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.