- Conference
- 2003 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 1 December 2002
- Decision
- Carried
The issue of staff involvement has never been more important. The NHS is undergoing a radical shift in both structure and culture as it moves the balance of power from the centre to the frontline. If we are to succeed in moving decision making to frontline staff, we need to ensure that we have effective staff involvement and partnership working.
The Government recognises that the trade unions need to be supportive of staff involvement and have a central role to play in partnership working. It has effectively issued a challenge to us all by asking whether trade unions are up to jointly running the service.
The gains for trade unions arising from staff involvement and partnership working are becoming clear. Since the unions are playing a central role in decision-making about all aspects of working life this involvement tends to increase the relevance and status of the union in the eyes of its members. In branches where partnership is well developed it can be seen that there is significant membership increases.
Also, it is not possible for staff, managers and trade union representatives to work successfully together to solve problems without the growth of mutual trust and respect, combined with a willingness to listen to each other’s point of view.
As a consequence, the contribution of trade union representatives is seen as extremely valuable and managers are supportive of members who want to become union representatives – especially where there are gaps in union organisations.
Staff Involvement and partnership working do, however, pose some serious challenges to accepted practices and behaviours. Managers for example, need to lose the notion that they have failed if they don’t have the answers to the problems. The union for their part need to get used to supporting, advising and trusting members to find acceptable solutions to the everyday working problems, rather than taking the “leave it with me – I’ll sort it out for you” approach that has been encouraged in the past.
A culture of blame when things go wrong needs to be replaced by a culture of learning from mistakes – a culture appropriate to a learning organisation.
For partnership working to really make an impact practical steps need to be taken to ensure that trade union representatives can pick up the Government’s agenda and in so doing create the strong branch organisations that we require and desire, to represent our members and put the union at the heart of the NHS where it belongs.
If union representatives are to get meaningfully involved in running the NHS organisations at senior managerial level from board to ward there will need to be an open and transparent sharing of all information, which in turn requires mutual trust about appropriate use of sensitive information. Training for union representatives in the skills and knowledge they need to participate effectively, for example, in strategic and financial planning, are also critically important.
At the delivery end of the service, busy union representatives and staff will need paid time away from work to participate in problem solving sessions. New mechanisms are needed to monitor the impact on negotiated agreements where there are industrial relations implications arising from local decisions via staff involvement.
UNISON, along with our sister and brother unions, have potentially much to benefit from partnership working/staff involvement. This motion instructs the Service Group Executive to require Regions to carry out an audit of local branches, identifying branches that have developed the partnership agenda in terms of agreements/programmes of staff involvement, audit tools to measure and evaluate the programmes with a view of sharing good initiatives with other branches/regions, with the purpose of maximising the potentials that partnership working can deliver in establishing strong branch organisations and substantial increases in membership.