UHDB's Finance team takes home prestigious National award
UHDB's Finance team is celebrating after being named 'Public Sector Team of the Year' by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (AICPA and CIMA), an international professional body.
The Finance team, which boasts around 100 staff, was presented with the prestigious accolade in the recent AICPA awards, which recognises institutions that work to shape the future of the global accounting and finance profession.
Judges found that the team demonstrated "how it has embedded a culture of innovation and improvement to ensure it is continuously providing value for the wider public" in abundance.
Kendre Chiles, Deputy Director of Finance - Financial Services, said the international recognition from the award helps to 'put UHDB on the map' and the team is very proud to be recognised against their peers across the breadth of public sector services.
Kendre said: "Finance can sometimes be underappreciated and while we know that we are not at the forefront of care provision in the Trust, we are a support function here to help the organisation to be able to deliver excellent patient care."
Among the innovations and improvements the team showcased, were transformations that began when UHDB was formed in 2018 when the organisation faced several significant challenges which were worsened by the pandemic.
Those challenges centred around annual accounts and an increase in the size of board reports, in addition to Trust parting company with external auditing partners - leaving a big job for the team to deliver.
But the team quickly got to work to increase transparency and financial governance ownership by creating greater awareness of the importance of control accounts through delivering training throughout the organisation. Despite the team facing a significant increase in workload and an increased complexity in financial reporting, the team has managed to maintain and improve performance.
Kendre said: "This award covers all the work we've done. The accounts production process is incredibly hard work and we have hugely improved the process over the last few years. This behind-the-scenes work can go largely unnoticed in the wider Trust and people don’t realise how much manpower these things take.
"What people do see is the outward face of finance and I think part of what won us the award is the work we have been doing in engaging with the wider Trust to provide training and support managers in wards and departments. People work really hard so it is a wonderful achievement to have this recognition on such a big platform."
Simon Crowther, Chief Financial Officer at UHDB, said it is a priority for the Trust to continue to strive to improve efficiency and learning around finance and he is delighted the team's efforts to do so have paid off.
He said: "This is an exceptional achievement and a great example of the ongoing work the team is doing behind the scenes to continue to improve the financial services we provide. It is important that we are spending our resources wisely and we are always looking for ways to improve efficiency and learning around how we best use our public funds.
"As a Trust, we are incredibly proud of the team and it is wonderful to see them recognised on an international stage."