Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase NHS staff workforce resilience.

No assessment has been made of the adequacy of staff workforce resilience in the National Health Service. The NHS People Plan and NHS People Promise published in July 2020 sets out a comprehensive range of actions that focusses on making the NHS a better place to work, helping increase staff resilience and improving retention.

Building on the work of the NHS People Plan and People Promise, the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published in June 2023, sets out the importance of ensuring we keep more of the staff we have within the health service. This will be achieved by supporting people through their careers, boosting the flexibilities we offer staff to work in ways that suit them and work for patients and ensuring access to health and wellbeing support. We also need to continue to improve the culture and leadership across NHS organisations.

Investment in health and wellbeing is vitally important in helping staff resilience. NHS England has developed a range of health and wellbeing initiatives which include a health and wellbeing guardian role, a focus on healthy working environments, empowering line managers to hold meaningful conversations with staff to discuss their wellbeing, and a comprehensive emotional and psychological health and wellbeing support package.

NHS England has also published a ‘Growing Occupational Health and Wellbeing Together’ strategy. This sets out a roadmap for the NHS and partner organisations to work together to develop and invest in occupational health and wellbeing services for NHS staff over the next five years.