Caring for our people.

It’s our staff who make us who we are. Their care, compassion and dedication to helping others are what allows us to give our patients the best possible care.

We know that working for the ambulance service is not easy. Our staff help patients on what is probably their worst day, every day and it’s bound to take its toll.

Director of People, Lisa Ward is responsible for looking after our staff, ensuring they have the right support, that they feel safe and valued and that their wellbeing is a priority.

She speaks to us about some of the work she and her team have been doing:

“We know from speaking to our staff that while many of them are thriving, we have some work to do to make sure that all our team members have a good experience in work.”

“This year, we launched our new values, which we developed based on feedback from staff: working together; being at our best; making a difference. The behaviours underpinning these values set out how we all want to be treated in the workplace and this next year is about bringing these values to life.

“Health and wellbeing has always been important to us and the pandemic has brought this to the forefront. One new initiative that we’ve launched to help build on our values and make sure staff feel able to speak up about injustice is our Treat Me Right campaign. We have created a toolkit of useful information and actions for managers to support their staff when they don’t feel that they have been treated right.”

Making sure everyone is treated equally and that we adhere to the needs of our diverse workforce and community is also really high on the agenda at the moment too.

Lisa said: “Listening to our people and giving them a platform to speak openly is extremely important. Back in January, we launched our Race Equality Network. This joins our thriving LGBT Network and we hope to see a Disability Staff Network follow in 2021.”

Lisa, who is part of the Executive Leadership Team, continues: “We have been challenging ourselves to be much more ambitious about how we improve equality, diversity and inclusion. My hope going forward is that we can keep moving towards an organisation where everyone feels comfortable to be their real self in work and where our workforce and our leaders are more representative of the communities we serve.”