Colleagues from all areas and roles gathered in our "Ideas Kitchen" to cook up more new ways to boost and improve our organisational development plans.

For some time now we’ve been holding tea trolley rounds as an informal way of finding out what works well here for colleagues at CHFT and what would improve things. The ideas that those rounds were used to build on.

The Ideas Kitchen followed a cooking theme and  a group of CHFT "chefs"  (mainly Workforce and Organisational Development) used a series of recipe cards to talk about ideas for our OD strategy going forward.

Each chef visited each of the tables with their recipe card for comments and feedback. 

"Head Chef" aka Associate Director of Organisational Development, Ruth Mason, said: “It was a really positive day, filled with great ideas and energy. We really were cooking on gas, you could say.

“One of the key themes that came out was to put in place more structured leadership development opportunities to help us become great managers and leaders.

“And what came across loud and clear was that colleagues really enjoy working for our Trust, so we have to look at ways in which we make sure they know they are valued, with ways to keep them with us.

“Everyone was full of ideas and suggestions and it’s clear they want to be involved and engaged in the whole process.  They literally told us “involve us – we have ideas and can help”.

“It was really great to see so many ideas in the room and we’ve definitely got a recipe for success”

** The tea trolley rounds will continue through next year, and there may be another OD Kitchen as in the New Year as we are working toward taking the strategy to Board in the New Year.