The issue of care home staffing has been in the news a bit recently (see this, this, and this). It’s a massive issue because the demand for care – especially specialised nursing care around things like dementia – have never been greater. And the demand will only increase as the population gets older. A few different factors have been offered to explain why there’s a gap, with the biggest reason coming down to pay (last year, council care employees were paid £9.80 an hour, whi

What does the perfect organisation look like? We don’t mean the obvious things – chocolates pens, two-hour working days, and a ban on Coldplay on the office radio. We mean equality-wise. People are always asking us what the ‘best’ organisations are doing in terms of training, staff networks, board representation, and so on. The truth is, there isn’t a recipe for a perfect organisation. It just doesn’t work like that. Every organisation is unique, with its own history, staff p

To celebrate the launch of NHS England’s new guide on how to create diverse boards (which we were privileged to author) we’re publishing a series of posts on how to make diversity part of the fabric of your organisation. All these posts are modified versions of what’s in the guide, so if you want more info make sure you download it (it’s free!). In our first post, we asked why team diversity is important and came up with some (hopefully) surprising answers. We then looked at

Have you ever been on a training course that's packed an emotional punch? Do you dread having to talk about yourself in public? In this blog post NHS employee Lucy Thatcher shares her experience of being on a training session run by brap - and how she dealt with some of the emotional issues it raised. Stepping Up We are our own worst enemies. Someone said that to me a week ago, whilst I was crying in front of roughly 40 people, whom I had only known for two days. I have carri

To celebrate the launch of NHS England’s new guide on how to create diverse boards (which we were privileged to author) we’re publishing a series of posts on how to make diversity part of the fabric of your organisation. All these posts are modified versions of what’s in the guide, so if you want more info make sure you download it (it’s free!). Last time we asked why team diversity is important and came up with some (hopefully) surprising answers. This time, we want to think

To celebrate the launch of NHS England's new guide on how to create diverse boards (which we were privileged to author) we’re publishing a series of posts on how to make diversity part of the fabric of your organisation. All these posts are modified versions of what’s in the guide, so if you want more info make sure you download it (it’s free!). First up – why is any of this important at all? Because the people we work with are generally polite they don’t literally roll their