How a leading NHS Trust is coping with the looming winter crisis

Dec. 2, 2013 - PRLog -- Pressure from government bodies, national press and the public has been mounting regarding the forthcoming winter crisis. One of the contributory factors to this predicament is the staff shortages that the NHS is facing across the country.

The shortage of registered and qualified nurses has been well documented (Francis Report, Keogh Review). Here in the UK we are training fewer nurses than we need; this coupled with home-grown nurses emigrating overseas and an ageing workforce has meant that the UK is unable to fill a large number of substantive nursing posts.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (WAHT) faces the same staffing issues that trusts are facing across the country. Bev Edgar, Director of HR & Organisational Development, states ‘In recent years, Worcester Acute Hospitals Trust has seen a 17% reduction in nursing and midwifery commissions to HEE across the West Midlands. Now the staffing shortages particularly in acute and emergency medicine are apparent.’

The Trust employs more than 5,500 staff across three busy hospitals in Redditch, Kidderminster and Worcester servicing a population of over 550,000. WAHT has long been in a position of needing to balance patient care with cost efficiency. Ms Edgar continues ‘HR statistics tell us it can cost more than 12% of salary costs just to replace any member of staff without including productivity loss or agency backfill. In the UK it is recognised the average recruitment costs are £5,300 per person. Therefore, it is not unrealistic to think that each nurse we replace is likely to cost us more than £12,000 in pay and productivity costs within the next year, which is why we have to be successful in recruiting the right candidates first time.’

Having identified this, WAHT chose to work with HCL’s Permanent Nursing division to recruit registered qualified nurses for substantive positions within Medicine across the 3 sites.  With a long history of working with the NHS to fill substantial staffing gaps HCL Permanent was confident that it could help resolve the Trust’s staffing needs.

The team successfully provided a shortlist of qualified and experienced candidates; Elizabeth Kennedy, Sales Manager, stated ‘it was crucial for WAHT that we found the right balance of candidates. They wanted overseas candidates with experience who would bring a sense of gravitas and knowledge to the role, while also continuing to recruit nursing graduates with six months experience locally. This combination can bring vibrancy and new ideas to established teams.’

The importance of selecting the right nurse for the right role was reinforced by Ms Edgar ‘we made a decision to over recruit in time for winter and we wanted to bring some experienced nurses into our teams. We normally run Assessment Centres and can expect to offer jobs to about 50% of applicants. The majority of candidates are newly qualified. As we already employ about 10% newly qualified nurses each year we have to ensure they have the right skills mix and mentorship support.’

Recruiting the right candidates was a primary motivation for HCL, Ms Kennedy continues, ‘Nurses from mainland Europe are extremely well thought of within the NHS, however, fluency in English and comparable experience is a major concern for our clients. Before we shortlist, my team establishes via intense phone and Skype calls a candidates’ level of English and relevant work experience.  Every candidate that we present for interview must have an excellent command of the English language.’

The recommendation was to bring the Trust to Madrid for a two day interview event on the 24th and 25th September. This event was a culmination of weeks of preparation between job postings, going through the hundreds of applications received, to analysing their competency. HCL subsequently shortlisted over 20 candidates which WAHT went on to interview. The attention to detail that HCL had put in contributed to high conversion rates; with 90% of all nurses interviewed by WAHT being offered posts.

The resulting success has meant that the first contingent of nurses started on the 4th November and cemented the positive and fruitful relationship between HCL and the Trust as Ms Edgar confirms ‘I am delighted we used HCL’s Permanent team to help us recruit – and we will be certainly using them again in the future.’

London, 2013 –

For any further information, contact HCL Permanent Marketing Manager Fiona Murray on +44 (0) 207 451 1441.

Source URL: http://www.hclworkforce.com/how-a-leading-nhs-trust-is-coping-with-the-looming-winter-crisis

About HCL Workforce Solutions

HCL Ltd., headquartered in London, was formed in 2003 and is a leading provider of staffing solutions in the health and social care sectors. HCL supplies over 2,000 temporary and permanent doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, qualified social workers and administration & clerical staff to public and private sectors every week. We are an international company with offices in the UK and Australia and recruitment drives in Europe. For more information please visit our website at www.hclplc.com, view our facebook page or follow us on twitter @HCLplc.