Positivity grows on trees for Barnsley team

To keep staff morale high and raise team spirit, the neighbourhood rehabilitation and crisis response team have created a positivity tree and motivational emoji board for staff to interact with.

They were the idea of staff sister Kerry Taylor, who explains: “I returned from maternity leave to find some changes had taken place within the neighbourhood rehabilitation and crisis response team which sometimes had an impact on morale, so I decided to create the positivity tree and emoji board.

“The positivity tree is where anyone can put anything good that has happened from their working week or to acknowledge acts of kindness no matter how small, for example a colleague swapping you a shift or simply finding a parking space. The emoji board is a light-hearted team building exercise – at first I received mixed views on this, but it did evoke conversation. Now it gets staff talking about how they feel and why, and more and more people are using it.

“At the end of the day we spend a lot of our time at work and our health and wellbeing is paramount. Sometimes it’s it the smallest of things that can have the biggest impact. Happy staff equals happy patients.”