Persona becomes a member of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter

In May 2023 we received the fantastic news that we had been approved as a member of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter.

The Good Employment Charter is a voluntary membership and assessment scheme that aims to raise employment standards across Greater Manchester regardless of size, sector or location through the framework of the charter.

The charter has identified seven key characteristics of good employment:

• secure work
• flexible work
• pay
• engagement and voice
• recruitment
• people management
• health and wellbeing

Persona has been a supporter of the charter since the end of 2021 and we worked closely with the team at the charter to achieve member status. The charter has given us the opportunity to recognise the good employment practices that we have within Persona but also ensure that we continuously review and challenge ourselves to build on the good practice and improve.

One of the key areas that we focussed on over 2022/23 is in relation to inclusion and we have re-vamped our recruitment approach to remove any barriers and ensure that we are assessing candidates against our values. This approach has seen an increase in the number of candidates that apply for our vacant roles and then go on to be successful in obtaining a role within the organisation.

These efforts were also recognised at the Greater Manchester Good Employment Awards in April 2023, when Persona won the Most Improved Employer Award. This was a great achievement and only achievable through the collaboration of teams within Persona to develop, adapt and implement a new approach to address the recruitment challenges.

So what’s next?

Well, this is just the start of the journey, we want to continue to invest in our staff to ensure they feel valued, cared for and can thrive at work and we have already introduced a number of new initiatives this year to support this such as our new:

• Ideas Hub - a simple way of gathering people's ideas about things that could be done to improve the lives of people we support and benefit staff too
• Rising Stars Programme - an opportunity for people who have been identified as or have identified themselves as having potential to progress and who are willing to commit to the scheme, which will provide them with a means to plan, prepare and upskill ready for progression
• Staff Your Voice Ambassadors - giving staff a platform to voice their opinions and assist Persona in understanding the perspective across four key areas (Workforce, Wellbeing, Digital and Green)

We are also hoping to work with other organisations within health and social care to raise awareness about the charter and to encourage them to achieve member status or to work towards it, which in turn will drive up employment standards in Bury.