Recommendation 1

HM Government Acknowledged

Delivering core NHS and care services during the pandemic and beyond 17 B. Recommendation at paragraph 140: Definition of Workforce Burnout and monitoring/assessing staff wellbeing We further recommend that NHSE/I should develop a full and comprehensive definition of “workforce burnout” and set out how the wellbeing of all NHS staff is being monitored and assessed. This information should be made available to us by the middle of October 2020, to enable us to scrutinise it in the course of our inquiry into Workforce Burnout and Resilience in the NHS and social care. (7) In the absence of a clinical definition of burnout, we are guided by the following working definition: • Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. (8) Research is currently underway to better understand the factors associated with burnout, with the aim of identifying evidence-based interventions to address it. This work firstly a review of the international literature regarding burnout in nurses, followed by data collection led by Imperial College London. This has been commissioned by our Chief Nursing Officer, Ruth May. (9) The way staff present and describe their needs will vary, and whilst it is important to be clear about definitions, getting the right help for our staff when they need it is our priority, and in whatever terms they may descibe their need. (10) We are engaging at national and local levels to monitor and assess wellbeing; for example, through supporting line managers to have individual wellbeing conversations with staff and being better able to identify the signs of stress. C. Recommendation at paragraph 154: Definition of racism and discrimination and strategy to tackle these issues The NHS must increase its efforts to all forms of discrimination and racism from in its organisation. We therefore recommend that NHSE/I and the Department for Health & Social Care to set out in detail its strategy to tackle racism and discrimination and to promote diversity in the NHS, including information on targets and deadlines by the end of 2020. We expect full and constructive engagement with NHSE/I and the Department as we further investigate matters relating to diversity and race in the NHS as part of our future work, including our Workforce Burnout and resilience in the NHS and social care inquiry, in which we will review the root causes of these matters (including the difference between correlation and causation relating to coronavirus and excess deaths amongst BAME communities) and potential solutions. (11) The NHS must welcome all, with a culture of belonging and trust. We must understand, encourage and celebrate diversity and inclusion in all its forms. Discrimination, violence and bullying have no place. (12) To ensure the NHS is inclusive, diverse and a place where discrimination, violence and bullying do not occur, the People Plan asks employers to take action on a range of areas: 18 Government Response: Delivering core NHS and care services during the pandemic and beyond • Overhauling recruitment and promotion practices to ensure diverse representation of our workforce • Ensuring that leadership is representative of the overall BAME workforce • Reducing disproportionality between BAME and white staff int he entry to formal disciplinary procedures • Ensuring senior leaders are accountable for progress on equality and inclusion • Strengenthing staff networks and the voices of BAME staff and other seldom heard staff groups • Health and wellbeing conversations to empower people to reflect on their lived experience and determine what teams can do to make further progress (13) In order to ensure that employers make progress, NHS England and NHS Improvement will be tracking delivery and supporting systems in a variety of ways. To ensure recruitment and promotion practices are transformed across the whole NHS, we recently published an Inclusive Recruitment Guidance via NHS Employers and have initiated engagement with key stakeholders, including NHS Employers, staff representative groups, to publish an evidence-based guidance on inclusive recruitment and promotion practices. (14) The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) already tracks progress on representation across all grades by ethnicity and disability, and we will be working with employers on ensuring their recruitment processes impacts representation across protected characteristics. The WRES and WDES 2020 reports are due before the end of the calendar year. (15) Employers already have clear goals to ensure that, at every level, their workforce is representative of the overall BAME percentage. We will be analysing the 2020 Model Employer data to assess the progress of individual trusts and CCGs against agreed tracjectories. An update report for each trust will be publishe