People and Culture Strategy | North East and North Cumbria NHS

Supporting the people who care for us all

Every one of us – as patients or colleagues - has seen the incredible dedication and expertise of our region's health and care staff first-hand at some point in our lives.

But despite the deeply impressive commitment that staff have shown over the last few difficult years, we still face significant challenges.

Health and care are changing. So are patients' needs, as we live for longer with more complex needs and long-term conditions. The pandemic has also had a huge effect on our people's health and wellbeing.

A new People and Culture Strategy for our region's health and care organisations aims to address these urgent challenges. Developed by a wide-ranging partnership including the NHS, local government, education and voluntary sector bodies, as well as patients, staff and trade unions, it has a clear ambition: to make the North East and North Cumbria the best place to work in health and care.

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A greater emphasis on preventing ill health and making good use of new technology bring a need for more flexible employment approaches, with health and care can work together across boundaries.

Many people are now working longer, so we must be ready to attract and retain older employees. At the same time, many 'baby boomers' are retiring, and we need staff with the right skills to fill their shoes.

We also need to do more to ensure our workforce truly reflects the communities we serve, as well as offering support for our people's wellbeing.

Two medical colleagues looking at laptop

One key commitment is to increase our staff vacancy fill rate across health and social care services by 50 per cent by 2030, as well as helping staff to stay with us through flexible working, better career structures and more training.

A renewed focus on wellbeing, learning and improvement will benefit our staff and the people they care for, while our leadership model will help us develop talent and our leaders of the future.

A new Health Equity and Inclusion (HEI) strategy will aim to create workplaces across our health and care system where our people feel they belong, are listened to, invested in, and valued.

And a focus on reform will see us using innovative digital solutions such as artificial intelligence, as well as sharing skills and good practice so that different parts of our system can learn from each other.

Our strategy