When the Liverpool Women's NHS Financial Trust achieved a high performance rating for its services in a report published last year by the Healthcare Commission, the trust's board of directors decided to show staff their appreciation by providing them with a Christmas gift.
The board recognised that the trust's outstanding performance was largely the result of employees going the extra mile for patients.
Kim Doherty, director of human resources, says: "We wanted to ensure that staff received something tangible rather than a cash award for their efforts. In the past, we have found that when we hand out cash awards they are absorbed into household budgets and are not remembered." So the trust decided to give every employee a £50 Love2shop voucher, at a total cost of £85,000.
Doherty says the £50 voucher was selected because the variety of shops that would accept it meant staff could "buy gifts for themselves or use the reward to buy Christmas presents for others".
