Are you using Employee Relations in ESR?
Employee Relations in ESR
ESR Employee Relations (ER) functionality enables Organisations to record the outcomes of all ER types for employees and ex-employees such as, grievances, disciplinary, harassment, capability, flexible working and further ER stages. ESR has full reporting capability, providing you with the ability to report on all of the employee relations types, including an analysis on Equality and Diversity in relation to ER cases. Using ESR Organisations can produce local management reports and respond quickly to any Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Equality & Diversity
The need to analyse ER data in relation to Equality & Diversity became more prominent in 2015 following the introduction of the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES).
One of the metrics included in the WRES requires NHS organisations to report on Disciplinary cases in relation to Ethnic Origin. For Organisations using the ESR ER module this is a simple task as a standard dashboard already exists within ESR Business Intelligence (BI) allowing Organisations to view a summary of all cases over a specific time period by the following protected characteristics:
- Gender
- Ethnic Origin
- Religious Belief
- Sexual Orientation
- Age
- Disability
Employee Relations Dashboard example:
Following on from WRES, the Workforce Disability Equality Standard is due to be implemented in the near future which will also require Organisations to supply ER data in relation to specific metrics.
As well as assisting with national reporting requirements this dashboard can also help you to identify trends or areas of concern for your Organisation.
Paul Deemer, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at NHS Employers, endorses the utilisation of ER functionality across the NHS:
“The NHS is currently trying to address and tackle some of the most intransigent staffing issues – and is increasingly using the data from ESR to help understand and get underneath those issues. One of these issues relates to increasing the employment rates and employee experience of staff with a disability. To this end, we will be introducing a new Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) in 2018 which will require Trusts to analyse their ESR data in a similar way to the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES). The key difference with the WDES is that one of the metrics will require Trusts to scrutinise their sickness and capability procedures and compare the differences between disabled and non-disabled staff. Trusts who are using the employee relations functions within ESR will find this much easier to do. We would also encourage Trusts to promote the Self Service functionality within ESR as we know this improves data accuracy and encourages staff with a disability to disclose their disability.”
One Organisation that has been using ESR ER for a number of years is West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust (WMAS) which serves a population of 5.6 million people covering an area of more than 5,000 square miles made up of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Coventry, Birmingham and Black Country conurbation. The Trust employs approximately 4,800 staff and operates from 15 new fleet preparation hubs across the region and a network of over 40 Community Ambulance Stations.
ESR Lead and HR Trust Project Manager, Rachael Belleini says that the organisation has been using the data from the ESR ER module for the last 6 years to extract the monitoring data for disciplinary, grievance, harassment and flexible working. Whilst this is done primarily using the current Discoverer reporting functionality, Rachael is now looking at how ESR BI can be used for next year’s reporting requirements, as this offers wider capability with KPI’s, charts and the ability to drill down to specific departments more easily.
In addition to the above, the HR team use the Employee Relations module for recording capability both with and without an underlying health reason, and have been doing this for a number of years.
“For WRES reporting the ESR BI report introduced last year has made the completion of the mandated reporting far easier for the data indicators, and I would expect WDES to follow a similar pattern/format.”
ESR BI Reporting
As well as being able to report on ER data by Equality & Diversity characteristics, a series of other national analyses exists through BI to enable Organisations to analyse specific cases in greater detail, and also assist Organisations with monitoring KPI’s in relation to case management.
The ‘Cases’ analysis within the ER Dashboard allows Organisations to view all cases which have been open for a defined number of days, determined by the Trust. Each BI report has a number of prompts/parameters to define and target the areas you wish to report on. In addition, all analyses have an export button to enable the user to export to their format of choice and also provide the ability to add reports to a ‘Briefing Book’, to allow the user to group national analyses together into a board-report type document.
Full details of the nationally maintained ER Dashboard are available via ESR KBase: https://www.electronicstaffrecord.nhs.uk/kbase/entry/505/ (log-in required).
Key Benefits of using ESR to manage Employee Relations
- Using the ESR Employee Relations functionality reduce the demand on resources when answering FOI. requests and internal requests.
- It can be used to support the detailed file on the relevant case.
- The ER record is linked to the person data, thus providing robust and accurate data.
- It enables Organisations to produce regular board reports on Employee Relations statistics which can identify any issues or points of action.
- HR can track caseloads across the team.
- The expiry notifications ensure that cases are reviewed correctly and on time.
Want to know more?
If you are considering implementing ESR Employee Relations within your organisation, or want to find out how it could be used more effectively, then contact your regional NHS ESR Account Manager to arrange a visit.