Chief People Officer, West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Join Team West Herts and help our staff shine!

About West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is a forward-looking and progressive acute trust. It is continually striving to deliver high quality care to our communities. WHTH is on a journey of transformation which began when it moved out of ‘special measures’ in 2018. This was followed by further positive Care Quality Commission ratings, a raft of national awards, low vacancy rates and increased staff satisfaction scores.

WHTH provides healthcare services to a core catchment population of approximately half a million people living in West Hertfordshire and the surrounding area. Overall, the population served is relatively affluent, but there are some areas of deprivation. The Trust also provides a range of more specialist services to a wider population, serving residents of North London, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and East Hertfordshire.

The Trust has a workforce of almost 5,000 people, across three hospital sites. We are one of the biggest employers in the area. We treat nearly a million people each year, including over 150,000 people attending emergency services, nearly half a million via outpatient clinics, and about 4,600 babies delivered by our maternity services.

Our Hospitals

Services are run over three hospitals: Watford General Hospital, St Albans City Hospital and Hemel Hempstead Hospital. Outpatient physiotherapy is provided at Jacketts Field in Abbots Langley.

Watford General Hospital is at the heart of our acute emergency services - the core location for inpatient care, and for all patients who need the specialist emergency facilities (such as intensive care) of a major district general hospital.

St Albans City Hospital is our elective care centre. It provides a wide range of planned surgical care (both inpatient low risk surgery and day-case) and a wide range of outpatient and diagnostic services with more than 100,000 outpatient appointments. The St Albans site is being developed into an Elective Care Hub for the local system.

Hemel Hempstead Hospital offers other local healthcare facilities such as diagnostic services, including MRI and cold pathology, as well as an outpatient service that sees more than 100,000 patients per year. The site has an exciting future as a multi-specialty base for planned medical care. Redevelopment options are being explored with the local council with a view to creating new facilities in the town centre as a joint project with council and other health partners.

Trust Success Stories

Trust redevelopment - confirmation of funding for the preferred option to build a completely new hospital at Watford which will replace existing clinical buildings, including Princess Michael of Kent building, the Women’s and Children’s building and the A&E wing. Redevelopment will also be taking place at St Albans City Hospital and Hemel Hempstead Hospital.
In December 2021, we realised our 'teaching hospital' ambition and changed our name to West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Gaining teaching hospital status reflects the dedicated work of many teams and individuals who have set the standard for delivering high quality training, learning and education at all levels of the workforce. We work with several universities on training and educating a wide range of healthcare professionals. We have appointed a new non-executive director from UCL's medical school focus on this important aspect of our role.
In 2023, we hosted a visit from the Prime Minister who undertook some clinical shifts, he spent time with our teams and innovative virtual hospital. He also spoke about his support and enthusiasm surrounding our redevelopment plans for the new hospital.
Trust staff successfully implemented a new electronic patient record in November 2021.
We have received national recognition for our pioneering work on the ‘virtual hospital’ for Covid-19; one of the consultants who helped to establish this model of care is now leading a roll out of virtual care across the East of England region and another was awarded an MBE. Our work in this field continues at pace and attracts significant interest from other hospitals nationally and internationally.
We published our clinical strategy in 2021 reflecting our position as a thriving organisation with most of our services rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission. This clinical strategy sets out how we propose to organise, deliver and develop our services over the next five years, with ambitions around personalised care, collaborative working and consistently good care based on evidence and best practice. Full version here and summary version here.

Dear Candidate,
Thank you for your interest in the role of Chief People Officer at West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. I am delighted that you are exploring the opportunity to apply. This is an exciting time to join our Board and help support our future ambitions. I joined the Trust as Chief Executive in July 2022, and I was attracted by the dynamism of this high achieving trust and its ambitions for the future.
We regard ourselves as an ‘anchor’ organisation – very much at the heart of our communities in West Herts, employing more than 5,000 staff and treating more than 650,000 patients every year. We want to be seen as an organisation that puts patient care first and explores and embraces new ways of working to deliver excellent patient care. All of which require inspirational leadership of our workforce functions.
We are just about to publish a new five-year strategy that will focus on delivering excellent patient care, developing our hospitals, and designing services with our local partners. Alongside the strategy we have refreshed our vision and values. These will launch in April 2024. The People and Organisational Development directorate have worked hard to engage colleagues across the trust in this, and I need a Chief People Officer who will drive and champion the work to embed the new values across all our teams.
Huge progress has been made in recent years to improve services for our patients. We have won a range of national awards, reduced our vacancies, and have seen our staff morale continue to rise. Our teams have a track record of delivering innovation, for example, our nationally recognised pioneering work on the ‘virtual hospital’ for Covid-19, which has now expanded into more services and attracts significant interest from other hospitals nationally and internationally.
We were awarded Teaching Hospital status in December 2021 and are building excellent relationships with West Hertfordshire College. Developing our reputation and capabilities as a teaching organisation is something I will be looking to the new Chief People Officer to take to the next level.
Looking to the future, we are progressing as part of the New Hospital Programme and will see construction of a new Watford General Hospital start in 2026. A new hospital requires new ways of working, and planning the workforce we need for a digitally enabled future. Again, I’m looking for a Chief People Officer who will work with our clinical leaders on transformation and making sure our staff have opportunities to develop and progress within the trust.
This role will suit an exceptional leader with passion, ambition, and the experience to help us achieve our goals. The postholder will provide visible and transformational leadership both within the People and Organisational Development directorate and across the wider trust. You will find a supportive Board and an experienced executive and leadership team motivated by effective team working and an inclusive approach. The successful candidate will play a key role in driving new ways of working and a culture of empowerment, compassion, professionalism, and inclusivity.
I hope this microsite gives you all the information you need, but please do contact Alumni Global for further information. We very much look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully
Matthew Coats
Chief Executive
Our Values
Commitment, Care and Quality
Our values clearly set out how we work with patients, their family and friends, and partners and the standards they can expect from all of our staff, volunteers and contractors (such as our catering team). Many of our patients helped to create them. Our values guide staff recruitment and appraisal processes because evidence suggests that hospitals where values are part of the culture improve health outcomes for their patients.
Our Annual Staff Survey
Our ambition is to be one of the best hospitals in England for staff engagement and in the top 20% of acute hospital trusts in the country for the NHS national staff survey. Our 2021 NHS Staff Survey had the best response rate to date. All staff were encouraged to take part in the National staff survey which ran from October to November 2021. We achieved a response rate of 49% (47% in 2020) against a median response rate of 46% for the sector. Our staff gave a broadly positive view of working life and compared to the Acute and Community trusts we were benchmarked against, we as an organisation scored higher on five of nine themes, with the rest being in line with average scores.
Feedback from the staff survey continues to feed into a programme of work supporting the People Strategy 2020-2025 which places much greater emphasis on partnership working, quality improvement, diversity and inclusion, and living our values. We continue to focus on the areas that need improvement.
Supporting Health and Wellbeing
We aim to build an exceptional workplace that fosters a compassionate culture that empowers staff to thrive. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive workplace that is people focused, celebrates differences, and welcomes staff to bring their whole selves to work. The health and wellbeing of our workforce is a fundamental part of our ambition, to support staff experience and enable the best service to be provided for our patients
Our vision statement is,
To have effective and innovative ways to support the wellbeing of our staff and create a culture that support and protects.
Some wellbeing initiatives include;
- Psychological support through our local ICS wellbeing hub- Here for You and our Employee Assistance Programme.
- Onsite 1:1 appointments and departmental walk arounds by Here for You.
- Peer to peer support through Mental Health First Aiders and Wellbeing Champions.
- Fast track physiotherapy service.
- Educational sessions including, pensions, financial wellbeing, burnout, stress, physical health, nutrition and menopause.
- Free quarterly health checks, monthly discounted massages, and weekly discounted fitness classes onsite and at Watford Football Club.
- SHINE – our reward and recognition platform to send thanks and appreciation to staff as well as our monthly Stars of Herts nominations.
- Annual recognition events including Long Service Awards, Stars of Herts awards night as well as wellbeing events which include WellFest and Winterfest.
CQC Ratings
Our rating for 2021 was "Requires Improvement”. We were rated as ‘Good’ for effective, caring and well led. We were rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ for being safe and responsive. This was an improvement from our last inspection. Of the six core services inspected on this occasion, we were rated as good for four of these services and two were rated as requires improvement.
Overall, our rating remained as ‘Requires Improvement’; with all but one of the services at Watford General Hospital rated as ‘Good’ and all the services at St Albans City Hospital rated as ‘Good’ (eight and three services respectively) and two out of three services at Hemel Hempstead are rated overall as ‘Good’ with one rated as ‘Requires Improvement’. There is a clear plan in place to move ‘Requires Improvement’ ratings to ‘Good’.
Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care System
In July 2022, Hertfordshire and West Essex became a statutory integrated care system (ICS) and has formed an integrated care board (ICB). Our ICS has the overarching responsibility for ensuring that we get the most for our population from our £3.2bn combined health and care budget, making the best use of the skills of our 56,000-strong workforce. It provides clinical and professional leadership and ensures that our organisations pull in the same direction to help everyone - residents, service users, patients and staff - to achieve their potential. The ICS consists of three CCGs, two county councils, 13 district councils, eight provider trusts, two Health and Wellbeing boards and two Healthwatch organisations.
Within the ICS, we are a member of the South and West Hertfordshire Health Care Partnership and we play a key role in this partnership. Work is underway to develop the vision, aims, principles and priorities for our ICP. We are playing a key leadership role in this work. In an ICP model, we will share responsibility with partners for preventing ill health, enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment and ensuring care is joined-up to deliver better outcomes for people in West Hertfordshire.
Please click here to read the Job Description
All applications must include:
• A full curriculum vitae/resume
• Quoting the relevant role reference number: A039016.
• A covering letter highlighting the aspects of the job description and West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust that particularly attract you to the post (Microsoft Word document)
• Contact details for three referees, these will not be contacted without your permission. (References should validate a minimum period of six years employment)
• A completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form (which you will be redirected to once you have submitted your application) *
Monitoring
One of Alumni Global’s and West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s objectives is to ensure that its workforce is reflective of the local community and therefore we actively encourage applications from under-represented groups. So that we can successfully achieve these aims, while it is not mandatory we would encourage every applicant to complete the “Equal Opportunities Monitoring form” so that we can measure the effectiveness of our efforts. The Recruiting Manager does not have access to the Monitoring Information Sections of the application form at any stage of the process and the information provided will be kept entirely confidential.
For a confidential discussion on this role please contact:
Thomas Patterson, Managing Director or Beth Stickney, Principal Researcher, on +44 7703 821 996.
Candidate adjustment
If you require any reasonable adjustments to be made as part of the recruitment process please can you advise us so that we can ensure this is accommodated.
Key Milestones:
Closing date: 19th April 2024 - TBC
Final Interviews: 14th May 2024
Please ensure you have made a note of the final interview date(s). We recommend that you bookmark this microsite, as any potential updates regarding the role will be posted online.