Delivery It was critical that the programme delivered significant cost savings together with improvements in quality, patient safety and experience whilst being managed and delivered on time. The objective was to deliver £555 million savings to the NHS by addressing process deficiencies, staff productivity and overall sickness rates.

Acuity was responsible for:

• Designing the programme blueprint.

• Designing and implementing a multi-tier programme governance structure spanning Government departments and local NHS organisations.

• Engaging NHS organisations to develop local business cases for health and well-being initiatives.

• Designing and implementing a national performance management framework to monitor NHS organisations progress against sickness and health and well-being targets.

• Overseeing management of programme communications (including media handling and events).

• Managing subject matter expert and NHS working group to re-design the provision of occupational health to NHS staff and develop supporting business case to secure funding.

• Delivery of quarterly reports to Ministers on sickness absence reduction progress.

• Successful launch of the NHS Sports and Physical Activity Challenge initiative.

• Successful implementation of health and well-being toolkits in NHS organisations.

This programme was exceptionally high profile and required Acuity consultants to maintain on-going engagement with senior stakeholders including the Department of Health’s Director of Workforce, Department of Work and Pensions National Director for Health and Work, senior Government advisors, Royal Colleges and ministerial offices.

Result The programme was recognised as a success by the client and senior Government stakeholders. It laid the foundation for permanently embedding health and well-being principles into NHS workforce policy, and provided the tools and techniques required for local NHS organisations to adopt these principles.