Department of Health and the NHS

Understanding what matters to staff

The Department of Health asked Leapfrog to collaborate with Ipsos-MORI in finding out what really mattered to NHS staff, and to come up with a validated set of core values that could be used by Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trust in developing their own local value sets. The project ran over the course of nearly a year.

The research involved a series of depth interviews and group discussions across the country, talking to diverse groups of medical professionals, managers and support staff. During the study, we used a branded tool called The Value Spectrum, designed to measure the value systems of individuals and compare them with the value system of their organisations. One of our key findings was the differences between the values of the NHS and the values of the staff working within the organisation.

By the end of this process, we had a summary list of the 12 things that really mattered to staff, the values that seemed to resonate with just about everyone we’d spoken to. Ipsos-MORI then proceeded to validate the list quantitatively with a sample of 6,000 NHS staff, finally arriving at 10 validated factors. We were delighted to see 9 of our 12 original values preserved by the validation exercise.

The final stage was to fine-tune the wording, and Leapfrog conducted a series of large workshops to reach a definitive value set. In the workshops, we brought together all types of NHS staff, and it was fantastic to see hospital porters, nurses and junior doctors working together with senior consultants and managers. We also involved a copywriter, who came up with various versions between the workshops, which we then tested with staff.

And yet, we felt greatly honoured to be part of the creative process because of the potential it had in making a difference to a large group of people and, ultimately, to the entire population of the UK. The importance of the initiative was also reflected in the fact that it formed a basis of the widely discussed Darzi Report, as well as becoming part of the emerging NHS Constitution.