WORKFORCE PLANNING
Actionstoboostrecruitment and retention set out
Senior estates and facilities staff from the NHS Estates and Facilities Efficiency and Productivity Division at NHSI led the formulation of, and chaired, a well-attended ‘Workforce planning’ seminar at The Studio in Birmingham in April. The event brought together senior healthcare estates personnel from over 30 NHS Trusts, and representatives of IHEEM, HefmA, and IPEM, to discuss some of the key succession and skills gap issues facing the healthcare engineering and estate management sector.
The ‘Workforce Planning’ event was attended on IHEEM’s behalf by the President, Pete Sellars, and CEO, Julian Amey. The latter commented afterwards: “Demographics in this sector – whose personnel play such a key role in the smooth day-to-day today running and maintenance of healthcare facilities – show that experienced estates staff at all levels are retiring faster than they can be replaced. Urgent action is needed now to establish reliable data on the current situation, and the needs of the sector over the next 5, 10, and 20 years. Alongside this, alliances need to be established with course providers to draw up curricula for the programmes needed.
“The Apprentice scheme set up in the North East of England and now run by Eileen Bayles – who was among the speakers – was seen by delegates as a valuable template, which can potentially be replicated in other regions, and discussions took place on how to bid for funding linked to the Apprentice Levy. The outcomes of the day’s discussions will be taken forward in a number of workstreams.” The scene for the day was set by a senior estates and facilities representative from NHSI, in an opening address entitled ‘EFM Workforce Plan – a Sustainable &
Resilient Estates & Facilities Workforce’. After welcoming delegates, he put the ‘size’ of the succession planning challenge in context when he asked rhetorically – against a backdrop where he argued that the current estates backlog, ‘of £5.5 bn and rising’, showed that the ‘system’ had ‘in general badly neglected the NHS retained estate over the past 20 or more years’ – whether it had ‘done the same’ to the NHS estates workforce. Answering his own question, he said: “I think we may conclude after seeing the following slides that the answer is ‘yes’.”
‘Some quick wins’
Beginning his presentation ‘proper’, the NHSI speaker began by looking at the NHS Improvement Estates and Facilities Workforce Delivery Plan, of which he said: “As already identified, the NHS Estates and Facilities workforce requires some significant investment, and overall there are some quick wins. However, there are also areas that will need significant work and input from the whole sector.” The speaker explained that the resulting ‘project’ had been split into three phases, over the following timescales: n ‘Research & discovery’ – up to April 2018.
n Development – April 2018-September 2019.
n Delivery – September 2018-April 2020.
He said of the Plan’s ‘overarching objectives’: “As identified in the Government response to the Naylor Report, there is a need to invest in training and development to underpin the continued professionalisation of the Estates and Facilities workforce, including developing new roles and career paths. The Plan’s aim is thus to identify what is already being done across the NHS estate workforce, and what needs to be done, to provide the service with an estates and facilities workforce fit for the 21st century, and resilient and sustainable enough to meet the challenges facing the sector.”
A much diminished resource Looking at the current workforce, the NHSI E&F speaker said many NHS Trusts’ estates and facilities departments were now ‘one-third to half the size they once were’, with many finding it difficult both to recruit and retain staff, and that, in general, there was neither sufficient ‘investment’ in apprentices, nor effective succession planning. Nor was there a recognised career route map for such personnel, or any recognised education programme. These issues were compounded by more ‘current’ problems, including an ageing workforce, many NHS estates and facilities personnel working long hours – with a knock-on effect on their wellbeing and resilience, and there being few estates and facilities directors on Trust Boards. Again rhetorically, he asked: ‘Where is tomorrow’s estates director?’
At Healthcare Estates 2017, the second day’s keynote speaker, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health, Lord O’Shaughnessy (pictured third from left with Julian Amey, Pete Sellars, and NHSI’s Simon Corben) visited the Apprentices’ Theatre, and subsequently pledged to be IHEEM’s champion and ambassador for apprenticeships.
Key drivers for change Against this backdrop, he noted that there were several ‘key drivers for change’ in taking forward the Workforce Delivery Plan – including ensuring that the NHS estate had a ‘professional and adequately trained workforce, sufficient in both numbers and skills’; ‘securing that workforce’s future – by investing today in
June 2018 Health Estate Journal 25
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