Final groups join us from Serco
Yesterday, over 1,300 people moved from Serco to the trust in the final stage of bringing our soft FM services in-house. In total, 1,794 people joined us from Serco over the past 7 months.
Kitted out in new uniforms, and with new equipment and systems, this is the start of a new way of working for soft FM that will see big improvements for our patients and our staff.
New patient menus and bedside ordering is now available for the 180,000 meals we serve every month. The new catering system will remove waste at each step and help us become more sustainable and meet net zero targets. It will also help track nutritional information for each patient to help them recover quickly, as well as offering dietary requirements and preferences.
We are also introducing new cleaning products, processes and systems to make our hospitals cleaner and meet the standards we set ourselves, as well as those that we are measured against.
Our vision at the beginning of this transfer was to be digital first so that we can be more efficient. To make this happen, we bought one new streamlined system to replace 18 separate systems. This will free up time for our busy teams while offering real time monitoring for anyone, anywhere, and improved data to help us make better decisions.
Shane DeGaris, deputy group chief executive, said:
We are really pleased to welcome our soft FM colleagues into the trust. Our porters, cleaners, security guards, catering staff, ward hosts and domestic staff are the lifeblood of our hospitals and clinical colleagues could not do their vital work without them.
Mark Bagnall, group director of estates and facilities management said:
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people that have worked so incredibly hard over the past year to make this happen. It’s been a very smooth process, completed on time, thanks to this hard work and commitment. I look forward to building on this to make even more improvements to our soft FM service for our staff and patients.