Discovering Your ESR
Annual ESR Assessment
The NHS ESR Team introduced the Annual ESR Assessment for all user organisations in 2016, in readiness for the planned launch of the new Portal and enhanced functionality in 2017. Designed to help organisations understand what steps they needed to take to be ready for the new capability, the Assessment enabled HR Directors and ESR Leads to prepare plans that would enable them to be able to roll out the new Portal as soon as it was launched.
Two years on, the Annual ESR Assessment has become an important benchmarking tool, providing HR Directors and their teams with a comprehensive overview of how their organisation has progressed with its use of ESR functionality, and more importantly, how the data in ESR is supporting local workforce strategies.
Split into two parts the Assessment:
- provides you with a comprehensive set of statistics taken directly from the ESR solution, looking across a broad range of functional areas within ESR. This easily identifies gaps in usage and highlights where you can gain further efficiencies;
- gives you an opportunity to discuss your current agenda, your key priorities and your organisations objectives - as well as helping you identify how ESR can support you in addressing these objectives.
Earlier this year the NHS ESR Team conducted an in-depth review of the Assessment tool, taking into consideration feedback that had been received during the previous years and the reports that are produced. The 2018/19 Assessment round is now well underway across all regions in England, and significant progress has been reported across a wide range of ESR functional areas. Since the 2018/19 Assessment round began in late spring, 79% of all NHS user organisations have completed their Assessment or have a date committed with their NHS ESR Regional Team.
Following the Assessment, three reports are produced to help organisations digest the data and the recommendations that derive from the Assessment itself:
- Executive Summary - Illustrates overall progress regarding the implementation of various elements of ESR functionality, highlighting key areas where there is scope for further advancement;
- Summary Statement - Headline summary of progress made within your organisation towards maximising use of ESR functionality;
- Action Plan – Detailed summary of the ESR utilisation made by the organisation.
One of the core objectives for the Annual ESR Assessment is to help HR Directors and their teams to better understand the breadth of functionality within the ESR solution, and identify where ESR can support them to meet workforce and organisational business challenges.
Optimal use of ESR can help you address these challenges; whether that’s reducing sickness absence, improving compliance, streamlining recruitment, realise back office efficiencies, monitoring workforce diversity, managing staff costs, empowering your workforce, improving the quality of workforce data or all of these areas.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust both completed their 2018/19 Assessments in June and provided the following feedback;
'We welcomed the opportunity to discuss our progress with our NHS ESR Account Manager and Functional Advisor. We looked at what ESR functionality we are currently using and the options for the future. This was particularly useful because at that time we were considering the transition to Manager Self Service (MSS) and Oracle Learning Management (OLM). We had recently rolled out Employee Self Service (Limited Access) and felt that this was going to be the next natural step, although we weren’t sure what it involved.
The Assessment and discussion helped us define our approach to rolling out MSS and OLM, and provided the framework and evidence we needed to ensure we secured Board and Exec team buy in. We could use the recommendations within the report to help us reinforce where we could get more from ESR and increase our information transparency with line managers. Both our NHS ESR Account Manager and Functional Adviser were very knowledgeable and supportive with our questions around MSS, making our investigative process more efficient and rapid.
The NHS ESR team gave a presentation to the wider team including our Training and Education Department, which was gratefully received.
As a result of the Assessment and the support from our NHS ESR Regional team we have now commenced our roll out of Manager Self Service in liaison with the Training and Education team, who are building up their knowledge of OLM in readiness for full roll out. We found the ESR Assessment and the support provided by the NHS ESR Regional Team was the push we needed to bring our plans to fruition'.
Calum Robertson, Operational Lead – Workforce Information and Barbara Fitch, Workforce Information Officer
'As a Trust we have been gradually increasing our usage of ESR functionality, initially transferring from our existing training system to OLM. Realising the potential of the solution for the Trust and our employees with the new ESR Portal, we further developed our training offering through ESR by implementing competencies and applying competency requirements. Having seen the efficiencies this has provided we were keen to understand the solution further, so keen to undertake the ESR Assessment to help us better understand our current usage, and what further functionality is available.
Overall, everyone who took part in the Assessment found it to be extremely helpful, especially as there were a lot of things we discovered we could do with ESR that we were not aware of. The various Assessment reports are very informative and provided us with key information on areas of ESR functionality that we should focus on. They also enabled us to further discuss and formulate plans with Trust Senior Management to obtain their support and direction.
Since receiving our Assessment reports we have set up a new ESR steering group to focus on how we can make better use of ESR in order to meet our strategic workforce agenda. So far we have successfully moved our core skills e-Learning back to ESR and are in the process of planning our launch of Manager Self Service. We are also in the final stages of testing devolved access for our trainers, so that they can update class attendance using a tablet, as well as enabling employee self-enrolment for our face to face courses.
We are continuing to work with our NHS ESR Regional team who are supporting us further with our ESR development to aid us to achieve our objectives'.
Craig Stewart, Head of Workforce Intelligence
The new Discover your ESR tool
The NHS ESR Central Team has recently launched a new online tool – Discover your ESR.
The tool has been designed to work alongside the Annual Assessment process, and uniquely presents the ESR solution in a business driven format, segmented into current strategic workforce and operational business challenges.
Across the NHS it is recognised that the pace and scale of change to the ESR solution over the last 18 months has delivered tangible benefits – both in terms of enhancing and transforming the user experience and presenting HR Directors and their teams with the opportunity to re-evaluate how ESR can support a wide range of workforce challenges.
The Annual Assessment, as we have detailed earlier in this article helps organisations identify gaps in their ESR usage, what workforce challenges are currently a priority and provides a range of recommendations that are designed to support the organisation to move forward.
By using the Discover Your ESR tool HR Directors their operational teams can work through those challenges and develo
p a better understanding how they can address them using ESR.
The two elements; the Discover your ESR tool and the Annual Assessment gives HR Directors and teams the complete package that assists local planning of next steps to increase their use of ESR.
Two Workforce Leaders have recently told us what they think about the new Discover Your ESR tool;
'I have been impressed with the new functionality of ESR to support our ‘digital employee journey’ plans and found ‘Discover Your ESR’ online tool really helpful to support the business case for change. The tool is really easy to use and gives you a fantastic overview of how ESR can support a range of workforce strategies, national and regulatory policy and productivity goals.’
Lynn Demeda, Director of Workforce Programmes, Guys and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
'Delivering change is impossible without clear workforce data that is fundamentally reliable – principally due to its link with payroll. The launch of the new Discover Your ESR web based tool is a great innovation that builds upon the solid platform ESR provides. This tool enables strategic leaders to understand how they can use the data within ESR to understand their workforce needs and plan for the future, really maximising the potential within the ESR system'.
Mike Gibney, Director of Workforce and Innovation, The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust.
'The ‘Discover Your ESR’ tool aids in bridging the knowledge gap between Senior Leaders and HR teams in terms of their understanding of the ESR solution and its capabilities , thereby enables constructive conversations about workforce challenges in a useful and easy way'.
Cheryl Samuels, Deputy Director of Workforce, STP Education & Training, North and Central London
If you haven’t completed your Annual ESR Assessment for 2018/19 yet, want more information about how the Assessment and its reports can support you, or want to learn more about how Discover Your ESR can help you, please contact your NHS ESR Regional Account Manager.