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| Our brilliant feather wall at our staff awards was designed by our creative patients |
There are many ways to do this, but the annual staff awards have a special place in all of this, as they are all about recognising exceptional individuals and teams who make us all feel proud.
It can be so inspiring to hear about the fantastic commitment and achievements of people, so I was bowled over by the love in the room at the awards ceremony, with people cheering and clapping for their colleagues and other teams.
So, huge congratulations to all the winners and finalists at our Pennine Care People Awards ceremony this Wednesday. It was a spectacular setting at Rochdale Town Hall for spectacular staff. Despite the cold (as their heating broke that day), our hearts were more than warm enough!
I felt so proud hearing about the amazing work of the different individuals and teams on the big screen. And more than a bit nervous opening the ‘golden envelope’, as I didn’t want to ‘do a Terry Wogan’ who announced the wrong winner of the UK Eurovision song, or an Oscar’s ‘La La Land’ gaffe.
Because of the set-up of the different judging panels, I didn’t actually know who had won any of the categories, so I was grateful that the person handing me the correct golden envelope had steered away from the bar before the event!
It was a long day, as we’d had the board meeting that morning, followed by our Annual General Meeting (AGM), with flu jabs in between. And at both the AGM and staff awards, two very different personal stories from bold, spirited and inspirational women really impacted me.
Marzia Babakarkhail, a former judge in Afghanistan, spoke at our AGM about her dramatic and terrifying journey fleeing from the Taliban who had tried to kill her for her activist work on behalf of women.
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Here I am at our AGM with
our inspiring AGM patient story speaker, Marzia, and our chair, Evelyn |
She fled first to Pakistan and then eventually arrived alone and traumatised in Oldham.
Unsurprisingly, her mental health suffered with such trauma and she credits our Oldham Healthy Minds service with ‘saving her life’ in a different way. It was humbling, upsetting, moving and also an honour to hear her story.
And then Chizzy Akudolu, a successful actress, comedian and TV personality, talked about coping with her ‘black dog’ of depression at the start of the staff awards and her dad struggling to understand as he asked, ‘what do you have to be depressed about?’
Chizzy talks publicly about her depression in the hope that she might help others who are suffering. And what really struck me about her story was how, when she finally plucked up the courage to tell people what was going on, everyone she spoke to knew someone with, or who had been personally affected by, mental ill health.
It is so positive that we are beginning to be more open about our mental health as the stigma surrounding it is gradually reducing.
Stories are so powerful and we all have one, as we have all gone through things that have impacted and changed us. As these truly impressive women articulated so beautifully, we can’t go back to the beginning and ‘change’ our stories, but we can start from where we are and try to change the way we go forwards.
We’re crafting ‘our organisational story’ at the moment, and even though it’s not a personal story, it’s still about people: our employees, patients, carers, their families and everyone in our communities.
Our business is all about people - and in the most profound way. You change and help people to live their best life, and what is greater than that?
That’s why we want to thank you and celebrate your work, and also why we want your views on our Pennine Care story, which is the framework for our refreshed strategy.
We’re sharing it with everyone who attended the AGM as well as all of our teams via team brief, so please give us your views about whether this is going in the right direction.
We also want your individual views on your working lives, not just our future direction, as this is an important part of how we become a great place to work.
It can take time for changes to embed, for results to show and resources are of course a challenge and obstacle sometimes. But, we are listening and we want to keep on improving things for you.
So, if you haven’t yet done it, please complete your staff survey. It matters because you matter.
And finally, we say goodbye to our Rochdale children’s community service staff today. They have been with us for seven years and we have learnt so much from them. We wish them the very, very best, with a huge, heartfelt thank you.
Best wishes
Claire
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