Breaking the Rules

Dr Kevin Cleary and Dr Navina Evans cutting through red tape

In March 2017, a campaign at ELFT encouraged all staff to “break the rules”. Endorsed by Dr Navina Evans (Chief Executive) and Dr Kevin Cleary (Chief Medical Officer), staff were encouraged to highlight the bureaucratic, unnecessary and petty rules that are getting in the way of our work.

By highlighting and then eliminating these rules we will be able to focus more on what is important and valuable to our service users, carers and staff work. Ultimately, this campaign is about cultivating a culture of constructive challenge, openness, transparency and continuous improvement.

The campaign started with red tape appearing across Trust sites, with cryptic messages related to breaking the rules. After a couple of weeks of this teaser campaign, the executive team launched the call for ideas. Lots of fun was had with this, which led to staff sending in messages of the rules they wanted to break via a travelling video booth with masks, posting ideas into suggestion boxes, phoning in their ideas or emailing.

Red tape appearing across Trust sites

Over 100 unique ideas were submitted, with many being suggested several times. Staff submitted ideas about rules that they wanted to be changed. In the spirit of openness, all of the ideas raised were shared with staff on the intranet, who were encouraged to vote for their favourite ideas.

Over 600 voted for their favourite suggestions – the biggest response we have ever seen through our intranet!

Voting on which rules to break!

The next stage is very exciting; a panel of leaders are now working to ensure that the suggestions are all considered, identifying the ones that are possible to make happen. About two thirds of the ideas raised were not actually rules, but myths that need busting. Every day, one suggestion has been shared back with the organisation through the intranet, with the response from the Trust about how this idea is already possible, or how the system is being redesigned to make it possible.

Examples of the rules that are being changed: