West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership is working to avoid harm in employee investigations through a new pilot programme. The initiative is delivered as a partnership between the West Yorkshire Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub and NHS Wales. The pilot was inspired by the work developed in NHS Wales. The focus on avoiding harm in employee investigations has subsequently been taken up by the Healthcare People Management Association (HPMA) who published the ‘When we do harm’ paper. The programme draws on learning from the patient safety movement and this animated video highlights the importance of the work, by changing culture and approach to ensure formal processes are always the last resort.
Evidence shows that investigations can cause harm to the person at the centre of the investigation but also the wider team, including witnesses, HR and investigating managers. The stress and anxiety of being told you're subject to investigation, possibly dealing with being suspended from work, and being isolated from colleagues can all negatively impact on employee wellbeing and often lead to sickness and low morale. It’s not just the person at the centre of the investigation who may suffer harm, there is the wider impact on colleagues, witnesses and the individuals' families.
So, an organisation’s policies, or the way they are implemented, can harm employees. But the important point is that this harm can be avoided. The work in NHS Wales saw significant reductions in formal cases and related sickness days.
While processes must be followed, this programme focuses on how organisations can prioritise people’s mental health and wellbeing and encourages consideration of wider factors in HR investigations. The programme calls for investigations to be used as a last resort, drawing on principles from the patient safety movement to minimise unnecessary harm.
Awareness events and training sessions have taken place to help staff from across our Partnership gain a deeper understanding of how they can avoid harm through workplace investigations. This includes a train the trainer model to equip professionals with the knowledge and tools to share learning within their own teams and organisations and support long term change. 20 colleagues from 14 different organisations have completed the train the trainer training and will now share this learning with their colleagues. This training model has so far reached acute trusts, mental health trusts and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations in West Yorkshire.
So far, almost 200 people from across the health and care system have attended awareness events, including HR professionals, trade union representatives, wellbeing leads, and operational managers.
90% of attendees said it improved their knowledge and 95% would recommend the training.
Michelle Holland, Deputy Chief People Officer, Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We all need to stop and reflect before we act. This session provided that space, allowing us to consider our own practices and hear from a diverse range of colleagues. My key takeaway is to encourage more operational managers to attend, as this will help drive culture change, not just policy updates.”
NHS Wales – Improving our employee investigations impact report of the work.
The discussion paper and further resources are available on the HPMA website.
Hello. My name is Carlyn Boyce, Clinical Lead for the West Yorkshire Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub. This personal blog reflects the content of a training session co-presented with Dr. Kerry Hinsby, Clinical Psychologist.
Avoidable harm in investigations is not inevitable, it is a systemic issue that can be addressed through education, compassionate leadership, and a commitment to intersectionality. In our Employee Investigations – Looking After Your People and the Process training, we explored how power and privilege influence investigations, and why a nuanced, intersectional approach is vital.
This work is personal for both me and Kerry, it reflects not just our professional insight, but lived experience. As a visibly Brown person and a visibly White person, we co-facilitated this session to emphasise that real change requires collective action.
Employee investigations in the NHS are essential for ensuring fairness, yet they often reflect broader systemic inequalities. Intersectionality, how overlapping identities like race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation shape experiences, plays a crucial role in determining investigation outcomes. Without acknowledging these complexities, processes can reinforce biases and cause avoidable harm.
Reports like the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (2023) and Too Hot to Handle (2024) reveal that ethnically diverse staff face higher rates of bullying, harassment, and discrimination, yet are underrepresented in grievance and disciplinary procedures. This imbalance raises critical questions:
The Power Cycle, adapted from Sylvia Duckworth’s Wheel of Power/Privilege, illustrates how those closest to the centre e.g. leaders, policymakers, hold the most influence, while those on the margins e.g. women in lower-grade roles, ethnically diverse staff, disabled employees, face greater risk of marginalisation.
In investigations, this plays out in multiple ways:
Without intentional intervention, this power imbalance reinforces harm and excludes key voices.
The iceberg model of identity reminds us that while job roles and professional conduct are visible, hidden factors such as cultural background, personal challenges and systemic barriers significantly impact investigations.
For instance, international NHS staff, especially nurses, may experience language barriers, family separation, or housing difficulties, yet these factors are rarely considered. A compassionate, culturally aware approach is crucial to fair investigations.
One of the most eye-opening lessons from our training was how our own cultural perspectives shape our judgments. Unconsciously, we apply assumptions based on our personal norms, failing to consider the diversity of perspectives.
To challenge this, we must:
Intersectionality isn’t just the responsibility of marginalised individuals, it’s a collective commitment. Workplace training often focuses on single identity groups e.g. leadership programmes for women or neurodiverse individuals, but what about ethnically diverse women with neurodiversity in leadership?
A holistic, inclusive approach is needed, one that embraces multiple identity layers rather than treating them in isolation.
The conversation starts here, but the work must continue. Let’s commit to real, lasting change.
Hello, my name is Sonya Robertshaw and I'm the Workforce Lead for the Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Programme. My role involves working with organisations across the West Yorkshire system to develop collaborative approaches to support the recruitment, retention and wellbeing of our workforce.
One such approach has led to the development of a new pilot scheme running across the West Yorkshire health and care system. The programme, delivered by our HR team and the West Yorkshire Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub, will focus on avoiding harm in our employee investigations.
Speaking as a professional with a background in HR, I can say that one of the hardest parts of the job is supporting managers with disciplinary matters. The process can be formal, sometimes involve interviewing lots of witnesses and can take a long time to complete. Quite often the member of staff concerned is off work whilst the investigation is ongoing. Emotions run high, and the process can be upsetting for all concerned.
As HR managers who trained years ago, we were taught to follow process, weigh up the legal risks, tick every box. When we're caught up in our work and have lots of investigations in hand, we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are real people at the heart of it, with families to support, who quickly become isolated. Often those at the heart of the investigation suffer with their mental health and wellbeing because of the process.
All our organisations have wellbeing leads and Occupational Health providers, but we don’t always work together when developing our process to explore how we can ensure we adopt a compassionate approach and prevent harm being caused. In addition to harm to the individual, poorly applied processes can cause the organisation reputational harm and there is a significant financial cost when staff are off work for considerable amounts of time whilst processes are ongoing.
With the above background and understanding of the impact of the processes, I was really interested to hear about the work being developed in NHS Wales around ‘avoidable employee harm’. Led by Andrew Cooper, who is head of programmes in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, he also leads the 'improving employee investigations' work across NHS Wales with Health Education and Improvement Wales.
The focus on avoiding harm in employee investigations has subsequently been taken up by the Healthcare People Management Association (HPMA) who have published the ‘When we do harm’ paper. The programme draws on learning from the patient safety movement and this animation video highlights the importance of the work, by changing the culture and approach to ensure that formal processes are always ‘a last resort’.
We are delighted to be working with Andrew and colleagues from NHS Wales for our West Yorkshire partnership Avoidable Employee Harm pilot programme. It has attracted a huge amount of interest and we now have three mental health trusts, two acute trusts, the ICB and one local VCSE organisation taking part.
If you’re interested in being involved in the pilot, please email sonya.robertshaw@nhs.net.
If you'd like more information on this project, or would like to get involved, please contact Sonya Robertshaw, Workforce Project Lead: sonya.robertshaw@nhs.net.
