Health Business

In the last few years the NHS has moved out of a period of rapid workforce growth to a more steady state, with labour supply now more closely matched with demand. Despite this relative stability the global economic situation is inevitably having a big impact on current and future recruitment in the NHS.
    
The next few years are expected to be challenging for the NHS. The emerging consensus is that the NHS is likely to have to make £20 billion savings by 2013/14, with a further significant funding gap for the subsequent three years. The current assumption is one of zero growth in the NHS budget.
    
The NHS now employs 1.3 million people and the pay bill accounts for around 40 per cent of overall expenditure. Inevitably some of the savings must come from this budget and a number of commentators have warned that the NHS must reduce staff numbers.

Looking ahead
Yet the demand on NHS services will continue to increase as the population grows and ages. The NHS therefore still needs to be an employer of choice attracting and retaining the talent it needs to deliver the vision of quality healthcare for all. It makes sense to foster and retain skills and talent through these lean years, developing the solutions the NHS needs through the people who will deliver them. The NHS has a chance now to take a long term view of the challenges ahead, tackling immediate budget shortfalls alongside designing its workforce for the future.
    
The evidence of earlier recessions is that staff who are made redundant are often re-employed either in a different part of the NHS or the wider public sector. This is a poor use of public funds. More recent experience from NHS trusts in financial turnaround has shown that ‘slash and burn’ strategies to release immediate cash savings from salary and training and learning budgets succeed only in disengaging staff in the short term and lead to skills gaps in the medium term.
    
In these leaner times, the NHS should therefore minimise redundancies on a large scale and make the most of natural turnover, eliminate waste and increase productivity.

An aging workforce
The NHS workforce is ageing and we know that around 30,000 people retire from the NHS each year. While this does present an opportunity for reducing headcount, it will also incur a loss of knowledge and skills that NHS managers will need to replace through a mixture of recruitment and training. It could be that the NHS faces a significant and expensive staffing shortfall in five to ten years if it does not plan ahead carefully now. All of this evidence points to the need for the NHS to work even harder to retain its skilled staff and recruit the right people in the future.
    
Organisations worldwide now view talent management as crucial to both boosting the leadership skills they need to see them through the current downturn and retaining much needed skills and talent in preparation for the economic recovery. The best companies and organisations are focusing on developing leaders who will not only ‘survive and thrive’ the current financial crisis, but will be well positioned for growth once the economy recovers.
    
NHS Employers is working with the NHS to help them identify, attract and retain the talent they need to get the best from their workforce. Now is an excellent time for HR and workforce leaders, together with boards, to be putting top quality talent management systems in place that will allow individuals, teams and whole organisations to perform at their best.

Effective recruitment
In order to attract the right staff for the future, the NHS also needs to have a good profile among new entrants to the workforce. NHS Jobs, the electronic recruitment service for the NHS, provides NHS organisations with a cost-effective approach to recruitment advertising, saving around £1 million a week. It is the leading online recruitment service in the UK, advertising between 8,500 and 9,500 NHS jobs at any one time, with consistently more visits than other commercial job boards such as Monster or Totaljobs.
    
Effective recruitment requires planning. It is always useful to review workforce requirements against current and known future demand before advertising a post. It may also be appropriate to discuss requirements among local employer networks or work collaboratively with other local NHS employers to recruit high quality candidates to support the wider local economy needs.
    
Working with neighbouring organisations allows NHS organisations to become familiar with local networks and their recruitment needs, providing scope to work together to meet national and local targets. Planning workforce requirements will need to recognise the modernising career agendas and implementation of the Next Stage Review.
    
It is widely recognised that our future workforce supply will largely come from those who are already in employment as well as those who are currently in education making choices about their future career or work pathway. NHS Careers is the careers information service for the NHS in England and supports over 350 careers in the NHS via a helpline, literature and websites.

Recruitment resources
NHS Careers has developed a number of resources including literature that the NHS can use at open days and careers events; the Step into the NHS programme of activity targeting 14-19 year olds that aims to promote the broad range of careers in the NHS; work experience toolkits for employers and education; and the What can I do with my degree website aimed at students and recent graduates.
    
Recent research has revealed the impact that NHS Careers has made to the NHS workforce. A survey of those that came into contact with the NHS Careers service revealed that 46 per cent of respondents have taken action to join the NHS, such as start a relevant training course, since contacting NHS Careers.
    
In addition, research with 14-19 year olds registered to the Step into the NHS programme shows the positive effect it is having among the age group. Since joining the programme, 93 per cent have said that they are more likely to consider a career in the NHS, with 80 per cent saying it was because they felt they could make a difference.
    
Backing Young Britain is a government campaign to bring businesses and the public and voluntary sectors together to ensure that the valuable skills and experience of the country’s young people aren’t being wasted during the economic downturn.
    
NHS organisations are involved with many of the initiatives promoted in Backing Young Britain, which include offering apprenticeships, work experience and internships to young people and closer working with your local Jobcentre on Local Employment Partnerships.

Apprenticeships
Earlier this year the government announced plans to create 21,000 new apprenticeship places in the public sector from April 2009, 5,000 of which will be in the NHS. The places will deliver on the government’s pledge to create 35,000 additional apprenticeship places. The 5,000 new positions will be across the NHS and social care in areas such as customer service, dental nursing, health and social care, pharmacies and learning and development posts.
    
NHS Employers is working with Jobcentre Plus and the government to promote the NHS as a place to access a range of job opportunities and to describe the benefits of Local Employment Partnerships (LEPs) to NHS employers.
    
LEPs are an initiative between government and employers to help tackle the increasing recruitment and skills challenges of our labour market and economy. NHS organisations play a key role in this initiative as they are often some of the most important local employers, providing job opportunities to a significant proportion of the local labour market.
    
In April 2009, the government introduced a new subsidy of £1,000 for employers who recruit long-term unemployed people. The aim of the scheme is to provide an incentive to employers to support individuals who find it most difficult to access the labour market after having a long period of unemployment and may require additional support from their employer when re-entering employment.
    
NHS Employers has joined partners with SOLACE Enterprises to offer a new Flexible Resourcing service which provides high calibre interim managers where needed in the NHS. The service is offering real quality and value to the health organisations that need to rapidly identify and secure additional knowledge, skills and resources in their organisation.

UK and beyond
International recruitment has made a valuable contribution to workplace expansion in the NHS over recent years. Given the current increased availability of qualified healthcare professionals in the UK resident labour market, NHS organisations are now less reliant on overseas recruits and as such are unlikely to use international recruitment to fill vacancies. However, this position may change again in the future.
    
The current economic downturn is inevitably having an impact on recruitment and retention in the NHS, but this shouldn’t mean large scale redundancies. Rather, it is more important than ever that the NHS attracts, retains and develops talented people who are up to the challenge. NHS Employers is working with the NHS to develop innovative solutions to make sure it has a workforce fit for both the present and future. 

About NHS Employers
NHS Employers is responsible for providing advice and support to NHS organisations on the recruitment and retention of all healthcare staff from administrators to paramedics. Through its bespoke services, NHS Employers is developing innovative solutions to support both short term workforce needs and the NHS workforce of the future. From April 2010, NHS Employers will become a membership organisation offering a complete portfolio of member benefits adding value to the NHS as a whole and to individual NHS organisations.

For more information
www.nhsemployers.org
www.nhscareers.nhs.uk
www.jobs.nhs.uk