Guidance for boards on Freedom to Speak Up in NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts (July 2019)

Summary

This guide has been produced jointly by NHS Improvement and the National Guardian’s Office, with input from a group of executives and non-executive directors (which included chief executives and chairs), FTSU Guardians and leading academics in culture and leadership. The guide sets out our expectations, details individual responsibilities and includes supplementary resources.

Content

It is expected the executive lead for FTSU to use the guide to help the board reflect on its current position and the improvement needed to meet our expectations. Ideally the board should repeat this self-reflection exercise at least every two years.

It is not appropriate for the FTSU Guardian to lead this work as the focus is on the behaviour of executives and the board as a whole. But obtaining the FTSU Guardian’s views would be a useful way of testing the board’s perception of itself.

The improvement work the board does as a result of reflecting on our expectations is best placed within a wider programme of work to improve culture. This programme should include a focus on creating a culture of compassionate and inclusive leadership; the creation of meaningful values that all workers buy into; tackling bullying and harassment; improving staff retention; reducing excessive workloads; ensuring people feel in control and autonomous, and building powerful and effective teams.