The Problem

Despite enormous levels of investment in the NHS over the last years, HR is often at the back of the queue and has continued to operate in a highly transactional and manual manner. The common platform across the NHS is the Electronic Staff Record, a system deployed many years ago and now used in different ways by different Trusts – to all intents and purposes, therefore, a national system operated in standalone instances.

HR systems therefore, where they do exist, have often been developed locally and often are not integrated.

Nowhere in HR are the effects of this felt as keenly as in recruitment. Our research indicates that the following are close to universal challenges:

• High attrition rates ranging from 10- 25%
• Lack of visibility and prioritisation of each vacancy
• Manual input of applicant data from NHS Jobs
• Lack of automation means that key tasks are manual and sequential
• Data held in multiple systems which are not integrated
• Time consuming interview scheduling process
• Offers can be slow to produce

These create significant problems that may manifest as follows:

• Average recruitment cycle from initiation to start of 21 weeks
• Increased costs (e.g. incremental cost of £291/week for Agency Nurse)
• Increased but inefficiently utilised headcount in HR functions
• Increased percentage of declined offers of employment
• Serial processes that require multiple rework of manual actions and activities tend to be slower and result in more errors
• HR unable to provide core Management Information in a timely and accurate manner
• Unnecessarily high dependency on costly Agency and Bank staff

Approaches to a Solution

One lesson learned is that the benefits of automating the recruitment process can be realised at a tactical as well as strategic level! A clear and demonstrable outcome is cost saving – even reducing the recruitment lifecycle by 2 weeks can save some trusts in the order of £500,000 per annum on agency costs. In addition, automating the processes that are currently carried out manually offers an opportunity to reduce or redeploy HR headcount.

At a strategic level, however, there is a real opportunity to take HR’s contribution to the business up the value chain – from transactional to transformational, reactive to proactive – and this, I would argue, is where the long term and dramatic ROI will be felt.

Our research also indicates that around 90% of the processes that a Trust follows in the recruitment cycle are identical.  A solution based on these common processes means that a BPM solution for an individual Trust requires only a 10% configuration.

Join us and learn more

Working closely with University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust we are creating a unique solution integrated with NHS Jobs and ESR that will give you visibility, control and management of your vacancy to appointment process.

You are cordially invited to join us at the BMA on 25th January or IBM Warwick 26th January to learn more about this unique solution.

If you wish to attend then please click here to find out more.