Director of Workforce and Organisational Development
Swansea Bay University Health Board

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in the role as Director of Workforce and Organisational Development at Swansea Bay University Health Board. This is a critical role that will be responsible for ensuring the successful system-wide delivery and continuous improvement of our people plans to move to our vision of a high-quality organisation across the Health Board. This role will promote our values, mission and equality, diversity and inclusion with the people and communities we serve.

Through the leadership of human resources and organisation development functions, you will spearhead the development of innovative organisational and service solutions and ways of working to support the strategic aims of the health board. The development of our high performance culture and the delivery of significant operational service change will be key. We are looking for a leader who can walk the talk and can show the energy, guile and confidence of skills to advise change through our people in the most challenging environment the health service has found in decades.

This role comes at a time of major changes at SBUHB and across our communities. We are all feeling the effects and aftershocks of Covid and the cost-of-living crisis is being felt in every family, home, business and public service. We have an active programme of service modernisation and improvement underway called Changing for the Future, which is implementing lessons we learned from Covid, investing millions in modernising services and shaping them to meet today’s pressures and future demand, improving the quality of care and outcomes and focussing on staff wellbeing and resilience. At the same time, we have led a 6-month engagement around a big conversation on how we will create a high-quality organisation and deliver it culminating in our vision for the organisation going forward. Your role will be to make this complex endeavour tangible, deliverable and real through our people.

I believe it is essential that we have the professional leadership, skills and resources to involve people in shaping and understanding plans, engaging them through transitions, championing equality, diversity and inclusion and reporting back and being held to account for our actions. The executive team and I are committed to our new strategy, team and investment. You will be working with a highly capable and able executive team who work well together and are utterly committed to be the vision and how we create it.

The person I am looking for in this role will be someone who has proven experience of working at a strategic and operational level in human resources and organisational development. They will be able to contribute at a very senior level, close to or at Board in a large complex organisation, preferably within the NHS and across whole healthcare systems. The style I am looking for will be one who compliments a strong, progressive executive team and board but who can bring drive, energy, enthusiasm and political acumen to an exciting role along with strong conceptual and analytical skills to deliver our challenging agenda. We are not looking for someone who is theoretically sound, but can’t deliver change through people and our approach to organisational development is practical and based on action and change resulting in an improved culture.

We strongly believe that meaningful engagement and communications are essential enablers of high-quality patient care and outcomes and staff wellbeing and job satisfaction. If you want to make a difference, where your skills can flourish and your values and commitment to public service, the NHS and wellbeing match ours then please apply and we look forward to receiving your application.

Dr Richard H. Evans

Interim Chief Executive