and those teams also serve as a vital medium within which we care for the health and well-being of staff. we know that when people are members of stable effective teams, that their stress levels are at least 50 lower, they're much less likely to be injured at work, they're much less likely to be intending to quit. because when we build effective stable teams, we build a climate of engagement and belonging and compassion. and belonging and compassion and crucial are central to what it is to be human. and more than ever, what we've demonstrated during this crisis is the centrality of com passion and connection and caring for each other as fundamental to what it is to be human and happy.