Background 

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust delivers community and mental health services, alongside specialist secure care, across 100+ sites in Cheshire and Merseyside. Following the pandemic, the Trust expanded rapidly from 7,000 to 12,000 staff through acquisitions and service redesign.

This growth brought complexity and demand for organisational development (OD) support soared. The Organisational Effectiveness (OE) Team had invested in team based working methodologies and expertise, and was trusted by senior leaders to provide high quality interventions which were risk assessed and managed on a case by case. The team needed a centralised way of understanding the needs across a complex organisation and ensure that interventions were consistent and maximised limited resources.

The challenge: to create a sustainable, transparent model to manage OD demand, embed accountability and maximise impact across a large, complex workforce.

Approach 

The Trust developed a pioneering OE Triage Model, a data-driven framework to prioritise, track and evaluate OD interventions based on risk, complexity and strategic alignment. Co-designed with clinical and support service leaders, the model ensures every intervention delivers measurable value and supports the Trust’s long-term goals.

Key components include a live database mapping all requests to capacity, progress and outcomes to enable evidence-based decision-making. There is also a five-level risk scale and four-tier intervention framework to ensure consistent, proportionate responses from self-serve resources to full practitioner-led consultancy, plus weekly cross-functional meetings that allocate cases by need, risk and practitioner development goals.

“Mersey Care’s data-driven model turned complexity into clarity, empowering leaders and improving team culture across 12,000 staff”

The team also introduced standardised templates, evaluation tools and case conferences that ensure quality, accountability and escalation routes across services plus a buddying and CPD system that grows internal expertise and reduces reliance on external consultants.

The model aligns OD to transformation programmes while addressing immediate team risks.

Outcome

In its first year 166 interventions were logged, with 84% triaged and measurable improvement across leadership, engagement and cohesion. Risk scores fell by up to three levels, manager satisfaction averaged 4.8/5 and cost savings of £67,800 were achieved versus outsourcing.

Mersey Care now ranks among the NHS’s top trusts for staff experience – third in England for ‘shared objectives’ and second for ‘constructive conflict resolution’. Engagement scores rose from 3.5 to 4.2 across reconfigured services, reflecting improved performance, financial outcomes and team health. The OE Triage Model has transformed OD from reactive to proactive, a unified, data-led system powering leadership, patient safety and quality improvement across the Trust.

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