There is hope in the humanness of our health and care system.

Engagement

• We received the feedback that our website and communications were often very NHS orientated and we have worked hard with contacts within social care to adapt our language, voice and messaging to be more inclusive. This has included working more closely with SSSC, bringing in community partners with direct links and roles in the 3rd sector, social care and education for health and care services. We have also listened through community engagement, making it safe to be honest and disagree with us and through blind feedback and wider review with our communication partners, Daysix, in our website redesign.
• We have learned that sometimes the best thing we can do is get out of the way.  When the pandemic hit, we spent the first few weeks creating space for those engaged with us, holding back our regular activities and listening to what different groups where saying.  This was received well and has strengthened our resolve to be always listening.
• COVID-19 stopped us in our plans half way through what we were doing to support our community members to connect, exchange, learn and come together.  We have since turned around a refocused and energised plan for moving forward for the next year, based on topics and conversations, hosted digitally for the foreseeable future.
• You can read more about these points in our engagement section

Talent Management

• It has been a busy time in developing the wider range of processes and tools and remaining sensitive to the needs of local systems and their operational pressures has been important. We are working hard with HR related teams to understand how we can support them in the area of talent management.
• Engaging colleagues in Health and Social Care Partnerships, care providers, and the 3rd /voluntary sector is still challenging and we are working hard to identify how to connect more effectively with more of the varied, diverse range of organisations.

Leadership Development

• The postponement of formal learning events for leadership cubed cohorts and national programmes was one of the most significant changes and required us to role model the ethos in our relationships to balance the variety needs across cohorts, collaborators and stakeholders.
• We continue to face the challenge of raising awareness and attracting more participants from Social Care and other partners to our Project Lift Community and development programmes.
• The challenges of the last year have accelerated the team’s appetite and capability to work virtually and reshape our development offerings for the online environment. This has served to enhance our collective skills and aptitude for working virtually going forward which will enable us to extend our reach

Values Based Recruitment

• Our exploratory work has reinforced the ongoing tension between a desire for national consistency and the importance of local autonomy and has also emphasised that the experience of those involved in such processes should always be a central consideration. We have been listening to understand through work across HR Directors, recruitment leads and conversation between Scottish Government, Boards and organisations.
• Progress has been slower than hoped due to the refocusing of resources on our response to COVID-19

Performance Appraisal

• We have contributed to evolving and improving the experience and impact of Performance Appraisal in supporting our senior leaders in embodying the attitudes and behaviours of the Project Lift ethos.
• We have worked to progress our understanding of what the holistic process could look like in the next phase of activity by listening to others across the system which has shown a range of activity depending on a range of factors within Boards and organisations.

We know that there will be challenges ahead that we cannot yet see.  We wait as a global community to see the ongoing impact of COVID and how that manifests itself on our Nation, our health and care system, those that access it and those that work within it.

We are encouraged by the humanness we have seen in the responses in the past 6 months and how we, as part of the wider system, have adapted to support our communities, networks and organisations.  If ever there was a time for the Project Lift ethos to be shown as the approach to enable transformational change, it is now.

• Engagement – we will continue to further reach across the Health and Social Care system to enable people across our communities to connect, inspire and learn together through Project Lift.
• Talent Management – we will continue to develop the Talent Management suite while extending access to both the platform and collaborative opportunities across health and social care and the wider public sector. We will also strengthen a national approach to succession planning and continue to broker connections between those identified as having potential and emerging leadership challenges.
• Leadership Development – we will continue rescheduling and recovery of development activities configuring these in a way that supports what’s needed in the system and draws upon whole system learning. We will continue to expand our range of offers, providing offers open to all and more tailored offers to specific target populations and groups identified through the Project Lift Talent Management process.
• Values Based Recruitment – we will continue to engage with those engaged in values based recruitment at a local level to learn from their experience and inform good practice and will support it’s extended, proportionate and effective use across health and social care and supporting the development and growth of individuals, whether they are successful or not.
• Performance Appraisal: we will continue to revisit how we can support the evolution and improvement of the experience and impact of Performance Appraisal with those across the Health and Care system who are using this while continuing to hold the central responsibility for ensuring it is part of the holistic approach to the career journey from recruitment to development.