The funded project has now come to an end, and as it drew to a close we found it highly useful to reflect on work and the experience. In this blog post, we share some learnings from across our collaborative team, as well as exciting news about where we’re heading next.
Our collaborative team included colleagues from East Riding, Hull City, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire councils, the University of Hull, Marketing, Design & Comms support from Mattix Design, and project coaching and support from Matt Wood-Hill at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. We all viewed this to have been a highly successful, productive and enjoyable project, and when we considered why, two core elements were the fantastic leadership of the project Lead from East Riding, Eddie Niblett, combined with the commitment, enthusiasm and engagement demonstrated by all partners, as well as by the research participants. It has been clear that this has been a project that mattered, and one that took place at the right time, with the right focus, so as to be of real relevance to all involved.
We’ve been thrilled with the outputs – the Report, Working Practice Profiles, Remote Working Stress Risk Assessment Tool & Guidance, all available on our site – and have received fantastic feedback on these so far. Of course, the quality of the content was reliant on the willingness of partner organisations and participants to share their experiences with candour, and it required the team at the University of Hull to apply robust methods of inquiry and analysis in order to reach useful conclusions and offer actionable recommendations.
So with the outputs published and the funded phase now over, our thoughts turn to the ‘What Next?’. The potential for this project to have long-lasting positive impact for public sector workers is huge, and the project team remains invested in ensuring we deliver maximum benefit for local authorities nationally. The team at the University of Hull is working with the UK Health & Safety Executive to make the survey tool available via their online stress indicator tool, and is also working with the four local authorities involved in the project to run the survey via the HSE platform across their organisations. Simultaneously, we’re engaging with a range of organisations including trailblazing local authorities in all corners of the country as well as with the Local Government Association and MHCLG to look at how we can ensure this is picked up and used by as many local authorities as possible.
