1. Discuss with senior HR leaders in your community: What are the points that resonate with you? What do you challenge or disagree with? How can the paper and its themes support change?
2. Discuss with your HR team: How does your current practice align or differ from the themes raised? What themes do you wish to develop? What themes need further consideration and discussion? Can you use this paper to guide your approach to disciplinary processes in your organisation?
3. Discuss with your executive team and board: Introduce the seven themes to colleagues for awareness and reflection. How do they wish to proceed – in-line with the seven themes or by challenging them and taking another approach? What data do they need to assess performance and outcomes? 

Seven themes and key take-aways

1. The essential role of HR leadership Strengthen Board leadership so CPOs lead, own and report on disciplinary policy in line with organisational culture and values.
2. Putting people at the centre Design policies that are accessible, humane and rooted in trust, written in clear language and focused on the people affected.
3. Support for everyone involved Ensure consistent, structured support for staff under investigation, as well as for managers, investigators and HR teams.
4. Addressing inequality Improve fairness, transparency and consistency in how disciplinary processes are applied across the workforce.
5. Choosing the correct process Support managers to distinguish between conduct and capability issues and to intervene in all HR issues earlier and appropriately.
6. Taking a last resort approach Prioritise informal resolution wherever appropriate to reduce harm and improve outcomes for individuals and teams.
7. Pursue continuous improvement Embed ongoing learning in organisations, reviewing processes regularly and using data to drive improvement and consistency.

The research shows health and care leaders at all levels have a critical role in modelling and rewarding collaborative behaviours but this is insufficient on its own. Leaders also need to pay attention to six leadership practices if they want to build a stronger collaborative ethos.

This style of working is hard especially in a resource-constrained environment. The report recommend leaders give greater attention to designing more participatory processes and developing the collaborative skills of other groups of staff.

Given the pace of change and disruption needed to solve many of the problems facing our health and care system, we recommend leaders extend the practice of collaborative leadership to work with a broader range of local organisations as well as local communities.

They also detail how to identify the right intervention points in operations and the supply chain to help an organisation stop or recover from an evolving critical situation before its impact turns catastrophic. In this article they summarise the key advice from their resilience framework.

"It starts at the top with C-suite executives who are fully committed to understanding what’s happening on the front lines so they can ask the right questions and be open to the right recommendations and actions."

• A robust safety culture is the combination of attitudes and behaviours that best manages the inevitable dangers created when humans work in complex environments.
• Great leaders know how to wield attitudinal and behavioural norms to best protect against these risks.
• These include:
• psychological safety – that is, an environment where no one is hesitant to voice a concern and caregivers know that they will be treated with respect when they do)
• organisational fairness – where caregivers know that they are accountable for being capable, conscientious and not engaging in unsafe behaviour, but are not held accountable for system failures
• a learning system in which engaged leaders hear patients and front-line caregivers’ concerns regarding defects that interfere with the delivery of safe care, and promote improvement to increase safety and reduce waste.
• Leaders are the keepers and guardians of these attitudinal norms and the learning system.