Human Resource Management Strategy

Section 2: The HR Perspective

THE NATIONAL STRATEGY, "HR in the NHS Plan", July 2002

The overarching aim of the current national strategy is "more staff, working differently".
This is addressed through 4 "pillars": model employers, model careers, improved staff morale, development of HRM.
There are national programmes in support of each pillar. These are described in that document.

LOCAL HR STRATEGY

We are developing local programmes of action that explicitly support the strategic direction of the PCT and the services for which it is responsible.
Wherever possible we work with other health and social care employers to develop and share good practice. In particular we work with RBH, with whom there is an explicit programme of joint working, including the implementation of Agenda for Change and the Electronic Staff Record (HR Information and Payroll system). We also have SLAs for Payroll, Occupational Health and Clinical Excellence Awards.
Our local programmes of action reflect the 4 pillars of the national HR strategy "HR in the NHS Plan".

Model Employer

For us, this pillar has a foundation and 4 cornerstones:

The foundation for being a model employer is the "Improving Working Lives" (IWL) programme. We have achieved Practice standard and have a major programme of work to achieve Practice Plus standard by November 2005. We see IWL as a major driver for organisation development through which we can put our values into action. The 7 IWL standards underpin our development as a model employer.

The first cornerstone is our commitment to staff involvement in service planning and to partnership working with the trade unions we recognise. Our Staff Open Forum and JNG are operating effectively and we have full partnership with Trade Unions in all aspects of HR work, particularly Agenda for Change and IWL.

The second cornerstone is our value of diversity in our staff and in our services. We have established our Equality and Diversity Group in partnership with Trade Unions and staff and have agreed an Equality and Diversity strategy. Implementation of this is a high priority. Corporate Social Responsibility is an important part of Equality and Diversity, and will be addressed by the Equality and Diversity Group and in our Recruitment and Retention Strategy.

The third cornerstone is our HR policy framework. This is the means by which the PCT ensures organisational justice. This is reviewed on a rolling programme, ensuring that the needs of staff and managers are met by clear and workable procedures to enact those policies.

The fourth cornerstone is a healthy workforce in a healthy workplace, led by the Public Health Directorate. We are developing an improvement programme as part of our IWL work.

Model Career

This pillar too has four cornerstones:

The first is the modernisation of pay. The PCT has implemented the new Consultant contract and GMS contract and is working in partnership with RBH to implement Agenda for Change.

The second cornerstone of the second pillar is workforce planning. This has been described in section 1.

The third cornerstone is retention and recruitment, including careers promotion locally. We are focusing on this from a service perspective, ensuring that we identify and develop the competencies and roles needed to design modern health and care services. We will continue to develop new roles, for example Assistant Practitioners and Advanced Practitioners. Building on our commitment to diversity, we will ensure that there is good access for all to the opportunities that present. This supports the commitments made in our Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy. We will particularly address identified supply problems, including those in the primary care workforce.

The fourth cornerstone is Learning and Development. The strategy for this, under the leadership of the Director of Clinical Governance, steers the PCT towards being a learning organisation providing accessible lifelong learning opportunities to its staff. The key vehicle for achieving this is appraisal and personal development planning. The Agenda for Change Knowledge and Skills framework will be integrated into current appraisal processes, which are being evaluated now following initial implementation.

Staff Morale

The morale of the workforce is of overarching importance to quality care - it is the roof that arches over all this strategy.
Our work on IWL, particularly the staff assessment processes, will provide vital information on morale. Our other key source of information on morale is our annual staff survey. Both of these inform our annual HR action plans.

Development of HR

So far we have used a building analogy. To continue that, the development of HR is the garden in which we grow and nurture the process of being a good employer.
We have reviewed the HR function, assessing the PCT's position at the transactional (administrative), interventional (policy and casework) and transformational (strategic) levels. The review showed a concentration of internal resources at transactional and interventional levels. Our aims for the development of the function are to maintain our current capacity levels, to maximise transactional efficiency through process reviews and the development of operational procedures, including inter-departmental boundaries, and to improve interventional capacity through policy reviews and the development of operational procedures for HR staff and managers. This policy / procedure review will be supported by an externally-commissioned HR skills training programme for line managers.
We have developed our Medical Staffing capability to a degree, and are establishing partnership working through a new Local Negotiating Committee (LNC). There is further work to do here, especially around the implementation of new policies accompanying the new Consultant contract. We also need to further develop frameworks for the direct employment of GPs.
We currently support Primary Care through the NHSP Helpline service; we recognise the need to develop capacity and capability of HRM in Primary Care.

HR relies upon robust information systems. We are implementing the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) in partnership with RBH. Provided the project reached Go Live (due now at the end of May 2005), this provides us with an integrated HR / Payroll database and reporting system, which will replace the current "home grown" system for HR and the separate SPS system for Payroll. ESR implementation is supported by a PCT ESR group which looks at specific application in the PCT, and by the Workforce Implementation Group (WIG), which is working to ensure that the PCT has clean workforce data and efficient processes to maintain that data and to use it for effective reporting.

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