A new mobile phone app and several “speak up advocates” are being used in a bid to give staff a voice at Shropshire’s two main hospitals.

The board of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust was told moves are being made to encourage a “speak out” culture at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital.

Chief executive Simon Wright said he was hoping the new moves would help people raise concerns they have.

It comes off the back of a staff survey which showed the trust ranked low in a number of areas.

Mr Wright said: “We have more than 6,500 staff over both of our hospitals and we want to communicate better with people and give them the ability to speak out when they have concerns.

“We want conversations to be happening in the right way. We don’t want to focus on blame, we want to focus on learning.

“I want a more open culture and 20 speak up advocates have been put in place to a culture of people speaking openly.”

Mr Wright added: “We need to focus on the value of learning not blame – we need to invest in people to support how we do that.”

He also added that a staff app has been launched to improve communications between management and staff.

He said feedback shows that workers get frustrated if things such as ward changes are not communicated properly.

He said: “Most of us have smartphones now and the staff app will help people keep up to date.

“It can be something like changing a ward around and if we get that wrong it causes frustration.”

Dr Edwin Borman, director of clinical effectiveness, added: “Sometimes people come and raise concerns and don’t want to start anything official so this is a good way for people to help raise issues of concern.”

The staff survey showed three of the 10 overall themes are “significantly worse” than the sector and national average scores.

These themes are health and wellbeing; safety culture, which scored the worst nationally; and staff engagement.