Behavioural Guidelines

Behavioural guidelines are an organisation-wide set of "soft" standards, which complement more formal policies. Their intention is to help staff and their leaders hold each other to account - encouraging them to behave well towards patients and towards each other.

The intention is to give staff - especially on induction - a clear steer on some basic behaviours.

As an example: "Friendliness" may be one of your organisation's values. What does that mean in practice? One suggestion is that everyone should greet everyone by name, wherever possible.

We would suggest, this translates as a behavioural standard that says:

"If you know somebody’s name, don’t be afraid to use it ... and if they don’t know yours, introduce yourself."

An excellent set of values-based behavioural standards has been produced by Nottingham University Hospitals.

The key to ensuring that these behavioural standards are owned by the people that are being asked to abide by them is to ensure that they are developed using contributions from as many staff as possible.

We have developed a "Good-Day Bad-Day" workshop that can by run by a leader or manager with a small group of staff in less than an hour. This will provide a good selection of quotations and ideas to incorporate and synthesise.

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Useful Documents

Behavioural Guidelines One-Pager
File Size: 103 kb
File Type: pdf
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Behavioural Guidelines Leadership Brief
File Size: 55 kb
File Type: pdf
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Behavioural Guidelines How-To Implementation Guide
File Size: 119 kb
File Type: pdf
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Good-Day Bad-Day workshop facilitator guide
File Size: 98 kb
File Type: pdf
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Example Behavioural Guidelines

The following files are anonymised versions of real documents produced by one hospital using our system of "bottom-up" guideline development. The first document is the booklet produced for all new staff. The second is the "consultation" document - showing the answers given during the "good-day bad-day" workshops (see above), from which these were derived.
Example Behavioural Guidelines Artwork
File Size: 576 kb
File Type: pdf
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Example Behavioural Guidelines Consultation Document
File Size: 878 kb
File Type: pdf
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