February 14th was the date for the third annual NHS Sustainable Development conference: Delivering the Sustainable Healthcare System.
Crex was there to discuss how the NHS can engage with employees and other stakeholders to shift mindset, change behaviour and achieve their goals collectively and more quickly.
The key messages were very mixed: on the one hand we were told that a poll of NHS Chief Executives felt that engaging with staff on issues of sustainability was easy. On the other hand the audience (people with sustainability in their job title) felt that they lacked senior management support, which of course is crucial.
The problem might be interpretation. For many at the conference sustainability meant 'energy' and reducing carbon. Far less people talked about environmental sustainability and embedding this into organisational culture.
Interestingly the greatest gains across the NHS has been in reducing carbon emissions from energy. Much less has been done about procurement, which involves many more people and is essentially about making the right the decision, not just installing a new boiler.
So the quick wins are being achieved, the hard work is still ahead of them.
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