CQC have recently released some new guidance on how to recognise and tackle closed cultures within health and social care services. This new guidance will enable CQC to better identify and take action with services that might be at risk of developing closed cultures.

“Company culture refers to the basic assumptions, beliefs and behaviours that have developed over time and are shared by members of an organisation, that often operate consciously or unconsciously and define in a basis taken for granted fashion, an organisations view of itself and its environment” Edgar Schein

A closed culture within health and social care services increases the risk of harm. The development of closed cultures can be deliberate or unintentional – either way it can cause harm to a person and their loved ones. In services where there is a closed culture, people are often not able to speak up for themselves – this could be through lack of communication skills or lack of support to speak up.

You may recognise a closed culture in your service if:

• people are removed from their communities
• people stay for months or years at a time
• there is weak leadership
• staff lack the right skills, training or experience to support people
• there is a lack of positive and open engagement between staff and with people using services and their families

The benefit of creating a strong culture within your health and social care service is to create a supportive, caring environment for both your team and users of your service, where there is a high degree of trust and respect, and there is good communication between everyone.

What is your service’s culture?
Use these questions to think about what type of culture you have in your service.

• What do people who work in your service say about their team?
• How do they work together?
• What would they say it feels like to be part of that team?

Patrick Lencioni developed the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team to show how culture supports high performing teams. According to writer Patrick Lencioni, there are five basic dysfunctions that teams commonly struggle with. They explain why building trust is one of the most important and fundamental things you must do to become a high performing team.

The 5 dysfunctions of teams are:

1. Lack of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to results

If you can get better at developing skills to counter the dysfunctions, and change the patterns and the problems, you will build confidence and capability, become much more effective, become better at collaborating, and your organisation will benefit.

If you would like any more information on the above or have any questions, please either reach out to myself or contact your lead consultant. To get in touch, please email [email protected] or call us on 03305 552233!

As a specialist, family run recruitment business, we provide a proactive and consultative approach to recruitment. We help organisations to target issues such as continuity of staffing, reducing spend where you have a high volume of agency usage and supporting those who have specific talent requirements or are in hard to fill locations. We can help with any immediate staffing requirements or longer-term recruitment projects to ultimately save you time and money on agency spend.

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