Digital Support Officers – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

IT & Digital

Individual or Team Nomination?

Team

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Digital hubs are our response to a digitally immature, digitally stressed user community who had been loosing faith in IT support for some time. With the vision of providing real, effective support closer to colleagues with the goal of improving first time fixes and getting the end user working quicker/smarter. Tailoring our training/support offering through increased accessibility, dedicated space and hand held support to suit our colleagues needs. We are putting our end user customers at the very heart of everything we do to listen, engage, transform and support their digital experience in their daily roles. The background Originally we had a “ IT Makeover and transformation project” were we visited all 88 sites across 5 boroughs to support colleagues with their digital needs and understand their issues/barriers. • Initial Findings were that Data Quality on our Electronic Patient Systems was poor, we saw people reverting to paper, with numerous reasons as to why the system couldn’t be used • Lack of a consistent approach led to issues when staff moved across boroughs • Service Desk calls were logged in a queue with limited 1st fixes and staff had to book slots in for repairs in a central site which meant time away from their base and reduced ability to be productive whilst waiting for a solution/appointment. Hence the development of “Digital Hubs” serviced by Digital Support Officers. The vision to have dedicated spaces located closer to the localities, with a goal of having one per borough, funded and supported in collaboration with our suppliers VMBO2. Staffed by a team of Digital Support Officers who are situated in the hubs/out on the shop floor to offer support /fixes and listen / hand hold where needed. The Hubs are a space to come to relax, learn and get 1-1 support /fixes as well as sharing issues/ developing better solutions. A space where staff could access “internet café” style devices to do online training where they struggle to get access equipment /a dedicated space. Moving away from the "Call Handling /transactional /queue” style Service Desk, where they were required to travel up to 45 mins for a device fix. "I wanted to send an email complimenting Janet Renshaw and her colleagues. The process for getting my new laptop and phone has been extremely easy. They are warm, accessible, knowledgeable, responsive, and positive. I have returned to the NHS after working primarily in universities since 2015. The last time I started a new NHS job was around 2008 when I became a clinical lead in a trust in Yorkshire. Times have certainly changed. I was dreading coming back to NHS IT support as my previous experiences have been quite negative. However, I have now changed my mind since interacting with Janet and her DSO colleagues and seeing how the NHS IT offer has progressed" Dr Jennifer McAnuff - Occupational Therapist. 2/5/23