“It’s time to harness the creativity of the workforce and trust people to make change to hit that sweet spot of optimising service delivery, it’s a win win”.”
A new study has uncovered job crafting and flexible work design are having positive benefits for GPs across the UK. The Institute of Employment Studies (IES) has recently carried out a research project, testing this with 6 different GP practices across the UK, and the outcomes were compelling. This blog was informed by chatting with Stephen Bevan, one of the researchers involved in the study.
An important aspect to highlight in this study is that the researchers were keen to explore beyond the conventional methods of job design, for example, changing working days, hours or rotas. Although compressed hours were deemed the most attractive option to most people in the study, researchers were most interested in ideas beyond that. For example, how people can swap tasks with colleagues to suit their individual needs and benefit their own professional development.
What was the purpose of the study?
Originally, the team was asked to look at GP burnout. However, they quickly realised from the research that whilst there was some evidence of job crafting and flexible work design across the NHS, there are very few examples of this in general practice. Hence the desire to do this research.
Why GPs?
The Covid-19 pandemic put a huge strain on the NHS and left GPs feeling exhausted, burned out, and lots of practices saw GPs quitting as a result. It was evident that something needed to change. An underlying theme for GPs was the pressure they felt to continue delivering high quality care.
What did the study do?
With support from NHS England, IES put a call out to see if there were any GP practices in the UK interested in taking part in the study selection process. The institute was looking for 6 practices that met a range of different attributes, with the main criteria being a diverse practice with a variety of ages, races, genders, etc. Several conversations with practice managers took place to ensure that they could collect data without putting additional pressure on their already extremely busy workloads.
How did they carry out the study?
The researchers identified four to five people in each practice who had agreed to take part in the study, and carried out semi-structured interviews before and after their shifts.
A specific example of job crafting in general practice
GP practices often get hundreds of frequent callers for many different reasons. An advanced nurse practitioner took on the role of reaching out to patients before their conditions became acute. This involved monitoring and proactively contacting patients to ensure they felt looked after. As a result, this change in approach was a win-win for GPs and patients - preventing repeat callers, and crowding appointments, as well as ensuring patients didn’t deteriorate in health.
“Evidence tells us that individuals having autonomy and control in their jobs leads to better performance, retention, and wellbeing. ”
Key outcomes
There were a number of notable outcomes from the project:
GPs felt empowered to explore ways in which they could get their work done in a different way.
Transition to working patterns which allowed GPs to deliver care which accommodated flexible working and promoted physical and psychological wellbeing.
Significant progress to more agile and responsive models of organising work
GPs were able to better define the boundaries between job roles and responsibilities
More opportunity for professional development, aligning to fulfilling work
Able to deliver their goal that patients would receive the highest level of care, leading to feelings of better job satisfaction.
Conclusion
Overall, this study has had a positive impact on GP surgeries across the UK, leading to a domino effect of benefitting the GP, the practise and of course the patient. The paper concludes: “although this has not created a perfect solution, most GPs would agree that they had made significant progress to more agile and responsive models of organising work”.
You can read the whole research paper here.
If you’re interested in learning more about job crafting or testing this within your organisation, please contact us at [email protected].
