Safety Quality Belfast (SQB) – NICRN’s Staff Wellness Programme
November 2, 2026
On Thursday 10th September 2026, Safety Quality Belfast (SQB) held its annual celebration event to recognise and celebrate the achievements of this year’s cohort. The involvement of service users and carers is a key element of Quality Improvement (QI). The Trust SQB, Level 2 QI training supports staff to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to lead and deliver meaningful quality improvement initiatives.
Involvement is integrated into the SQB programme to raise awareness about the importance of ensuring the people who use services are integrated into improvement work The Involvement Team support this work through delivering training, guidance and ongoing support to participants, helping to ensure that involvement is embedded throughout their projects and that the voices of service users, carers and stakeholders help shape ideas and drive improvement.
NICRN were delighted to be chosen as a project from the over 60 applications.
The aim of the Staff wellness project was to improve staff wellbeing in the NICRN, aiming for about 5% by end of 2026. Recent staff surveys had revealed the need for a wellbeing programme. There have been challenges to staff wellbeing; requirement of a structured tailored wellness programme, a need for practical interventions for sustainable staff support, and enhancing research delivery/team productivity through addressing staff wellbeing.
The NICRN team applied for the Safety Quality Belfast (SQB) Project. The team was selected and undertook following activities to promote staff wellbeing:
- Staff engagement events
- Staff ideas board
- Feedback collection through staff surveys
- Shared learning and networking events – also included topics to enhance safe & efficient research delivery.
- Interactive wellbeing teaching sessions (i.e Bone health, Vision health, Chair Yoga etc)
- Take-5 teaching sessions.
- Botanical garden walks.
- Cycle to work talk.
- Be well talk.
- Nutritional talk
The above resulted in a remarkably successful wellness programme tailored to NICRN staff preferences. There was an increase in staff morale by 18.3%, as measured through surveys. The data revealed that staff preferred face-to-face interventions.
The NICRN SQB team would like to thank all our NICRN colleagues who contributed to the staff learning events; their participation has been paramount to the succession of this project. NICRN would like to congratulate colleagues, Sonia, Michael, Charlotte, and Deslyn, who diligently organised, led and completed this programme, helping to create an agile and resilient workforce.