EXCLUSIVE: NHS England will explore the role of data analytics in driving a tailored approach to employee health and wellbeing at Employee Benefits Connect 2017.
Eric Barratt (pictured), healthy workforce programme manager at NHS England, will present a session titled ‘Driving positive behaviour for a healthier workplace’ as part of the data analytics conference stream on Wednesday 1 March 2017.
His session will provide insights on how NHS England is using staff surveys and data analytics to create a tailored strategy to support the health and wellbeing of NHS staff and help the organisation achieve its long-term goals for health and wellbeing at work.
Barratt said: “By surveying and finding out what the issues are among our staff, it’s helping us find out where we should be focusing our interventions, and it also helps us target particular staff groups as well.
"We [also] found out which interventions and offers [staff] were most aware of and which ones they are least aware of, so we can then actually pin down which ones we need to be marketing better as well.”
Barratt will provide examples of how NHS England has leveraged data to develop its health and wellbeing approach in a bid to reduce sickness absence rates and support staff with key issues such as stress, mental health, obesity and musculoskeletal conditions. This includes the implementation of health and wellbeing initiatives across 12 demonstrator sites in the UK, such as schemes with Slimming World and meditation app Headspace.
Barratt said: “It [has] been shown that healthy staff are better engaged staff and that leads to improvements in patient safety and patient experience. We also find that staff retention and staff experience improves when the wellbeing of staff is addressed.”
He added: “I certainly want [delegates] to be thinking about using data better to draw logic between the needs of their staff, what support they then offer their staff, and then using data to refer back on a periodic basis [to] make sure [health and wellbeing initiatives] are having the desired impact, and then making improvements through active learning from [their] findings. It’s [about] taking a continuous improvement approach to the health and wellbeing of staff using data to inform what [organisations] do.”
Employee Benefits Connect 2017 will take place on Wednesday 1 March 2017 at the Park Plaza, London.
