December update from Andrew

With just five days left until Christmas and the winter temperatures having finally arrived, I thought it was time to write my final update for 2018.

Personal/personnel update

As you know Liz Cutts left us a few weeks ago. It was lovely to see so many of you there at her leaving presentation to wish her well in her new role. If you need to reach me please get in touch with Sharon Church who is now looking after my calendar and availability.

We’ve also bid farewell, for now, to Dean Westcott who’s on loan/secondment to the STP as their Director of Finance. We’ve welcomed John Leslie in as his cover, and many of you will have met John at last week’s staff briefing.

Away from work as I’ve mentioned before my priority has been the yearly Geldard pickling season. As we approach Christmas alongside the usual jars of pickled onions and pickled cabbage lining the shelves of the kitchen store cupboard we’ve also branched out into cranberry sauce and chilli jam. They will come into good use over the next few days, particularly at my local street festive party taking place in Great Dunmow on Christmas Eve and within the family over Christmas and New Year.

Business update

Thank you to everyone who attended the staff briefing last Tuesday. We heard from Healthwatch Essex on their work and how we can work closely with them. Kate was very impressed with the contributions from everyone and I know left with lots of ideas and suggestions, as well as names of people to get in touch with!

It also saw two other firsts, the new corporate induction day where recent new starters heard about the CCG. They also had an opportunity to meet their new colleagues across the organisation all in one go. These will now be held quarterly, aligning with staff briefings and the HR team will be in touch with all new starters shortly after they begin work to invite them along.

The other first was the launch of our new intranet, AskHUE (https://askhue.org/). This new internal resource lets you keep up to date with the latest news.  It covers events and training sessions, a new telephone directory and details of our executive team and board.

We want you to help shape the content on here so it’s relevant, useful and accessible. That way it will help everyone in their day-to-day work and information will be easy to find. Our comms team are really keen to hear any ideas or suggestions you may have so please do get in touch with them, either by popping to Building 1 or emailing them.

Working with our HR provider we’ve been training many of you on our new appraisal process, how it works and what you need to do. We are introducing the new system where the focus is on talent management from April.

This system will identify people’s strengths, weaknesses and ambitions for the future. It means both work and training can be aligned to support you and your career. As you will be aware the Agenda for Change strongly aligns progression along incremental pay points with locally agreed performance. This new system will also help us to demonstrate and measure this far more accurately.

Look out for further training sessions in early January for both line managers and non-managers. If you haven’t yet attended a session please book yourself on, dates can be found on AskHUE.

Looking into the future our integrated care partnership work with Princess Alexandra Hospital, Stellar, EPUT, local authorities and social care is progressing well. Work continues on the new Integrated Urgent Care contract, with the new service set to launch on 1 April 2019. Herts Urgent Care (HUC) have been to all areas, meeting with GPs and practice staff to get their input into the new service.  This is to ensure it works for them, as well as all our residents and patients.

So lots going on and more to come as we move into 2019. If you have any questions for me about the subjects here, or anything else please just contact Sharon Church.

That’s all from me for 2018. Thank you all for all your hard work over the year, stay well and enjoy the Christmas break.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Andrew