Transitioning to ESR e-Learning from a Third Party system

A Case Study by Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Background

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals is a large acute Trust with an employee headcount of over 16k staff.  We moved onto ESR OLM for the recording of all mandatory training in April 2016, at this time the Trust was using an external learning platform for all our e-Learning.  A weekly update was then required from the external learning platform to ESR.

The Project

Due to using two separate systems, it was extremely challenging and time consuming trying to report on Compliance each month.   Therefore, in order to utilise the planned developments within the ESR Roadmap for both ESR and e-Learning, we decided to complete the move onto OLM by using the ESR e-Learning solution to take effect from April 2017, because this would then enable us to support real time data for the purposes of monitoring compliance via Business Intelligence.   Benefits would also include removing the need to manually add e-Learning completions to OLM.  The Organisation would benefit from overall cost savings by not having to renew licence fees on our previous supplier and it would also clearly solidify our aim to make ESR the one place for staff to access all of their information.

Ian Wiltshire-Young, Senior Workforce Information Analyst said:

“We formed a project group which met fortnightly.  Membership included staff from Education and Workforce Development, IT, Workforce Information and a representative from our Community Services Directorate.  Amanda Lowdon, our NHS ESR Functional Advisor, also regularly attended the meetings to keep the Project on the right track. The group worked its way through the checklist to ensure everything was ready for go live.”

 

Benefits

Joanne Reay, Workforce Development Manager summarised the benefits of utilising Competencies as well as ESR e-Learning;

• Using Competencies in ESR only displays on the learner screen the training that people need to do and this is very helpful for employees. Previously our staff were regularly completing the wrong training courses if there were multiple variants, which did cause some confusion and frustration.
• Everything is now in one place.
• System management is much more streamlined.
• After using ESR e-Learning for only one calendar month we were in the Top 2 of Organisations in the country for e-Learning completions with nearly 8000 completions and the Top Performing Trust in the country for e-Learning completions between June and August 2017.   Already our compliance has increased by 6% compared to this time last year and feedback from end users on ease of use is extremely positive.
• As an Organisation we have been able to make savings of approximately £8.5K + VAT per annum relating to support and licencing costs previously incurred from the Third Party Supplier.

 One end user, Ashleigh Logan, Senior HR Administrator said:

“I have recently used the e-Learning system on ESR and found it really easy and accessible to use. I found that using ESR Learning Management was easier to follow and having the courses which I needed to complete in front of me saved time and made the mandatory training a more streamlined process.”

 ESR is provided to the NHS at no cost and therefore the support and licencing costs have enabled us to make that cash saving, but in addition we anticipate that there are likely to be other cost savings in terms of utilising national learning packages and not creating our own. However, it is difficult to project what these would be at the present time,  but is something we do intend to revisit and evaluate at some point in the future.   

Longer Term Benefits

Going forward, as our staff become more adept at enrolling on courses we will be looking at enabling self-enrolment, as we recognise that this project has resulted in more proactive engagement with our staff in their use of ESR and that has in turn improved data quality. 

Lessons Learned

• Having successfully moved back to ESR e-Learning we would recommend that any Organisation considering doing the same ensures that all content is moved across into ESR e-Learning as early as practicable.
• PC builds can vary quite considerably, so this needs to be looked at very carefully with your IT colleagues and well in advance of a go live date.
• Even though we have been live with Employee Self Service for several years the volume of people stating that they had not received their log in details was substantial, and with hindsight it would have been beneficial to push internal communications out to all staff that they would need their ESR log in details ready for the changeover.

Further Information

For further information please contact: Joanne Reay, Workforce Development Manager - Joanne.Reay@nuth.nhs.uk or Ian Wiltshire-Young, Senior Workforce Information Analyst - Ian.Wiltshire-Young@nuth.nhs.uk