Dear Colleague,
Join our campaign to support our workforce.
I am writing to you as Chair of Greater Manchester People and Culture Health and Care Group, the Group responsible for overseeing delivery of the People and Culture Strategy across Greater Manchester, to ask you to back our campaign to improve support for working carers and our disabled workforce.
As a Group we recently explored what more we can do to promote good practice and share existing resources to encourage wider spread and enable more members of our workforce to feel their benefit. The Greater Manchester Working Carers Toolkit and the Foundations for Change Disability Framework have been designed with our health and care workforce in mind. We have chosen to focus on these two fantastic resources that are co-produced and grounded in what our staff have told us and are easy to
pick up and implement right way.
Carers UK estimate that over a quarter of all workers are currently juggling work and care, and yet a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggests that only one third of employers have either a formal written policy or even an informal verbal policy in place to support working carers to stay in work and balance working and caring.
We also know that there are five million disabled people in work in the UK, and yet disabled people are nearly twice as likely to leave their jobs as non-disabled people. Scope have identified that some of the top reasons disabled people leave their job include inflexible working patterns, negative attitudes and discrimination and challenges getting reasonable adjustments.
It is really clear that collectively, we all need to be doing more to support our colleagues who are facing additional barriers in the workplace. We would really welcome your efforts to work with us to support these invaluable members of our workforce.
What are we asking you to do?
1. Complete our short pre-campaign survey. This will allow us to create a baseline and measure the impact and benefit to our workforce. (It includes nine questions about the support your organisation currentplace and will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. All answers will be summarised, with no organisations named.)
2. Ask the relevant team in your organisation to work through the two resources, to identify any gaps in your provision and work to implement the good practice.
working-carers-toolkit-1.pdf
Foundations for Change
3. Invite members of your team to join one of our learning sessions, taking place in November to talk thrly has in ough implementation, with an opportunity to hear from employers that have already made great progress. Follow the links below to book your places:
• Supporting our working carers, 1-2pm, Tuesday 19 November (Microsoft Teams)
• Supporting our disabled workforce, 1-2pm, Tuesday 26 November (Microsoft Teams)
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing gm.workforce@nhs.net.
Thank you in advance for supporting this campaign.
Warm regards
Karen James OBE
Chair of Greater Manchester People and Culture Health and Care Group and Chief Executive at Tameside & Glossop NHS IC Foundation Trust and Stockport NHS Foundation Trust.