Helen Aghanian, Bridgewater NHS Community Foundation Trust

The PMAs judges hailed Helen Aghanian’s Creating Kinder Cultures Workshop, delivered across the Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHFT), as “thoroughly designed and engaging”, describing Aghanian as an “articulate, professional and passionate presenter” whose “personal commitment to the initiative shone throughout, as did her ability to reflect and learn from her experiences at work”.

Aghanian recognised that the culture of teams and organisations was both an integral strategic element of the NHS long-term plan as well as a strategic priority of BCHFT’s people strategy, and that numerous studies had been conducted on the impact of kindness in healthcare.

Bringing in partners from human resources, organisational development and communications, who identified a number of workstreams, Aghanian created the Creating Kinder Cultures Workshop. Since being introduced, it has also been used to inform other processes within the people directorate, such as the Kinder People Nomination, which recognises kindness at an organisational level, and being publicised throughout the organisation using the Feel Good Friday Bulletin.

One obstacle addressed in the workshop is people’s perception of kindness; to understand that it is ‘more than a feeling’, delegates are asked to reflect on practical kindness and how this impacts on team behaviour, patient care and organisational outcomes and reputation. One challenge was engaging senior colleagues within the trust; however, “as word has spread regarding the benefits of the workshop, there has been a noticeable shift in enthusiasm to attend the workshops”, Aghanian said. 

Aghanian has ensured questions around kindness have been added into the NHS National Quarterly Pulse Survey, which has shown that 77 per cent of respondents agree that kindness is encouraged and valued in the organisation, while 62 per cent often experience acts of kindness within the organisation. 

The PMAs judges described Aghanian’s presentation of her work as “impressively evidence based, with reference to a good range of academic material from her studies and to a significant body of primary research in her own organisation”. “She also referenced the Profession Map in specific and relevant ways, and her approach to tackling potentially sensitive topics with tricky stakeholders was both courageous and principled,” they said.