Have NHS bosses lost their marbles?

Plan to use toys and emojis to monitor staff ‘joy’

A CASH-STRAPPED health board facing cuts of nearly £26 million is paying for staff to learn how to feel ‘joy’ at work.

Managers at NHS Lanarkshire will take part in a 12-week course – costing £145 a head – teaching them how to help stressed employees, including doctors and nurses, battle burnout.

Managers will learn to monitor ‘joy levels’ among staff by using happy or sad emojis – or asking workers to drop marbles in a jar.

But last night, James Price of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘I suspect staff would be happier knowing they were spending money making peoples’ lives better, not being wasted on patronising claptrap.

‘Taxpayers expect hospitals to focus on healing the sick, not waste time and money on spurious and unproven activities like this.’

NHS Lanarkshire’s ‘quality directorate senior management team’ will take part in a virtual training programme called Finding & Creating Joy in Work.

It will be provided by the US-based, not-for-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), whose president is Derek Feeley, the former chief executive of NHS Scotland. He resigned in 2013, weeks after it emerged he put pressure on Audit Scotland to water down a report on waiting times. The IHI said the approach may sound ‘flaky’ but benefits patients, saves money and provides a better place to work. A report by NHS Lanarkshire – which must save £25.8 million this financial year to break even – quotes an IHI paper which ‘described how burnout leads to lower levels of staff engagement, patient experience, productivity, and increased risk of accidents’.

IHI says that ‘to measure joy in work’, its staff drop one marble a day into a glass jar: a blue marble for a good day when a worker ‘made progress’, or tan ‘for a day without progress’.

Other ways to measure joy include a whiteboard with two columns – one with a smiling face, one with a frown, where staff indicate their daily level of ‘joy in work’ by ticking the appropriate column. Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘Health boards are barely keeping their heads above water financially, so it’s hard to understand why this should be any kind of priority.

‘Patients would rather NHS managers got their heads down and worked through these challenging times, not pursued nonsense.

‘It’s important hard-working NHS staff take pleasure from their working day but this approach is not the way to do it.’

Lesley Anne Smith, NHS Lanarkshire director of quality, said: ‘There is strong evidence that shows a correlation between greater employee satisfaction and safer, more efficient patient care.

‘There is also evidence that an engaged workforce is associated with fewer medical errors and better patient experience, less waste, higher employee productivity and reduced turnover of staff, leading to better financial performance.

‘We are trialling this 12-week online training programme with nine staff at a total cost of £145 each, which provides guidance on how to improve engagement with staff and address any issues and implement change.’