This page is divided into two sections; Your Health and Well-being and Leading for Health and Well-being. It has resources which will support you in leading an organisation and focusing on your own health and well-being, and leading in a sustainable way.
Your Health and Well-being
On a personal level, it’s crucial to maintain your own health and wellbeing – but in a complex, pressurised environment it can be difficult at times to maintain that well-being and balance.
Maintaining and ensuring your own well-being means that you will lead in a way which means that you can make good decisions and maintain relationships in your work and in your personal life. Leadership in the NHS at this level takes a huge commitment so it is important to stay well enough to maintain that performance and feel great about work.
Powerful Ted Talk from Chris Turner, a consultant in emergency medicine at University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust and founder of Civility Saves Lives; a campaign that aims to raise awareness of the power of civility in healthcare. Though this has a clinical safety focus, the principles are applicable to wider settings.
Meditation has been shown to help people stress less, focus more and even sleep better. This app enables the user to select a good range of high-quality meditations of different durations, it is suitable for beginners with some free elements to get you started.
Amanda Super, occupational psychologist, has been working in leadership and NHS staff development for many years, specialising in coaching people to develop their self-compassion. Featured as a guest blog from NHS North West Leadership Academy.
Contains hundreds of resources, books, worksheets and exercises to help explore our inner attitude, how we approach our relationships, our personal values and sense of purpose.
A collection of insights by leaders and writers on how to better manage yourself in our busy working lives. It is relevant to those who are feeling the pressures of daily living to help them perform better at work and develop a better work-life balance.
Recognising the signs of burnout, the research behind it and what you might to do combat it.
A range of guides which take between 10 and 20 minutes to complete – topics include resilience, making decisions under pressure, remote working and much more.
Leading for Health and Well-being
As a senior leader in your organisation you are responsible for creating a culture which supports staff health and well-being.
These resources from NHS Employers give a great overview of how your organisation can provide staff with an environment and opportunities that encourage and enable them to lead healthy lives and make choices that support their well-being. In addition, the resources below can support your thinking about how the board can support the development of this and the wider culture of openness about health and well-being.
The NHS Long Term Plan highlights board engagement in the health and well-being agenda, as central to an organisation’s ability to understand, deliver and sustain workforce health and well-being. A fully engaged board will ensure that health and well-being Leads – throughout the organisational structure have real and tangible support at the most senior level and will fully support the cultural shift required to make clear and sustainable improvements. Presented by Dame Carol Black and Paul Litchfield.
Deborah Lee, chief executive of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, shares her own experience of poor mental health and why she thinks it’s essential that senior leaders encourage open and honest conversations about mental health.