Team Resilience in Uncertain Times

If you’ve worked in healthcare for any length of time, you’ll know that teams matter more than almost anything else. Forget vision statements and strategy documents - when things get tough, the quality of your team is what will make or break your ability to keep going. Right now, across the NHS, things are tough. Really tough.

The announcement from Wes Streeting that a future Labour government would abolish NHS England has added a new layer of uncertainty to an already unstable system. Up to 10,000 jobs are expected to go. Whether that figure materialises or not, the atmosphere it creates is already having an impact: recruitment is slowing, people are leaving, teams are shrinking, and whole services are being restructured without much clarity on what comes next.

And yet, the work doesn’t stop. Healthcare never pauses. Patients still need care, systems still need data, decisions still need evidence. So how do we keep teams effective when everything around them is in flux? And what does “effective” even mean in a context like this?

It’s easy to default to language like performance, productivity, outcomes. But that misses the point. Right now, an effective team is one that still functions. One that communicates. One that supports each other, even if the future of their roles isn’t guaranteed. The most effective teams I’ve seen in healthcare aren’t the best-resourced or the highest-performing on paper. They’re the ones that adapt, that stay together, that find ways to protect their integrity when the structures around them collapse.

That’s a quiet kind of strength - and it often goes unnoticed. Especially when analytics teams are involved. These teams are central to NHS improvement, planning, performance monitoring, and quality - but they are rarely treated as central. Too often, they’re seen as back-office or optional. When cuts come, they are frequently the first to lose staff and the last to be re-integrated.

And yet, without analytics, how do we know whether anything is working? How do we plan, forecast, or justify any transformation at all? At a time when decisions are being made fast, often under political pressure, we need good data more than ever. And we need the teams who can make sense of it.

This is where CHAIn (the Consortium of Healthcare Analytics Intelligence) can be a real lifeline. Not because we have flashy tech solutions or a one-size-fits-all model, but because we understand what it means to work in the NHS right now. We know how fragile teams can be. We know the value of institutional knowledge. And we know how to support teams to hold the line, even when they’re operating with half their original staff and no clear line of accountability.

CHAIn works directly with organisations undergoing transformation, helping to protect the function of analytics. That support might look like helping managers reframe their team’s purpose in light of new objectives. It might mean clarifying who’s doing what when everyone’s job title has changed. Or it might be as simple - and powerful -as reminding people that they’re not alone in trying to make sense of this chaos.

We also invest in people. Not just through technical training (although that matters), but through signposting, guidance, and confidence-building. We know that many analytics professionals haven’t had access to the kind of support that’s becoming essential - professional registration, clear frameworks for progression, communities of practice. So we make that access easier.

Most importantly, we foster a community. Not a corporate network, but a real peer group - people who understand the work and its pressures, who are willing to share and listen. It’s a subtle thing, but during upheaval, that kind of informal support can be the difference between burnout and survival.

In this moment of national uncertainty, when structures are being dismantled and rebuilt in real time, it would be easy to retreat inward - to wait and see. But that’s a luxury many NHS teams no longer have. The system doesn’t stop. And the need for shared intelligence, for insight that leads to better care, is as urgent as ever.

What’s needed now is not another round of slogans or digital dashboards. What’s needed is a serious commitment to team resilience. Not resilience as a buzzword, but resilience as a lived reality: the ability to keep moving, keep thinking, keep working together even when the system around you is cracking.

That starts with investing in the people doing the work. Recognising their value. Giving them the tools, support, and confidence to carry on. And maybe, just maybe, giving them space to shape what comes next.

The future of the NHS is once again uncertain. But the teams inside it - those who work quietly and consistently to keep things going - deserve our attention now more than ever. They’re not just data analysts. They’re the backbone of intelligent care. And if we want an NHS that survives this moment, we need to start building from that backbone outward.

To learn more about how CHAIn is supporting healthcare analytics professionals through these changes, visit: https://www.chainintelligence.org