Safety recommendation
HSSIB recommends that the National Guardian’s Office, working with relevant stakeholders, identify the barriers that prevent temporary staff from speaking up and develops mechanisms to address those barriers. This will build on their work to explore barriers for other staff groups and enable all workers to contribute to patient safety improvements without fear of reprisal.
Response:
We will implement HSSIB’s safety recommendation that the National Guardian’s Office will work with stakeholders to identify the barriers that prevent temporary staff from speaking up and develop mechanisms to address those barriers. This builds upon our work exploring the barriers to speaking up to improve workplace cultures so that all workers – no matter what their contract terms – are confident to speak up.
Given the critical role which temporary workers play in the NHS, it is vital that we ensure that they feel confident to speak up about patient safety and not fear they will lose future opportunities to work in that organisation. Temporary workers can offer valuable insights into practices and quality of care. Freedom to Speak Up guardians are available to all workers – this includes temporary, agency and bank staff.
I echo HSSIB’s recommendation for local level learning and for leaders to ask themselves: How do you ensure that temporary staff know how to speak up and that they feel safe to raise concerns?
We are planning on taking this action forward in 2025/26, subject to funding.
Response received on 5 November 2024.