Senior leader reflections: Simon Clarke

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust runs Good Hope, Heartlands, Queen Elizabeth and Solihull hospitals and Solihull community services.

I joined the Royal Navy, as a Supply Officer, straight out of college after doing my A-Levels. I spent about nine years in that role before moving to the Ministry of Defence, within the combined service, again as a Supply Officer. It was in this time that my journey of having a very active leadership style and leading people across multiple organisations began.

I do not know why I became a Supply Officer if I’m truthful; it wasn’t really the plan. I think it was a case of me wanting to join the Royal Navy and someone there telling me they thought I’d be great in supplies and me taking any job they gave me! However, it has given me a fantastic career and allowed me to branch out in to many areas of procurement and contract law.

From there, I moved into the pharmacy industry as a Purchasing Officer. During this time in my career, I progressed to become the Global Vice President of Procurement within an American company that was involved in building pharmaceutical plants all around the world in places like India, Singapore, Australia and the USA. It was here that I got my first insight into leading virtual teams; something that has come in handy over the past few years! I hadn’t been used to that before, so it allowed me to adapt and develop so that I could ensure I was able to manage an enormous global workforce while still achieving our outputs and outcomes.?

My next role was my first taste of the NHS; working with NHS England and Improvement to support a trust whose finances were in special measures, which I did for about three years, before moving to another trust in the same region to do the same sort of thing.

I later heard that a role in procurement was available at UHB, so I applied and the rest is history!

As the Managing Director of Procurement, I essentially shop for a living – my social media handles are actually ‘Head of Shopping’! My team and I procure all the goods and services, including consumables, that help ensure the Trust and all its sites are able to function and patient care is at the forefront of everything we do. Therefore, everything around you - from a pen to the lighting -?the Procurement Team will have had some engagement in, whether that be helping to support contracts or sourcing the items for the Trust to operate.

We make sure that our patients are safe, but also that our staff are safe, which became paramount during the pandemic with PPE.

I have to say, my team worked very hard to ensure this Trust, and others within the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System (ICS) were supplied with PPE throughout those difficult times.

I’ve travelled all around the world for work and it has allowed me to get a better understanding of how procurement and logistics is done in other countries; I have brought all of those best practices to what I do today. I’m not from Birmingham, and don’t actually live in Birmingham, but I love working here and at UHB. When considering this job I was attracted to it for so many reasons. To me, UHB is one of the flagship trusts in the England and is one of the largest andit looked like I was moving into an organisation that had clear visions, and a fantastic strategy. Since I joined, it has just grown and grown, especially with the merger of Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, and most recently the development and launch of the ICS.

The boldest thing I have done in my time at UHB is take on the role as the Procurement Lead for the ICS, and I’m really proud of it because of the results we are seeing already. This role has seen me work to create the Birmingham and Solihull shared procurement service, which has moved all the procurement teams away from each individual trust and instead focus our efforts on a new category management process benefiting the system as a whole. We didn’t know if it was going to work, but with everything the team and the trusts have put into it, we can see that it is working.?

I’m honoured to lead the team, and of the work, we are doing in making sure the Birmingham and Solihull’s pound goes further.

There are of course challenges in the role, particularly in the current climate with stock shortages and ongoing stock resilience issues, but I’m so proud of the team for doing such a great job to ensure those challenges are not felt on the front line.

Now more than ever I am driven by knowing I make a difference in the work that we do. A lot of people rightly talk about the front line staff who provide the best quality care.?However, it is a privilege to know that the work we do ensures that front line staff can do this.?Everything we do is to make staff safe and to ensure the right products are in the right place to deliver the best patient care.

I have a large team made up of multi-disciplined individuals and I have always operated on an open door policy. I ensure that every single day I am on the office floor, or out across the multiple sites we support. I have a fantastic senior management team who lead in the same way; we are all of the belief that our staff are number one. If we do not have the staff, we do not have the service.

I want my staff to feel connected with each other and with me, because if they aren’t, it all falls down. It is up to me to ensure everybody feels connected with each other and across all of our stakeholders. I try to never go directly to an individual in my team with work-related question. I may have a question in mind, but I make a point of asking them first “how are you doing?”, or “how is your family?” I try to instil in my team that there is a person at the end of every interaction.

There’s so much pressure on individuals already, and as much as I can’t change the pressures going on in the world now; just asking someone how they are feeling and seeing if I can help in anyway is probably one of the most rewarding things. I ensure I do that with each member of my team, and they do the same to me in return. To me, kindness is a collective and empathy is one of my biggest drivers as a leader. There are many kind things my colleagues do for me on a daily basis, but I believe the kindest thing they do individually and collectively is believe in and trust in me; and I believe and trust in them.

One of the best bits of advice I received, and still use to this day, came from one of my senior officers in the Navy, who was also my mentor. He said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do”. That has always stuck with me. I have very smart people around me who make our team better, smarter and stronger. It’s my job as the leader to make the difficult decisions, but I utilise all of those smart people around me to ensure the response is the best it can be.

Interested in joining team UHB? Find all our current jobs vacancies on our website: