Your ESR – an enabler to support a range of business objectives

With little or no training required to carry out the basics in ESR Employee Self Service, it’s not surprising that HR and Finance Directors are increasingly looking at where ESR can reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Ensuring patient safety is top of everyone’s to do list; having a safe and competent workforce is essential for good quality patient outcomes.  The breadth of data that you input into ESR means that ESR should not only be seen as enabler to a range of business decision making processes that support patient safety, but it’s also a valuable tool for implementing strategic policies on recruitment and retention and staff engagement. 

Empowering NHS staff to take ownership of their personal and department data can bring a range of benefits.  With individual employees taking more responsibility for managing their own personal and professional records using ESR, managers and HR teams can focus less on transactional work and more on strategic workforce planning and management.  

Spotlight on ESR Self Service

Two key developments that have been deployed into ESR during 2016 have enabled more organisations to evaluate the merits of using full Employee Self Service.  In fact in many regions across England, ESR Self Service projects are a key strategic objective for many NHS organisations; whilst the benefits highlighted above a critical factors, the key business benefit helps you to drive efficiency, save money and further support your workforce.

The Self Service package

• All NHS employees have the ability to view and update their personal information, such as emergency contacts and bank details.
• All NHS employees can view and download their payslips.
• All NHS employees can request annual leave or other forms of leave.
• All NHS employees can participate in a Development Review, browse learning opportunities and request enrolment on courses.

And there is more…

• Your nurses and midwives can undertake their revalidation.
• Managers can view, report and manage key areas such as absence, turnover, training spend and competencies.
• Business Intelligence reporting provides key information on staff.
• The Compliance Matrix utilises red, amber and green status to view staff compliance at a glance.
• A colour co-ordinated absence calendar helps managers to identify absence patterns and view all staff absences.
• Devolved data entry frees time in central functions such Payroll, HR, Training and Recruitment, reducing resource requirements and freeing up time from administrative duties to allow other more pro-active work to be undertaken.
• Reduces pay related queries.

The introduction of ESR via the internet - myess.esr.nhs.uk

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust decided to move to the ESR online payslip earlier this year to reduce costs, but with launch of myess they took the opportunity to do more…

Initially the Trust wanted to give their employee’s access to their TRS, Payslips and P60s online, with a long term objective to move away from printed paper payslips being distributed across the organisation. (They intend to completely remove printed payslips in the new 2017/18 financial year).

In addition to the business objective the Trust also recognises the benefits of giving employees access to their own ESR data in order to enable them to keep that information up to date, and are using Employee Self Service Limited Access (ESSLA) as a precursor to introducing more Self Service functionality into the organisation, progressing towards Supervisor and then full Manager Self Service over time.

As a result of this project their ESR data quality has improved, in part to the fact that employees can easily identify where information is out of date or missing.

It took four months to rollout ESSLA and the team made use of step by step guidance and mass uploads into ESR.

“The Employee Self Service functionality has improved the data quality as well as saved time in administrative processes.  The Regional ESR Account Manager provided invaluable advice on the Self Service system from the initial interest right to the go live date within the Trust.  The support and knowledge offered throughout the process facilitated the success of the implementation of the system.  We instantly observed staff taking advantage of the ESSLA benefits; the new internet enablement enhancement has been exceptionally well received by our staff and significantly increased the usage of ESSLA.  With the benefits of ESSLA we are excited about utilising the other Employee Self Service functions.”  

Helen Lovelock, Workforce Information Manager at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust

Want some help?

If you want to understand how ESR Self Service can support your workforce management and financial objectives, please contact your ESR Account Manager or Functional Advisor.  We are currently undertaking Assessments for all ESR user organisations.  Read the Assessment article in this edition of ESR News to find out more and book your Assessment today.