Update from the National Programme Director

Welcome to the December edition of ESR News. As I reflect on the last twelve months, working together with NHS organisations and partners, we have achieved a significant amount of progress and success.

Last December I reported that we had exceeded 1 million users accessing the portal. A year on, there are now over 1.36million employees accessing the portal – a great reflection on how NHS employees have embraced the new functionality. Furthermore, at the end of November, over 1 million employees have now opted out of receiving paper payslips, resulting in significant cost savings for the NHS.  The pace of growth across many other areas of functionality has also continued throughout the year, in particular ESR’s Learning Management functionality (OLM), Appraisal functionality and Employee Self Service. 

In April we took part in the National Streamlining week - which was run in partnership with NHS Employers and NHS Improvement.  The week was dedicated to showcasing how NHS organisations, regions and STPs are embracing Streamlining to reduce the time to hire new employees to improve the experience of those staff moving between employers, and provide tools and resources designed to help those that were embarking upon Streamlining.  All of the ESR resources can be accessed via Discover your ESR.

During the year we have continued to play a key role in the national Doctors in Training project.  Led by NHS England / Improvement, in partnership with other organisations, both of these projects now fall into the ‘Enabling Staff Movement’ programme. This programme aims to improve the induction and rotation process for all staff — starting with doctors in training. Through implementation of this programme, trusts will be supported to further improve the doctors’ experience when  on rotation between NHS organisations - with on-boarding and induction information only being repeated when necessary. 

This is just one example of how the NHS BSA ESR Team is working collaboratively on the national stage, ensuring that the ESR solution continues to enable efficiency and productivity benefits and meet the workforce information needs for local, regional and national NHS organisations.  Within this publication, there are further examples of how ESR has been developed to meet both national and local (user-led) requirements - consistent with previous years, as we look forward to 2020, ESR will continue to align to Workforce policy so as to support the NHS in delivery of the objectives, whilst meeting user needs.

You may recall in last years’ update I advised that the ESR programme had joined the NHS Business Services Authority in April 2018 – being part of an NHS Workforce Services Directorate along with NHS Jobs, NHS Pensions and an HR Shared Services function. 

Gordon Coyne, NHSBSA Director of Workforce Services comments:

During the course of 2020, it is our corporate ambition to continue to optimise how these key services work together for the benefit of the NHS and the emerging landscape.  We aim to provide a service to our customers that maximises benefit from use of NHS BSA Workforce Solutions in order to support effective recruitment, retention and workforce planning in the NHS. A number of exciting developments are being progressed that will further support this objective – including but not limited to a new NHS Jobs service being introduced in 2020, a MyNHS Pension self-service portal being introduced to further highlight the benefits and options of being within the NHS pension scheme, expansion of the HR shared services function to offer additional value add services across the NHS as well as ongoing developments to the ESR solution. Ultimately, all of our Workforce Services offerings will be aligned to both user needs and emerging policy – to this end, we will continue to work collaboratively with all organisations across NHS and Strategic Arm’s Length Bodies to maximise service impact.

As we approach the end of 2019, it also means that the final year software release (Release 44) is scheduled.  As with previous releases, Release 44 is significant as it includes a major Oracle release. Additionally, R44 includes a Portal upgrade to Liferay7 technology - whilst the upgrade itself will not change how the Portal is used, there will be improvements to how Portal content is managed, making it easier for administrators. The upgrade to Liferay7 will also future proof the ESR solution and enable us to continue to enhance the capability and the experience of users going forward.

Thanks and Best Wishes…

Finally, I hope that you find this December edition of ESR News interesting and on behalf of the ESR Programme and the NHS BSA, may I express our thanks for all of your support throughout 2019, wish you a Merry Christmas and offer Best Wishes for 2020.

ESR Developments continue to enhance the user experience

As we start to look towards the final main release of 2019, Release 44, it is worth looking back on what has already been a busy year with a number of significant developments made to ESR.  

38 different changes have been released since March 2019 and some of the highlights this year include:

• Ensuring the Appraisal and Review functionality within Self Service supports the new NHS Terms and Conditions of Service on Pay Progression,
• Enabling Applicants to access their own dedicated ESR Portal dashboard to help them in their on-boarding journey,
• Improvements to the usability and information provided on the My ESR Dashboard, with updated portlet functionality, including booking Annual Leave directly on the portal and updating the compliance portlet to give much great usability,
• Bringing changes to support the streamlining and enabling staff movement agenda, including the ability for employees to have competency updates reflected across multiple employers.

Details of these can be found in the Guide to Enhancement and Changes which accompany each release; these can be found on ESR KBASE. 

Release 44

Looking forward, December is another significant release for ESR with a large number of enhancements from our user community as well as changes supporting national initiatives.  In addition we will be completing the regular upgrade to the Oracle software with the implementation of the annual roll-up patch, which not only includes fixes but also the opportunity to capitalise on the latest Oracle functional enhancements.  Release 44 also includes an upgrade to the latest software behind the ESR portal. 

Supporting National Programmes – including:

Increasing the use of Job Planning across different staff groups -  Release 44 includes support for areas on NHS England and Improvement’ agenda with the introduction of new job plan recording for additional clinical staff.

Supporting streamlining and enabling staff movement programmes -  improved reporting is introduced on the tracking of Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) to help better management of the IAT process. 

Introduction of a new portlet allowing applicants moving around the NHS to have their bank details move with them from the current or last employer, which they can then confirm - removing the need for any manual input.

New My ESR Portlets

We are also introducing two new portlets to the My ESR Dashboard.  Based on the success of the Equality and Diversity portlet available for Applicants, this will be made available for Employees.  Giving quick and simple access to manage key diversity data such as Religious Belief, Sexual Orientation and Ethnic Origin the portlet is aimed at helping Organisations improve their data quality and reporting capability on diversity measures. 

A new “My Employment” portlet will also be introduced which will allow Employees to quickly see a consolidated data set relating to their service within the NHS, data on their assignment information in their current employers and a number of different data items currently dispersed on differing Self Service pages.  This portlet is designed to give the employee much greater understanding on the details held on ESR and help manage data quality by enabling the identification of any anomalies they may wish to query and have rectified.

 

Example layout for the My Employment Portlet:

Process Improvements

The importance of our engagement with ESR users is reflected in the changes included in Release 44, based on their feedback and requests aimed at improving usability and efficiency for both Self Service and core ESR users. The changes that have derived from users in Release 44 are detailed below:

Future changes to Equality Data ... ... ... ...

ESR enables the recording and reporting of data to help organisations demonstrate compliance with equality legislation.

It also assists in comparing the experiences of staff in the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES), and in determining action where necessary.

Current position

Where data items and values exist within the NHS National Workforce Dataset (NWD) they will be reflected in ESR. If a data item is not currently within the NWD then the values used in ESR will have been determined through consultation with user groups and appropriate stakeholders.

The data items and values currently available in ESR for some of the protected characteristics do not entirely satisfy all users and we have received a number of requests to add, remove or change them.

Are there plans to change the Equality and Diversity details recorded in ESR?

NHS England/Improvement (NHS E/I) are currently leading on a review of all protected characteristics which could result in a Unified Information Standard for Protected Characteristics (UISPC) or a number of separate information standards. This review covers data sets used across the NHS in relation to both the workforce and to patients. It is anticipated that the recommendations, if accepted, will be incorporated into the National Workforce Dataset at which point we will ensure they are reflected within ESR.

Will changes be made to ESR ahead of the wider review?

Although it would be possible to implement changes to the values in ESR independently of NHS E/I’s review to satisfy user requests, there is a high risk that any such changes would be rendered obsolete when that review is complete. So at present there are no plans for ESR to implement changes ahead of the published review outcomes.

Next steps

Once agreed, any changes to the data items or values will be incorporated into the National Workforce Data Set and ESR will be updated to comply with them.

In order to minimise delay NHS Digital have indicated that they may allow systems such as ESR to implement the required changes whilst the process to formally publish a revised National Workforce Dataset is underway. This approach was recently taken with the introduction of the Sexual Orientation Monitoring Standard.

NHS Digital will publish formal announcements regarding changes to the data sets on their website.  Users of ESR will be advised of changes and implementation dates through the usual channels including Release Notices and User Group meetings.

Introducing the new ESR Implementation Advisors

During the summer, we began to establish a new team of Implementation Advisors.

This role is designed to enable us to provide additional hands on project management and implementation support to NHS organisations that have committed to roll-out further ESR functionality.  The team have a wealth of ESR knowledge and experience and are already helping our regional teams to support a range of implementation projects.

We are delighted to introduce the first four new ESR Implementation Advisors who have joined the NHS ESR team in recent weeks; 

Graz Leonowicz – Midlands and East Team 

Graz joined the team in October having previously worked for Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  Graz is currently working with Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust on their OLM rollout, and assisting Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust with their plan to implement Manager Self Service.

 

Bronwyn Driver  - North of England Team

Bronwyn previously worked across the North West supporting organisations to implement improved recruitment processes as part of the North West Streamlining Team, before joining the North ESR regional Team in September 2019.  

Bronwyn is currently working with North Lincolnshire and Goole (NLAG) who are migrating their course booking system into ESR as part of a wider Self Service project, which involves working with the NLAG  training administrators on site two days a week helping them to set up the 500 courses and associated offerings and classes and setting up OLM Data Groups to enable course facilitators to manage their own classes.

Nelson Boto – South of England Team

Nelson is currently working with the Isle of Wight Trust on their OLM & MSS implementation, Sussex Partnership with their implementation of Supervisor Self Service Limited Access and OLM, Great Ormond Street  Hospital who are progressing with their implementation of OLM, and a number of other projects scheduled for the early part of 2020 involving OLM, BI and Appraisal.

 

Jessica Brooks – North of England Team

Currently assisting Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust with the formation of a new catalogue of Mandatory Training courses, including the application of competency requirements, and will also be assisting North East Lincolnshire CCG with a similar project soon.

 

The team of eight, when fully recruited will provide support covering all the regions (South, Midlands and East, London and the North of England).

The expertise of the Implementation Advisors in their specific regions is available to organisations who commit to ESR implementation projects as part of their Annual ESR Assessment.  If your organisation hasn’t scheduled their 2019/20 Assessment yet, please contact your NHS ESR Regional Account Manager

Data Quality in ESR

Poor data quality can impact upon every aspect of the workforce from vacancy management to leaver analyses, from employee details to aggregate staff reports, from pay to pension.

Data from ESR enables analysis and monitoring across a wide range of policies and activities including: workforce information and planning, pay and reward, commissioning, statistics for FOI and PQs, diversity and inclusion, regulation, etc...

As highlighted in the recent Data Quality Webinars, ESR provides a variety of data quality resources to assist organisations in monitoring and improving their data.

A couple of examples are given below:

ESR NHS Data Quality Dashboard

The Data Quality Dashboard was initially designed to replicate the monthly WoVEn reports produced by NHS Digital. However, since its introduction a number of additional validations have been added to enable organisations to monitor many aspects of their data from missing email addresses to incorrect Registration details.

The Dashboard provides a high level Summary to show the number of errors for each validation and also has tabs to show the detail of the errors.

Organisations should, where possible, try to monitor this report frequently to address any errors as and when they occur, rather than waiting for the monthly WoVEn process to highlight issues.

Where a significant number of errors reoccur for the same validation, organisations should consider if a change is required to the local process linked to the validation (e.g. a high number of missing email addresses for new starters each month).

If you have any suggestions for additional Data Quality Validations that you think should be added to the national Dashboard then please raise an SR via the ESR Service Desk.

Workforce Information Verifier Dashboard

The Workforce Information Verifier Dashboard has been developed to help identify possible discrepancies between Occupation Code, Staff Group/Job Role and Pay Band that may exist within Assignments and their related Positions held in the ESR.

The tool was initially created in 2013 in partnership with NHS Digital to assist organisations in improving their data quality.  It has since been replicated in BI meaning that it can be run as and when required to see the ‘latest picture’.  The formulas within the analysis are updated after each National Workforce Dataset (NWD) release to reflect any changes, as well as any other ad-hoc changes which may be required as a result of trust feedback.

Any changes to the Verifier tool need to be considered by the national Workforce Information Review Group (WIRG) before we can implement into ESR BI.  Queries or requests for change should be sent to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk

 

NMC, GMC, HCPC & UID Reports

As well as the DQ reports available through ESRBI, we also send monthly reports to designated contacts at each organisation. These are produced by our Data Analysis Team and assist with Registration monitoring in ESR as well as Unique ID Monitoring.

Other Data Quality resources

• NHS Recruitment Dashboard (Vacancy monitoring)
• NHS Pensions Dashboard

Further information on all reports can be found in the HR Best Practice Guide on KBase here.

There are some organisations that don’t have a designated contact and therefore are not receiving these reports.

Please contact esr.datateam@nhs.net if you would like to update your organisations contact(s).

As a result of the resources made available, improved local processes, the roll-out of the ESR Portal enabling employees to ‘own their own data’ through Self Service and the launch of the Workforce Equality Standards for Race & Disability we have seen a significant improvement in Data Quality, particularly in relation to protected characteristics - some of which have been historically poorly populated. However, further work is required to continue the progress.

Did you know?

Following the recent Data Quality webinars we’ve produced a fact sheet based on the questions we received during the webinars which can be found here.

 

 

Enabling Staff Movements within the NHS

The East of England Streamlining Conference 

Background

The East of England Regional Streamlining programme first launched in 2016, with a focus on 4 main workstreams; Recruitment, Transfer of Training, Medical Staff - Doctors in Training (DiT) and Occupational Health. Excellent progress was made within the region, with regular workstream meetings held, objectives agreed and a central support structure in place. 

The formal project support came to an end in 2017; so this was an opportunity to relaunch Streamlining within the region, review the great work already completed by organisations, understand what needed to be worked on and take that forward into the future to ensure all benefits are realised.

Within the Streamlining Programme there is a focus on staff movement between organisations, making it a simpler and more positive experience for new starters. The activities involved can be applied to both general recruitment and Doctors in Training, and supports the NHS Long Term Plan to ensure “staff move more easily from one NHS Employer to the other”. A similar sentiment is emphasised in the Interim People Plan and with the release of the Enabling Staff Movement Toolkit.  

It is recognised nationally and locally that ESR functionality is critical for enabling the transfer of staff information around the NHS - and so plays an important role in achieving the goals of the Streamlining / Enabling Staff Movement Programme.

The East of England Approach

A conference was held on the 31^st October in Cambridge, with over 80 regional leads focussing on how the region can improve both efficiency and staff experience.

Monty Keuneman EoE Streamlining Project Manager stated:

The workshop was a great success with delegates from across the whole region coming together to hear about developments from the national and regional perspective. The vast majority fed back to rate the day as “good” and several rating it as “excellent”. The room was full of energy throughout the day and delegates were pleased the staff experience workstream was returning to the agenda.

The conference was organised by the Regional Streamlining Champion, Anita Pisana - Deputy Chief Executive, Cambridgeshire Community Services and fully supported by NHS Employers and NHS England / Improvement who jointly lead on the National Doctors in Postgraduate Training programme - which aims to improve the rotational experience of Doctors in Training, valuing their time and releasing time to care. In so doing, efficiencies will be realised that directly support the 2016 contractual commitment to improve the on-boarding and induction processes for doctors in postgraduate training.

View the NHS Employers/ NHS Improvement latest video for improving the pre-employment process and induction for doctors in training here.

‘Enabling Staff Movement’ includes an ambition to support a workforce to move seamlessly between providers. This means:

• Enabling a more robust new starter process with reduced repeated administration,
• Being able to update employment records online instead of using paper forms,
• Having an on-boarding process that is efficient and professionally managed,
• Having previous training and skills records transferred and recognised,
• Experiencing a relevant and value-adding induction.

Whilst there is a particular emphasis on improving the rotational experience of Doctors in Post Graduate Training, the same principles can be applied to all staff groups and recruitment within an organisation.

A common theme across all of the guest speakers highlighted the importance of a number of tasks where ESR plays a fundamental part of the process, such as initiating the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) at the Pre Hire stage - which remains an integral part to enabling the transfer of employee information between trusts. ESR IAT functionality underpins the Streamlining objectives and its timing in the recruitment process is critical as it is the enabler for all of the workstreams.

Transferring Mandatory and Statutory Training remains a key objective to enable previously completed training to move with an employee, removing the need for them to repeat the same Statutory and Mandatory training if already compliant.

To support this ambition, NHS Improvement and NHS Employers are encouraging alignment to the Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF) - enabling consistency with the learning outcomes across different subject areas. In turn, this will provide assurance to organisations as to the standards of the training, enabling it to be accepted via the ESR IAT process when an employee moves between organisations.

How organisations approach the work will have an impact on how successful they are, with a recurring discussion point during the day being how important it is for different functions within an organisation to work together - not in isolated silos.

James Clayden, Senior HR Business Partner/ Medical Workforce Lead for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation trust and the DiT Workstream Lead noted;

One of the key things for me that came out of the group sessions was how the roles relevant to improving staff experience processes are often split across different teams – for example, just in relation to DiPT one Trust has separate Medical HR, Medical Recruitment and Medical Education teams. I think we need to maintain the strategic drive behind Improving Our Staff Experience while at the same time making sure that the message is getting right down to the people who are actually doing the functions.

Benefits Realisation

A more streamlined recruitment process will lead to a reduction in the ‘time to hire’, which in turn will lead to less spend on agency staff, bank staff or overtime - as vacancies are vacant for less time.

65% of IATs completed within the East of England occurred for employees moving between trusts in the region.

Christine Cornwall, Associate Director of HR Transformation at Herts Valley’s CCG presented a case study that demonstrated some key benefits expected within the Herts and West Essex STP. The ESR Business Intelligence IAT Benefits report showed that within the STP there was the potential to achieve savings close to £200,000 in Q1 and Q2 of 2019 - if the training that had been transferred via IAT was taken into account pre-hire and not repeated by new starters on induction. This demonstrates the importance of having a flexible induction programme to deal with the different scenarios for staff.  

ESR Tip: Run your IAT Benefits Dashboard to see your saving potential.

ESR Recommended Next Steps

By embracing and committing to the Streamlining / Enabling Staff Movement programme, organisations can improve the applicant process and associated experience for new starters.

Organisations are encouraged to review the Streamlining / Enabling Staff Movement objectives set out on the NHS Employers website here, and consider what opportunities they may present.

The ESR Annual Statement

Every organisation is encouraged to complete their Annual ESR Assessment with the support of their Functional Account Manager. This provides an organisation with information on their use of core ESR Functionality and how this supports key streamlining objectives. In turn, this will support the organisation to plan for the realisation of all ESR benefits, including streamlining and how this will improve the experience for new starters – contributing to making the NHS the best place to work.

You can read about how NHS Dorset CCG has used their Annual Assessment process to drive their Workforce agenda forward in this edition of ESR News, where you can also watch our latest ESR Annual Statement video.

In addition to the Annual ESR Assessment, there is also an opportunity to run your own New Starter Journey process workshop - to look at best practice and improve local processes.  Your Functional Account Manager will work with you to review key functions such as, Recruitment, Learning & Development and Workforce management.  The Streamlining Checklist can be utilised to work through the on-boarding journey, make improvements and efficiencies in current processes, and maximise use of the functionality available to you.

ESR Tip: Contact your ESR Functional Account Manager to arrange your Annual Assessment

A Key Message

A key overall message at the conference from the Regional Team was for organisations to embrace what you can; it is not a case of all or nothing.

Anita Pisani – Regional Streamlining Champion and Deputy Chief Executive Cambridgeshire Community Services commented afterwards:

We had a really successful workshop across East of England on 31^st October to re-energise our streamlining work.  We focused on improving our staff experience and enabling excellent People practices.  I would encourage all Trusts to engage in this agenda as it reduces wastage and duplication as well as saving money and getting people into post quicker. You do not have to implement every aspect but please do implement what you can as soon as you can as it really does make a difference to the experiences of our staff who move between our organisations.

Further Information and Support

Contact your NHS ESR Functional Account Manager for more help and support in achieving a streamlined staff movement experience for all new starters.

Further information including case studies on the national streamlining programme can be found via the NHSE Streamlining Resources Hub.

For information on how ESR supports streamlining take a look at our on line toolkit.

Summit paves the way for Streamlining Success

Sorcha Callus ESR Functional Account Manager from the ESR North of England team recently supported a Streamlining Summit with the Humber, Coast and Vale STP. 

In this edition of ESR News Sorcha talks about the summit and what the Humber, Coast and Vale STP hopes to achieve by driving their Streamlining agenda with ESR.

Humber, Coast and Vale STP began their Streamlining journey in the summer after a very successful kick-start summit for all key stakeholders from across the region. 

Service Managers, Business Partners, Senior Leads and other regional colleagues were joined by Trust HR Directors and Deputies to drive forward this initiative. With Health Education England and the Streamlining Deputy Executive Lead sharing their thoughts and enthusiasm for the wider region the room was soon buzzing with everyone wanting to understand exactly how they were going to enable their organisations to efficiently and effectively streamline their processes. 

Along with Mike Winstanley, Senior ESR Account Manager from the ESR North of England team, we demonstrated how full utilisation of ESR would help the region to achieve the potential process changes and efficiencies that are needed.

ESR was unfamiliar to some, so seeing how the functionality would be an enabler to their Trusts realising significant efficiencies through Streamlining was very helpful.  Across the STP there are multiple systems in use. Having the opportunity to work directly with the key ESR managers meant questions could be asked, ideas shared, and action plans created.  Regardless of third-party systems, ESR is the portal for which most data sharing will happen, and our summit was the perfect platform to discuss experiences across the organisations and agree how we could work as a collective to ensure our success. 

Since the summit, Sorcha and fellow Functional Account Manager Amanda Lowdon have delivered the ‘Enabling IAT Workshop’ - mirrored from the same workshop in our neighbouring STP; West Yorkshire and Harrogate.  Recruitment and L&D teams were educated about the ESR pre-hire IAT process through technical presentations, collective discussion and local Trust process mapping which helped improve understanding of the key functionality available.

By giving Trusts the opportunity to understand the benefits of Streamlining, the role of ESR in Streamlining and having key technical support from the ESR team has propelled each Trust towards achieving their goals in line with Streamlining, creating a forward thinking network of collective peer support that has subsequently filtered into our individual work-stream operational groups.

Third largest CCG embraces transformation using ESR

Micki Attridge, Senior Workforce Lead, NHS Dorset CCG shares his experience of the ESR Assessment and how it’s helping to drive their Workforce agenda forward.

NHS Dorset CCG is the third largest CCG in the country and a first wave ICS, we look after c.825,000 people with 85 GP Practices, 18 PCNs, 3 acute and a community provider.

Having used ESR since the formation of CCG in April 2013 we previously had only used the basic functionality and had not fully appreciated the full breath of functionality available.  The 2018/19 ESR Assessment (in July 2018), enabled us, for the first time, to focus on the solution and fully understand the potential benefits it has to offer our organisation and our workforce. The Assessment helped us to benchmark where we were and to focus our minds on what we needed to do to implement Employee Self Service, Supervisor Self Service and Manager Self Service in time for 1 April 2019.

Our 2018/19 Assessment gave us the impetus to embark on our own ESR journey, undertaking a full review of our use of the system and the processes we administered. This enabled us to identify how we could maximise on the productivity and efficiency savings that were available through fully optimising our use of the solution.

As a result of the Assessment, we have successfully implemented Employee Self Service, with 85% of people having logged in within the last 3 months, and switched off printed payslips. We also have in excess of 90% of supervisors and managers logging in regularly, which is an encouraging sign for our future plans to implement Manager Self Service.  We have also saved significant time and duplication by fully utilising OLM within ESR.

I’m pleased to say we have just completed the 2019/20 Annual ESR Assessment and are delighted to see the progress we have made, demonstrated in the data provided. Seeing the utilisation figures and regional comparisons as part of our second Assessment validated the CCG’s hard work and commitment, thus providing us with a timely boost to remind us how far we have come. 2019/20 is a bedding in period for us with Employee Self Service as employees move to use the system for managing annual leave, statutory and mandatory training, recording of absences and appraisals, and to view their online payslips and their Total Reward Statements.

We have used this year’s Assessment to set our goals for the remainder of 2019/20 and beyond, where we will move to implement Manager Self Service to reduce transactional (paper form) solutions for payroll and HR by moving them on to ESR.  We are looking forward to seeing our employees achieving further benefits of the system as we make more functionality available and to fully realise the efficiencies to our back office team and the services they provide.

Have you discovered your growth potential?

If you haven't scheduled your ESR Annual Assessment for 2019/20 please contact your Regional Functional Account Manager.  You can watch this short video to learn more about the updated and enhanced Assessment format. 

ESR utilisation on track at Health Research Authority

The Health Research Authority (HRA) is an arms-length body with offices in London, Bristol, Newcastle, Nottingham and Manchester as well as many remote workers.

They protect and promote the interests of patients and the public in health and social care research. Within the organisation, some corporate functions such as payroll, recruitment and financial accounting are outsourced to third party providers which means the HRA has to work closely with these providers to ensure adequate control and oversight of the data within ESR.

Over the last 18 months, the organisation has made significant strides in rolling out ESR to streamline processes, remove duplication and empower staff and managers with control of their own/their team’s data.

They began by firstly rolling out Employee Self Service and Supervisor Self Service across the organisation; this enabled their employees to check and update their own personal information and managers to check on their team’s information and also input sickness absence.  Increasing the transparency of data encouraged employees to ensure the data was correct, thus improving the data quality within the system.

Having Self Service rolled out has enabled the HRA to implement further functionality, including a switch to online-only payslips in early 2019, annual leave management, appraisal recording and managing items through the Property Register functionality.

The organisation is keen to streamline their processes and systems, to ensure that there is less duplication of data entry and that accuracy can be more easily maintained. Recently they introduced e-Expenses for all staff to further reduce paperwork, improve management information and ensure continued compliance with local policy.

The HRA isn’t stopping there, they are now planning to utilise OLM to allow staff to undertake their core Statutory & Mandatory eLearning through self service, moving from their current third party LMS, and in the longer term, the intention is to investigate the implementation of Manager Self Service.  This will reduce the number of different systems and log in details that employees and managers are currently required to use, and ensure that consolidated data reports can be produced and checked more easily.

The drive for improved uptake of ESR functionality has been led by Karen Williams, the Director of Finance, Procurement and Estates who says: 

Making better use of ESR and its freely available functionality has massively benefited the HRA. It’s reduced duplication, streamlined and automated processes and importantly gives our people control of their own data through self-service. Our people need to work flexibly and ESR helps make this happen. The HRA also benefits from improved business intelligence and compliance reporting informing decision making and enabling strong governance.