It was lovely to hear that one of our clients, Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, has won an award for staff health and wellbeing. The Trust employs over 5,500 staff across three counties, and is one of the biggest providers of NHS community healthcare in the UK.
In 2013, Consensio was commissioned to provide our Effective Workplace Mediation Skills course to a range of employees, including HR, managers and Staff Side reps. The Staff Health and Wellbeing team were keen to have a pool of trained facilitators to help their staff to resolve workplace issues early and informally. The training course took place over two days, and gave the delegates lots of opportunity to practice some of the keys skills of a workplace mediator using tailor-made case studies.
The ‘Facilitated Conversations’ service was set up shortly after the mediation skills training course, and it enables staff members who find themselves in conflict at work to resolve their dispute in a safe and confidential environment without the need for formal procedures. This mediated approach has been so successful that the service won the 2015 Trust award for staff health and wellbeing and the Trust was given the go-ahead to train 12 more delegates this year. The award award won by the service is judged on five core areas:
* caring with compassion;
* listening, responding and empowering;
* leading through partnerships;
* learning, sharing and innovating;
* striving for excellence.
“The training provided by Consensio has been fantastic and the experience of the participants is always reported as positive. The trainers are very experienced and are able to build both skills and confidence so that the participants leave feeling ready to start delivering the service,” says Kathy Walters, Staff Side Chair and Convenor at the Trust, who is also a trained facilitator.
We hope that the service will continue to go from strength to strength!
