Moorfields Pharmaceuticals

The challenge

Moorfields is a growing business and has been through a period of rapid change. Previously Moorfields was owned by the NHS – today they are a money-making enterprise bringing innovation and new medicines to the field of ophthalmology.

The HR team has been supporting employees away from the old ‘NHS mind-set’ to become more entrepreneurial.

Moorfields had undertaken two internal employee engagement surveys themselves, but felt it was time to bring in a third party to undertake the process. They were looking for a survey provider to increase response rates and gain as much credible data about working life as possible.

What did we do?

We revamped and rebranded the existing survey and created a ‘survey day’ to promote the feedback process to Moorfields’ 80 employees.

The results were presented to top management by our Director, Gary Cattermole. A management report was also created highlighting areas of strengths and weaknesses.

We also organised two away days where teams could talk more openly about what works well and what doesn’t, and create ways to improve what Moorfields do.

Results

The survey achieved an exceptionally high response rate – 90%.

Pleasingly, Moorfields saw an increase in their overall scores from their previous two surveys in 2009 and 2011. Managers were viewed positively in comparison with previous surveys and views on training and development had increased by 25%.  In addition, it was clear from the open comments that it was ‘the people’ that was the best thing about working at Moorfields, closely followed by the ‘variety and challenge’ of the work itself.

The survey and away days identified three clear areas for Moorfields to focus its attention, communications, team culture and leadership.  These are areas where the organisation can focus remedial work and make positive changes going forward.

Action

Although it is still very early days after the survey was completed, the HR team have already created tactics to improve their performance.

Volunteers from across the workforce have been recruited to help drive change. Work has been put in place to transform communications within and between departments. The leadership team are taking a more active role in day-to-day life within the organisation, and much-effort has been put into moving the organisation away from a blame culture.

The future…

Moorfields is looking to develop an empowerment culture to help employees become more entrepreneurial. The HR team are monitoring their actions and are undertaking pulse surveys and annual engagement surveys to ensure their strategy remains on track.

“The Survey Initiative has been great. We’ve received lots of ‘add-on’ advice and many people within the organisation have commented that they provided a very slick operation. We would definitely use them again and we’ve already recommended them to other organisations.”

Sheila Johnson, Human Resources Manager, Moorfields Pharmaceuticals

To find out more about Moorfields, visit www.moorfields.nhs.uk