Medway NHS Foundation Trust: Cultural review (5 September 2025)

Summary

Medway NHS Foundation Trust commissioned independent experts Absolute Diversity to review their culture, so that they could better understand the experiences of their staff, and change the culture.

Staff shared their experiences with Absolute Diversity in a range of ways, and they have collated this feedback in a report which includes five recommendations that Medway fully accept.

Content

Recommendations

Absolute Diversity’s report includes five actions that Medway are committed to taking, which include:

• rebuilding trust by making it safe for people to speak up and to showing when action has been taken
• reviewing staffs’ experiences of our human resources (HR) processes and improving the HR services offered
• creating a work safety plan to help make Medway a safer, fairer, and more inclusive organisation for staff, patients, and visitors
• implementing a programme to ensure leaders take ownership and deliver on their commitments, and rolling out a programme for middle managers to help build fair and more confident teams.

Work to address gender inequality will also be taken forward, so too a recommendation that Medway refresh their staff networks so they become a more active part of how we listen, learn, and lead change.

Taking action

Medway are already taken steps to tackle some of the concerns raised, including:

• launching an independent Freedom to Speak Up (FTSU) service
• creating Dignity at Work Advisors
• rolling out sexual safety e-learning and Inclusion by Design training
• signing the NHS Sexual Safety in Healthcare Charter, and
• focussed work to reduce incivility.

The Board has also agreed actions that will ensure it keeps learning, listening and acting before issues become patterns. These include creating Executive Inclusion Champions to support the Board to lead fairly and reflect the people it serves, developing an Inclusive Leadership Toolkit to help teams know what good looks like, coaching and regular progress reviews.