Welcome to the December edition of ESR News

Update from Paul Spooner, NHS ESR Programme Director

First and foremost, welcome to your new-look ESR News e-magazine. With a new easier to use format, new refreshed branding and importantly, relevant content, I hope this edition is both informative and helpful for you.

I often preface my updates with the line: ‘Without wanting to sound like a ‘scratched record’… [20XX] has been another year of significant activity and achievement for the ESR Programme’. Well, I have to say, this is once again the case for 2016!

Having successfully transitioned the ESR Service from the previous supplier to IBM in 2015, this year has seen a period of consolidation and technology refresh in the Service Delivery area. Crucially, availability and performance of the ESR solution remains the single most important element of the services within the ESR Programme. With this in mind, and considering the scale of technology refresh that has successfully completed, I am delighted to reflect on another positive year in this regard.

Furthermore, it is important to highlight that the technology refresh itself introduces greater service efficiencies and flexibility for future developments…all of which will be beneficial for the NHS.

A new era for ESR…delayed, but now reformed in to the ‘ESR Development Roadmap’

I have previously advised on the overall intent to deliver a number of enhancements to the ESR solution. This project delivery has been subject to challenges and delay; resulting in a different approach being proposed to deliver the essential user requirements.

In March this year, we released functionality to support Nursing Revalidation. This capability was received extremely positively across the NHS and indeed, our HPMA Award winners for 2016 - Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS FT, demonstrated excellent innovation in their use of the solution.

In June, we introduced changes to the online payslip. There are articles in this edition that reference how this development is being used to further support NHS organisations improve efficiency, reduce risk and realise tangible benefits.

In October, we introduced a significant change to the access routes to employee self-service. Our users had previously identified an essential need for ESR to be accessible from the internet – very much in the spirit of driving efficiency and supporting ‘mobile workforce’ needs. ESR internet enablement provided such capability, and this will be further complimented with mobile responsive forms scheduled to be released at the end of this month. If not already, I would encourage you to explore what this capability can do for your organisation.

The ESR Development Roadmap, again referenced within this edition, highlights the releases up to December 2017. The development strategy has been to deploy as many of the essential requirements at the earliest possible release, in a schedule that maximises the complimentary nature of the solutions. For example: internet access (Oct 16) followed by updated and mobile responsiveness forms (Dec 16) followed by responsive Portal in March 2017 etc. Whilst such a delivery strategy is logical from a solution release perspective, I hope you will be able to appreciate how this approach can support smaller local projects within your organisation - that can be progressed to grow the capability being made available to your workforce in an ‘evolutionary’ manner, rather than the proverbial ‘big bang’ change.

As a Programme, we clearly have a lot of work to do in delivering the Roadmap, and as always, a release will only happen if testing proves successful. However, the Roadmap reflects the intent, as endorsed by our Pilot / Beta sites. On this point, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all Pilot, Beta and User representatives, for their contribution to supporting the solution development planning.

A look forward to 2017…

• Solution and Service stability: as previously referenced, this remains a key objective for the ESR Programme;

• Roadmap Delivery: providing additional value add capability to NHS organisations and users;

• Support and increase ESR usage: whether operating in a climate - as the NHS is currently - of needing to drive efficiencies, or considered ‘just the right thing to do’; using capability across the entire ESR portfolio remains an opportunity for the NHS. As an NHS Programme team, we will continue to support you in project analysis, initiation, planning and execution so as to meet this objective. There is an article in this edition that references an ESR Assessment Programme we are currently undertaking across the NHS. I encourage you and your teams to maximise this opportunity – particularly as preparatory work for using new solutions planned for 2017.

• Sharing best practice: once again, there are some excellent case studies in this edition. Throughout 2016, a number of case studies have been produced and shared to cascade the best practice across all areas of ESR functionality. This is a mechanism of engagement that the ESR Programme will increasingly harness.

Finally, on behalf of the ESR Programme, may I wish you a Merry Christmas and offer Best Wishes for 2017.