Report of Workforce Planning Action Day 15.4.02

Mark Butler, HR Director NHS Scotland, opened the meeting by stating that the outcome of the meeting would be an action plan with the next steps and timescales.

Mary Mulligan, Deputy Health Minister, then set the tone for the meeting by saying that the Scottish Executive (SE) was committed to a workforce in the NHS which was the envy of others. The service needs to be able to plan ahead for the next 50 years, and it needs to improve its planning on the size and shape of the workforce. Processes in the past have not been as clear as SE would have liked and any new system needs to be more transparent. There is a need to balance long and short term requirements and the system must be adaptable enough to cope with new techniques requiring new skills and legislative changes such as the Working Time Directive.

3 regional centres are described. There needs to be discussion on the Health Boards comprising each. All stakeholders need to feel they can influence matters and the centre will produce guidelines, not directives. The goalposts have shifted and the focus is now workforce development not workforce planning and numbers. (This shift caused problems for the rest of the meeting.) The idea is to move away from competition between Trusts and Health boards to a complementary basis of working. Partnership is vitally important in this process.

Prof. Gillian Needham, Chair of the Scottish Integrated Workforce Planning Group, then presented a short summary of the SIWPG report.

Mike Palmer presented a short summary of the SEHD response to the report. Workforce planning had changed to workforce development; integrating education and training, recruitment and retention, new ways of working and the impact of service redesign.

In building workforce development capacities, North, East and West regional workforce centres had been suggested. The question of whether they were staffed or existed as virtual centres had not been decided. The consensus of opinion from the responses was for virtual centres. There was also the question of how they engaged with other interests e.g. Local Authorities, education providers and local enterprise companies. Regional outputs would include a regional workforce plan, recruitment and retention strategies, promotion of new ways of working and development of a robust evidence base.

A national workforce unit would guide and co-ordinate the regional centres. It would deal with national workforce planning and recruitment and retention. It would be responsible for linking with other SEHD policies e.g. education and training. It would help develop a national data strategy. A service National Workforce Committee is also to be created.

The key themes described in the responses to the report were

• Whole systems approach
• Regional centres- which regions? staffed or virtual?
• Accountabilities and linkages
• Rural and remote aspects
• Links to Scottish Partnership and HR Forums
• Chunking the agenda realistically
• Building capacity in data and skills.

The meeting then broke into groups to discuss the regional centres and what was needed now to make them fit for purpose? The responses given at the feedback session are noted below.

• Baseline information. There is a dearth of skills and no common language. What information is required? it was agreed that in addition to information about the NHS, information about other sectors funded by the NHS e.g. agencies and nursing homes was needed.
• Ownership and influence. Where should the centres be? should they be geographically based or based on type i.e. rural or urban? They must have influence and must be able to attract the right people. Therefore investment will be required.
• The national and regional relationship must be clear. Who is going to disrupt the 'silo' attitude in operation at the Health department?
• There needs to be clarification of workforce development and the Centre for Change and Innovation.
• Data - what? who collects it? What do the national / regional / local centres need?
• What gets done first? A robust implementation plan is required. Should there be local pilots?
• Integration within the Scottish Executive is required. Policy decisions on the Health Department talking to e.g. the education Department are required to facilitate local integrated working.
• Who agrees the priorities and aims?
• There is a need for clarification on accountability, inputs, objectives and decisions.
• Practical models would be very helpful.
• Regional centres should be sharing solutions, expertise and knowledge.
• Remote and rural areas have specific requirements
• They should have an equal role at regional level
• Optimal use of technology will be required
• Early identification of demand and supply will be essential
• What is the remit and role of the Workforce Committee and who are the representatives on it? More information is required

• Where are we now and where do we need to be?
• IT systems need investment. For this to work properly, a common system with common data and a common vision across Scotland were required.
• A dataset on employee skills was required. This could be an employee held record and a lifelong record.
• The skills required should be identified, not necessarily more of the same skills already in place
• Examples of good practice were given on the flip charts

Prioritising the agenda

There are three key themes –

• Information
• Investment
• Inclusivity

Information – Health Boards need to buy into the agenda and a common language must be developed. There are too many instances of different titles meaning the same thing and different interpretations of the same title. Service delivery is key to building public and staff confidence and lead to the both groups being able to make informed choices – as long as they are aware of the information.

Investment – The key phrase is having the "right people in the right place at the right time". However, does the service have the right people in the right place to identify that the "right people are in the right place at the right time". There has to be the right balance between work and leisure for staff. There are many staff who enjoy the job but not the intensity at which they have to work. Are proper career paths available? The next generation of workers will not accept 20^th Century working patterns. Are staffing levels sufficient? Are staffing levels actually correct with the problem being that the resources are there, but not in the right place?

Inclusivity / partnership – There is a need to build on the Joint Futures partnerships and relationships.

• Is everyone ready?
• Need to gain and maintain a perspective from the public / patient point of view
• There must be support to find capacity
• National / regional / local tasks must be identified and agreed
• Multidisciplinary management skills should be developed
• There needs to be a focus locally and an ability to manage the pace of change
• The benefits need to be properly quantified and made clear to everyone.

• Research is not academia alone. It also includes
• Benchmarking
• Audit and performance indicators
• Clinical standards etc.
• Regional Role
• Include academics and others. It would help plan research work
• Feed the national database
• 2 way communication is essential – proper dissemination of information
• Staffing models – based on research
• Evaluation – must be clear on the aims and outcomes of service redesign and be able to measure and evaluate them
• Partners – Who are they? The Royal Colleges, universities, professional organisations and staff. Communication must be improved.

The Minister, in closing the meeting, stated that the Executive is committed to taking this forward and that any further ideas or comments should be sent to Grant Hughes at the Health Department.

The points from the workshops included above are only those which were presented at the feedback sessions. Many other points were made during the workshops and most of these were captured on flip charts. The points not included in the feedback presentations were nevertheless taken away to be included in the report of the day.

back to top