An improvement project is under way on a staff training and development system used at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT), to make it easier to use.
It has been spearheaded by Collette Partridge and Eileen Brasington after a survey found that colleagues didn’t always find TAPS (Training, Appraisals and Performance System)that straightforward.
Collette is the trust’sTAPs business support manager and part of the Education and Development Team. Eileen is a TAPS co-ordinator. Both have completed the trust’s five-day quality, service improvement and redesign (QSIR) course and are using QI tools and methodology on the project.
Colette said: “Colleagues know they need to have training or an appraisal and most are happy to book on and continue their development. But the system seemed to be making it hard to choose the course, or find what they wanted, so a change was needed to make it more staff-focused and easier to use.
“This is why we both went on to the QSIR course, to learn how to make changes and improvements.”
The project’s aim was to improve staff satisfaction with Education and Development Team, after a survey revealed a lower level than the team had hoped for. This measurement will be used as a baseline to measure improvement later on.
Eileen said: “The survey revealed some issues colleagues were facing with TAPS, which we thought could be addressed – some easily and others with a bit more structure to make the changes needed.
“We had the data, but we were not too sure how to use it to its best and so we looked into QI and realised it could be very useful in helping us to take the project forward.”
The pair wanted the different functions available on TAPS to be more widely used and easier. They wanted it to be simpler to do monthly reports on the number of colleagues who had completed mandatory and essential training.
Collette said: “At the moment, it takes a couple of weeks to get all the information ready and sent out to managers and staff for the previous month. We’re hoping to make changes so managers can have up-to-date information about their teams’ compliance at the click of a button. We also want to make it easier for colleagues to see what training is due and book on to what they need.”
Changes to TAPS started in January (2020) and will continue into 2021.
A second survey is planned for early next year, to see if colleagues think the system has improved and if using it is easier and better.
Collette and Eileen found that doing the QSIR training helped with their project.
Collette said: “The QSIR training gave us lots of new ideas. It was five days, held over several months. After each day, we’d get together the following day to see how we could apply the learning to our project.”
Collette and Eileen used a number of QI tools to help with their project. These included driver diagrams, to help them establish the route they wanted to take and project on a page, which helped them give a visual explanation of what they planned, which they took with them on a staff away day.