West London NHS Trust adopted a peer to peer recognition approach to staff engagement and reward to give immediate and easy access for staff to ‘Praise’ each other.
The Trust did this via Each Person, which they appropriately named Praise. Each Person is a recognition and reward platform dedicated to helping companies live and breathe their values while promoting positive reinforcement within the workplace.
Praise allows West London to get up-to-date data and insights into how staff are recognising each other. Praise provides their people with a range of Ecards that staff and teams can send to each other as well as Ecards to mark special occasions. By taking this approach, Praise enables the Trust to be genuinely inclusive and create a culture of recognition while remaining environmentally friendly.
Key benefits/outcomes
West London NHS Trust adopted a range of benefits from this approach.
- Working with Each Person enabled the Trust to quickly establish a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of recognising each other that was customised for the Trust and incorporated their trust values into recognition.
- The HR dashboard function enabled the Trust to have an overall barometer of staff reward and recognition, showing where recognition is happening and which of the trust values is most widely used.
- ‘We are recognised and rewarded’ is a central theme in the NHS People Promise. The platform encourages us to promote this actively.
- Praise enables celebrated events to be recognised for all cultures and provides a nomination platform to manage awards. For example, the Trust celebrated; Vaisakhi, Ramadan and Easter this year with Ecards for each celebration. The Trust also set up nominations for National Administrator’s Day.
- The platform aligns with our Trust Green Plan, which enables us to protect the environment while being kind to each other using Ecards instead of paper cards and makes it easy to recognise all staff, including those working remotely.
- In a fast-changing world, the platform is responsive to trust needs and can adapt quickly to innovation. An example is how Praise was used to collect £1,300 in 3 weeks to support the Ukraine appeal.
What the organisation did
Alongside other steps such as improved health and wellbeing support and dialogue with senior leaders, the Trust implemented a new method for staff to recognise and value each other. The Trust worked with Each Person to customise their Ecard reward and recognition platform hosted on their intranet. Since the Praise platform launched in February 2022, over 3,300 Ecards have been sent within the first few months. New starters are added to the platform each month, and data is analysed weekly to see where reward is happening, specifically which of the trust values are being used. For example, the Ecards all have a ‘reason for sending’, including trust values and other reasons such as Happy Birthday, Welcome to the Team, and Get Well Soon.
It revealed pride in how staff responded to the new platform and gave an in-depth insight into how appreciative our staff are of each other.
Results and benefits
The Trust built on its existing reward and recognition strategy focused on benefits and improved health and wellbeing. It found an innovative way to provide peer to peer recognition and responded to feedback from staff, who asked for this during engagement events the previous year. The collection of real-time data proved to be helpful too. The platform’s development also helped to focus the need to have a dedicated area on the trust intranet bringing together all types of reward and recognition, making it easier for staff to find.
- 85% of West London NHS Trust’s workforce registered on the Praise platform within the first three months.
- Over 3,300 Ecards have been sent.
- So far, over 4000 trees have been planted via the Each Person platform.
- Every staff member celebrating their first year at the Trust receives a Happy Work Anniversary Ecard.
- Every staff member gets a Birthday card.
Financial Benefits
Within the first few months of go-live, West London employees have made well over 3000 purchases on products within the shop and reward section. These purchases have allowed employees to save a £7,308.62 of Cash Back. During times of financial stress and with the recent costs of living this financial benefit to employees is much needed.
If the whole of the NHS was to utilise Each Person in this way they would save a combined £22,500,000 million in cashback alone.
Each Person gives employees cashback on all their shopping including Amazon. 50% of all West London orders were for Amazon products.
Takeaway tips
- Organisations can adopt a peer to peer recognition platform to create a culture of recognition and kindness to each other.
- Finding new ways to celebrate all staff’s cultural celebrations will help organisations become more inclusive and increase understanding of different cultures.
- Organisations will need to be creative in using the platform to ensure they get the most from it, including using nominations for awards, recognising Long Service and Ecards.
- Staff recognition and reward initiatives should be part of the overall organisational approach to reward and recognition, including improved health and wellbeing support.
Further information
For further information contact Alison.Webster@westlondon.nhs.uk.
Or Matt Norbury m.norbury@eachperson.com.
