Strength of leadership across organisation revealed, says new Chief Executive

NHS Walsall showed strong leadership across its entire organisation during 2008, according to new Chief Executive Denise McLellan, commenting today on newly released figures which once more place the primary care trust among the top NHS organisations for the way it treats its staff. Walsall was in the top 20% for the key measures of job satisfaction, training, feeling valued, job design and support from managers.

In the 2008 staff survey, which goes to all staff across the NHS in England and Wales, NHS Walsall was in the top 20% of comparable organisations for good communication between management and staff, staff receiving training, staff feeling valued, quality of job design, working in a well-structured team environment, work-life balance, support from managers, opportunities to develop, all forms of training, perceptions of effective action from employer on violence and harassment, reporting of errors, dealing fairly with errors, ability to contribute to improvements at work, and staff job satisfaction.

In its four least favourable scores on the survey, Walsall was one percentage point behind the national average on experience of physical violence (2% versus national average 1%), agreeing their role makes a difference to patients (88%, versus national average 89%), percentage of staff witnessing potentially harmful errors in last month (28% versus national average 29%), and was 0.09 behind the average on a scale of 1-5 on availability of hand washing materials (4.43/5 versus 4.52/5).

Chief Executive Denise McLellan said today: "The staff survey makes very exciting reading. NHS Walsall staff are clearly hugely positive about the organisation and their role. It shows strong leadership across the entire organisation. This gives us the very best possible starting point as we move forward together."