Our consultants have Board level experience in the NHS and/or the private health sector. We enjoy working with emerging NHS Foundation Trusts, Skills for Health, independent providers and health related charities.

Health Service Journal National Communications Award 2005

Echelon worked with an acute London teaching trust to improve patient and staff satisfaction. An innovative campaign to a collect 1,000 ideas to improve patient and staff care was implemented. The target was reached in less than 4 months with suggestions coming equally from patients and staff. Ten different methods for collecting ideas were used including TableMAPS™ to collect ideas in focus groups, wall boards, a call the CEO hotline and a special email address.

Many of the ideas received had significant benefits for the Trust and its users; the judges described the initiative as ‘a whole organisation programme with benefits not just for a few patients but for the entire population’.

Multiple versions of a core customer care programme for a private healthcare client

A cost effective and speedy solution was implemented adapting our customer service to deliver a practical, robust and engaging programme to over 100 sites in both training and self learning formats as many of staff members are part time.

English was also not the first language of many staff so a multi media approach using text and video clips was developed. The programme needed to map to different national qualifications. So materials were published using Echelon’s content management system enabling the rapid re-versioning and updating of core material. The materials in HTML format were stored and distributed via the company’s intranet.

Assessing candidates for senior management roles in the NHS

We supported an aspiring Foundation Trust to design bespoke leadership competencies and a candidate assessment process based around the Trust’s strategic agenda to ensure the senior team and board members were ‘fit for future’.

The Trust now has a bespoke toolkit to use in all senior manager appointments and a robust process that ensures new leaders are best fit for the future needs of the organisation read more.

Board development for aspiring Foundation Trusts

We design Board development frameworks based on the unique board competencies for that Trust. This forms part of the suite of evidence demonstrating capability to perform effectively as an FT Trust Board. We use these as the basis for conducting Board reviews and for targeting board development prior to FT assessment by Monitor.

This sustainable approach enables the FT board in future to:

• Select executive and non-executive directors

• Induct board directors into their roles and onto the board

• Develop the board and identify individual development needs

• Review the performance of the board, the chair and individual directors. The competencies could also be used by FT governors to appoint directors, as part of the process for deciding the remuneration on non executive directors and of holding the board to account

• Plan for seamless succession of key board roles.