Your ESR News

Annual round up by the National Programme Director

As I once again reflect on the year and draft my annual round-up for the December edition of ESR News, it is with great pride that I am able to reference key highlights from what has been an extraordinary year for us all.

First and foremost, I would like to express thanks to all NHS organisations for your continued commitment to embracing the ESR service – as I reference later in this article, growth in ESR usage has been staggering.

I would also like to thank IBM, our technology and service partner, and colleagues within the NHSBSA ESR team, who together, have maintained a high quality service – indeed, possibly more relevant than anytime previously, it is worth reminding ourselves that ESR remains one of the World’s largest and most complex HR Management solutions and service, and this has been successfully delivered under business continuity arrangements since March 2020.

I am delighted to provide a spotlight on…

ESR System Usage

NHS organisations have continued to embrace the functionality within ESR and realise many of the associated efficiency and productivity benefits. We report growth across a range of areas, but two of the key user metrics are:

• Employee Self-Service usage:
  • The total number of users has increased by 15% - reflecting growth from 1.37m unique users in December 2019 to over 1.57m unique users in November 2020.
  • Monthly usage has increased by 18% - reflecting growth from over 827k unique users per month in December 2019 to over 979k unique users in November 2020.

• Access to online payslips:
  • Employees who no longer receive a paper payslip has increased by over 67% - reflecting growth from over 1.03m employee payslips in December 2019 to over 1.7m employee payslips in November 2020.

If you haven’t already looked at our helpful resources for switching to online payslips please visit the ESR Hub; additionally, there is a thought provoking video that demonstrates the environmental impact of paper payslips - it’s worth a watch (if I may say so!) and illustrates how individual organisation or employee decisions can have a material impact when we consider the scale of the NHS.

ESR Developments

Consistent with previous years, we have continued to work with policy colleagues and users of the service to enhance the functionality within ESR. In addition to changes made to support the COVID response, a small number of examples include:

• Developments to the applicant dashboard so as to further support on-boarding – more on this later;
• Additional automation to the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process when a new applicant is created;
• Conflict of Interest recording and reporting capability (designed in partnership with NHS England/Improvement), and
• Introducing enhanced interface technologies in the form of Application Programming Interface (APIs), so as to further support system interoperability.

Service Performance

As noted earlier, ESR remains one of the largest and most complex systems of its kind in the World – reflecting both the scale and complexity of the NHS and terms and conditions of service.  

ESR has many Key Performance Indicators, including payment accuracy and payment timeliness – both of which have been consistently achieved throughout the year. Whilst I fully appreciate there have been a small number of system issues and unplanned service unavailability – something that the ESR Service teams work hard to avoid and/or minimise, the overarching achievement of such KPIs in normal working conditions is testament to the hard work and effort that goes in to delivering such a complex service, but when we overlay the unprecedented conditions introduced by COVID, this really is a sterling example of service discipline…and of course, ultimately, this has ensured NHS employees have continued to be paid on time, accurately - as is to be expected.

How NHSBSA supported the NHS during the pandemic

Consistent with many organisations, NHSBSA has been instrumental in stepping up services to support the NHS as we manage the greatest public health challenge in a generation.

Gordon Coyne, NHSBSA Director of NHS Workforce Services, was asked to lead the NHSX People Cell, in collaboration with colleagues from many partner organisations, to explore how existing or new services could be developed to help the NHS deliver care in the ever-changing and challenging environment. Gordon comments:

Over 25 services were established or enhanced via digital solutions as a result of working together with colleagues from DHSC, NHS E&I, NHSX, NHS Digital, Health Education England and through regional teams supporting the NHS and Adult Social Care workforces, facilitating recruitment, staff engagement, well-being and workforce planning. I hope that the relationships built during this difficult time will enable sustainable improvements to be delivered as we seek to transform our NHSBSA workforce solutions over the next few years.

 

As the national workforce system for England and Wales it was vital that ESR functionality could help and support Trusts manage some of the workforce related issues. Developments included the provision of enhanced absence reports – both local reporting and relieving the burden on local organisations to submit nationally, to enhancing absence reasons in ESR to record COVID and related data. Many other changes and services were provided to alleviate local pressure, or support national activity – including directly supporting the Nightingale Hospital set-up through the provision of workforce data. Such activity is a great example of how national systems and services can support both a national and local response – whilst helping local organisations focus on the delivery of care.

Recognising the impact of the pandemic on the daily operations of the NHS we launched the ESR COVID-19 Resource Hub in April 2020. This Resource Hub is tailored to support employees, managers and corporate teams with helpful fact sheets and simple step-by-step guides.

To date, the Resource Hub has been accessed over 467k times since its launch, and if you have not already done so, I would encourage you to take a look to see how it might help you.

ESR supporting National Workforce Policy

During the year we have continued to support the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and be a key delivery partner to the NHS England / NHS Improvement Enabling Staff Movement programme.

One area of functionality that is helping Trusts to improve the experience of their staff is the ESR Applicant Dashboard.  This has been a real game changer in some regions, where Trusts have used the dashboard to quickly recruit to large numbers of clinical vacancies during the pandemic.

In September we featured an article in ESR News about how Trusts in the North East and Yorkshire had given applicants early access to the Applicant Dashboard to speed up the induction process, ensuring that new staff had undertaken all the necessary e-Learning before starting work on the wards.  In recent months we have seen continued interest in the Application Dashboard with more Trusts using the functionality. The Applicant Dashboard gives organisations the ability to engage with their applicants at the earliest stage, by enabling applicants to update their personal information and complete any required training before their start date.

As referenced earlier, as part of our work to further support the Enabling Staff Movement programme we have progressed the development of enhanced interface technologies (Application Programming Interfaces – ‘APIs’) to support the Digital Staff Passport project; and have also developed an ESR New Starter Journey for Doctors in Training (DiT).  The New Starter Journey is designed to outline a simple 10-step process for all new starters, describing how to use the ESR solution to its maximum potential, thereby helping organisations provide the best experience for their new starters.

To further streamline this process for DiT we are working in partnership with colleagues in Health Education England to develop a bi-directional interface between ESR and the Training Information System (TIS), providing the ability to seamlessly transfer data.  You can read more about this project in this edition of ESR News and you can access all of our Enabling Staff Movement resources, including a new DiT checklist by visiting http://www.discover.esr.nhs.uk/nhs-people-plan.

In July NHS England published the ‘We are the NHS: People Plan 2020/21 - action for us all’.  Building on the interim People Plan it sets out actions to support transformation across the whole NHS, with one of the objectives to overhaul recruitment and promotion practices across the NHS. 

By providing functionality that enables staff to easily move from one NHS organisation to another, ESR can support NHS organisations to meet the challenge of having a more mobile, flexible and agile workforce. This supports recruitment for Doctors in Training as well as wider NHS recruitment by:

• Enabling a more robust new starter process with reduced repeated administration;
• Enabling employment records to be updated online instead of using paper forms;
• Having an on-boarding process that is efficient and actively managed; and
• Having previous training and skills records recognised and transferred.

If you would like to explore how ESR can help you to deliver parts of the NHS People Plan, please read our response to the NHS People Plan paper or talk to your Regional Functional Account Manager.

Future Planning…Transformation of ESR Services  

The ESR Service has been in operation since 2004, with all organisations having implemented by April 2008. ESR remains critical to the delivery of NHS Pay and HR management and policy. Following a recent technology and application review – including market feedback, a strategy has been agreed that enables a programme of transformation discovery to be completed. In order to deliver this programme, the ESR service contract with IBM has recently been extended to August-2025, so as to safeguard the ESR service whilst we undertake the following:

• ESR Discovery – this discovery project will assess the ongoing and future needs of the ESR service. Planned to start in late January 2021 and run for circa 12-16 weeks, this discovery will seek user and stakeholder feedback so as to provide a baseline of requirements to take forward.
• Alpha and Beta stages – using the discovery findings, an assessment of technology and application options will be undertaken. Planned to start in spring 2021 and be completed no later than summer 2022, this activity will seek to identify a best fit solution that meets the needs of the NHS and emerging integrated care policies.
• Service Commission – depending on the outcome of the Alpha and Beta stages, a period of two-years has been planned, from summer 2022 to summer 2024 to ensure all contracts are in place to enable planning for the transition and transformation of service by August 2025 and beyond.

In addition, you may be aware that NHS England/ NHS Improvement are in the process of progressing an ‘Integrated ERP Discovery’ – exploring opportunities and benefits of having greater integration between HR and Finance systems. NHSBSA is supporting this review, and the findings (due to report early 2021) may also inform the ESR Discovery and future service requirements.

At this stage, we do not know what solution or solutions will be identified as most suitable and therefore detailed activity beyond 2024 is yet to be confirmed. However, there remains a clear commitment to the delivery of service that best meets user and policy needs. To this end, ESR will continue to be developed and we look forward to working with users of the service and policy colleagues to identify and maximise solution requirements and developments. 

Thanks and Best Wishes…

Finally, I hope that you find this December edition of ESR News interesting and on behalf of the NHSBSA and the ESR Service teams, may I express our thanks for all of your support throughout 2020, and wish you a Merry Christmas and offer Best Wishes for a healthy and happy 2021.

The NHSBSA Workforce Service Directorate launches ESR Optimisation

Across all regions in England NHS organisations are working with their NHS ESR regional Functional Account Manager to maximise their use of ESR functionality to enable them to realise both the strategic and operational benefits that ESR can bring to an organisation.

With many years’ experience of working with NHS organisations, we understand that the pressures of todays’ NHS can mean that for many organisations implementation projects can sometimes be hard to get started.

Shortages of resources or system knowledge are two of the reasons why ESR functionality is not fully used. For many NHS organisations it’s a question of resources that can prevent them from moving forward with their use of ESR.

ESR Optimisation

The NHS People Plan 2020/2021 highlights the new challenges COVID-19 has presented, and it reinforces the need for transformation now more than ever. NHS organisations have a responsibility towards their people to continue to look after them, train them, and grow the workforce and work together differently to deliver patient care. Optimum use of Workforce services and systems such as ESR can support NHS organisations to do this.

To support NHS organisations to deliver the commitments in the NHS People Plan and to maximise their use of workforce solutions provided by the NHSBSA, the NHSBSA is launching an additional level of support for NHS organisations - ESR Optimisation.

How it will work

Using ESR Annual Assessment data coupled with the extensive knowledge of their organisations our NHS ESR regional teams will be engaging directly with NHS organisations that have committed to an ESR implementation project, specifically relating to Learning Management or Manager Self Service to discuss the option of setting up an ESR Optimisation project.  Once an ESR Optimisation project has been agreed the NHS ESR Functional Account Manager will oversee the project commencement and support the organisation through to successful completion.

A new team of Optimisation Leads and project support roles within NHSBSA’s Workforce Services Directorate are being made available specifically to enable us to offer this additional project support, initially until March 2022.

We’ll get to know your organisation’s needs

A dedicated team of experts including your NHS ESR Functional Account Manager, ESR Implementation Advisor and a new resource of NHSBSA Optimisation Leads will work with you to understand how ESR Optimisation can support you to successfully deliver ESR projects.

Whether its project management expertise or specialist technical ESR help required, ESR Optimisation will be able to help you.

We assist the transformation

Our objective is to help your organisation realise the benefits and efficiencies that ESR can give you.  We will equip you with the tools needed to optimise recruitment and HR processes, empower your managers and improve workforce planning.

Our expert technical help and interim resource boost will empower your organisation to get the most out of ESR, the system that you rely on.

We prepare you for the future

Before project closure, we will make sure your organisation has the system knowledge and skills needed to hit the ground running and continue transforming without us.

We’ve piloted this

In recent months we have been working with a small number of NHS organisations to pilot ESR Optimisation.   We have worked with First Community Healthcare NHS Trust, Airedale NHS Trust, the Royal Free NHS Trust and the Isle of Wight NHS Trust. 

The Isle of Wight were our first pilot project.  We supported them to complete their Learning Management and Manager Self Service projects, after experiencing a number of issues and delays.  You can read about their experiences of being the first to road test ESR Optimisation in this edition of ESR News.  There is also an article in this months’ ESR News about how ESR Optimisation helped the Royal Free NHS Trust.

 

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) - game-changing technology

RPA has the potential to be game-changing technology, improving productivity and increasing process efficiency and satisfaction.  At the NHSBSA we are on a journey to understand how and where to introduce RPA to best effect, beginning with ESR - our first RPA pilot.

Since October 2020 NHSBSA’s new RPA “bot” has processed over 31,000 items previously handled by the ESR Systems Integration Team, allowing them to focus on more complicated requests and to provide advice and support to User Organisations.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) which mimics human interactions, inputs and decisions by automating the repetitive, manual tasks performed by staff, is now reaping significant benefits for the ESR Systems Integration Team.  For example, the “bot” is now: -

• Adding/removing URPs from user accounts
• Suppressing P45s and/or terminating assignments
• Adding/updating appraisals
• Adding/updating supervisors
• Updating ESR hierarchy

The introduction of unattended “bots”, operating 24/7, has so far reduced processing time from 62 to 13 days, saving time and resource, and resulting in a faster turnaround for requests.  

The impact on the ESR Systems Integration Team workload has highlighted that there could be many areas of work across the wider NHS which could benefit from RPA.  With your help we would like to gather information to help us look at the potential of expanding a centrally run robotics offering beyond NHSBSA services to NHS ESR users, dealing with repetitive manual processes that are time consuming and costly. 

Please contact your ESR Regional Functional Account Manager if you have suggestions for how you could get the most from ESR using RPA. 

If you want to have a more general discussion about RPA and how it could benefit your organisation, contact:

Ivan Barber, NHSBSA RPA Programme/Project Manager Ivan.Barber@nhs.net, 07769 742 508.

 

ESR Supporting the Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport

The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport is a solution, currently in private beta stage, which enables the secure transfer of identity, employment and clearance information for staff that are temporarily deployed to support the COVID-19 response. The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport provides a solid legal framework for staff and bank workers to be deployed into other NHS organisations and streamlines and speeds up the sharing of information, allowing staff to move promptly and with ease. The information is transferred securely by the staff member through their own smartphone, putting them in control.

Why is it needed?

Traditionally, verifying personal, identity and clearance information for new starters is a time consuming task, which must be completed by each NHS organisation – whether employing an individual on a paid or honorary basis. This has been identified as one of the key areas of necessary improvement when processing temporary new starters during the current pandemic. The concept of a digital staff passport for temporary staff also supports the broader requirements of the Enabling Staff Movement Programme being led by NHS England and NHS Improvement in partnership with NHSX.

How is ESR Supporting the COVID 19 Digital Staff Passport?

ESR supports this digital passport solution using an integration process which links digital systems (called an Application Programming Interface or API).

Information relating to employment checks and position details are available to transfer from the Employing Authority’s ESR system to the Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport, thereby helping to create their employment credential, reducing the manual input and time required to create the credential. The employment credential is issued via a secure digital connection via the Connect.Me app on the staff members own smartphone. At the new organisation the staff member will be invited to make a similar secure digital connection using the app to share their COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport employment credential with their temporary host NHS organisation. The information can only be provided for authorised users at NHS organisations registered with the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport.

The link between ESR and the Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport uses personal data input to the passport system to match ESR details and retrieve the employment checks and position data. This information is then presented to the passport HR user or nominated user. The screens below will show how this functionality is presented in the digital passport portal.

The passport HR user will select the correct assignment and check the information, before making the information available to the passport portal and ultimately, the employment credential available to the new NHS organisation.  The new NHS organisation may then swiftly on-board the individual and takes care of local orientation requirements, before they start work.

Please watch this short video to find out more about the Digital Staff Passport and how it works.

How data will be protected?

There are a number of strict controls in place to keep information processed by the Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport safe and secure. This involves NHS organisations agreeing to undertake a number of activities:

1. The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport will require authorisation by the HR Director or nominated deputy, who will register the organisation as the Data Controller for information held within the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport. They will agree to the Terms and Conditions for the Digital Passport and the ESR API on behalf of their Authority.
2. By acceptance of the T&C’s, the Employing Authority is giving permission for this data to flow from ESR and will need to nominate a minimum of 2 local system administrators for the service. These individuals will maintain the digital passport system nominated user records. It is at this stage the link with ESR is activated.
3. To use the ‘Search ESR’ link within the passport portal, the nominated user must meet the acceptance criteria i.e. an active ESR record with the Digital Passport Administrator supplementary role allocated to them within the organisation’s ESR system and their ESR employee number recorded in the passport portal itself. This check will be performed each time they use the system.

Once the information for the passport holder is finalised on the passport portal the individual remains in full control of who they share their employment credential with. This means that they can decide who can and cannot access their passport details.

How do NHS organisations get involved?

The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport is currently in private beta phase with 88 NHS organisations across the England, covering all regions. To find out which organisations are registered or for more information please visit the www.beta.staffpassports.nhs.uk.

Enhancement Update: ESR Streamlined Doctors in Training Interface with TIS

The NHSBSA ESR Team have been working hard with their partners to deliver a suite of improvements and updates to the interface with Health Education England’s (HEE) Trainee Information System (TIS).

The ESR Streamlined Doctors in Training Interface with TIS forms part of NHS England and Improvement’s Enabling Staff Movement Programme objectives, to improve the staff experience as they rotate between different NHS Organisations during the course of their training.

With 183 NHS Organisations across England subscribed to the ESR Streamlined Doctors in Training Interface with TIS and more coming on board every month, technical and functional enhancements have been delivered to Medical Staffing, Recruitment and HR staff across the country.

Interface Enhancements

Given the scale of the interface, enhancements have to be managed carefully, and recentlythe focus has been on improving the Applicant creation process and the Medical Rotation spreadsheet, known as the MEDROT. The enhancements are designed to improve usability and provide the NHS organisation receiving the trainee with more information. There are a number of future enhancements also being considered and these include:

1. Addition of a Grade column for current placements.
2. Addition of Sub Speciality columns for current and future placements.
3. Reformatting of the MEDROT spreadsheet to remove blank rows and unwanted headers to allow for easier filtering and sorting.

Person Update Functionality

The Person Update functionality allows data about employed doctors in training to be synchronised between TIS and ESR. This means that ESR exchanges a wider set of information with TIS, including personal information and address details (amongst others) upon hire. If the information held in TIS is different to that held within ESR, TIS will be updated with the information from ESR.

This new capability makes it even more important for Trusts to maintain their ESR position and person information for Trainee Doctors, as this information will be shared securely outside of ESR. Use of ESR Self Service is a great way to ensure that trainees can maintain their own data, hence Trusts should be taking full advantage of this opportunity and promote the use of Self Service, wherever possible. Trusts are also encouraged to implement and make use of the Applicant dashboard as this is a further opportunity for Trainees to view and update their details at the earliest point in the journey of joining a new employer.

The ESR Person Update functionality became available in TIS from November 2020 with a small proportion of Trusts. Following its soft launch, HEE will continue implementation to achieve full capability early in 2021.

User Support Resources

Following the conclusion of the user communication series - with the Refresh Webinar on 14^th December, the user support resources for the interface have undergone a detailed review and consolidation to provide ongoing support as a one-stop-shop for all interface queries.

Users can now find an extensive FAQ document which brings together common questions received during previous communication events and expansion on key areas. This is supplemented by the Implementation Checklist which provides an ‘at-a-glance’ summary of the key activities required prior to implementing the interface.

For those wanting a comprehensive view of the interface and its functionality, the ESR-NHS0111 - Streamlined ESR and Junior Doctor Interface Guide remains available.

All this and more can be found on the ESR Hub. Simply navigate to ‘Explore Resources’ > ‘ESR Functionality Guidance’ > ‘Doctors in Training’ and remember to check back for updates.

 

NHS ESR Implementation Advisors – the first year

Back in December last year we featured an article about the new NHS ESR Implementation Advisors that had joined the ESR Team.  Initially four Implementation Advisors IA) joined our regional teams to support the functional Account Managers; Nelson Boto in the South, Graz Leonowicz in the Midlands and East and Bron Driver and Jess Brooks in the North.

During the first 12 months, the Implementation Advisors have worked with 90 organisations in England, around 23% of the total number of ESR organisations and potentially 531,585 employees will have been positively impacted by their work being involved in 96 projects to date.

The table below shows you how these projects are broken down into the different areas of ESR functionality.

Annual Leave Assistance	1
HTML Coding/Appraisals/PMP Assistance-Implementation	15
BI Reporting	6
Full ESR Implementation	1
MSS Assistance-Implementation	16
OLM Assistance-Implementation	52
Recruitment	2
Workstructures	3

Implementation of Manager Self Service at Salisbury NHS FT

In September 2019 Nelson Boto supported Salisbury NHS FT with their implementation of Manager Self Service (MSS). This was due to go live in November and would include 3,500 staff.

Initial discussions to define the project plan highlighted that the Trust had an ambitious timescale for this implementation and understandably the team had doubts that they could meet the target date. However, using his experience of similar projects, Nelson reassured the team that it could be achieved.

To ensure that the implementation plan was kept on track Nelson met with the project implementation team every week.  He advised them on hierarchies, possible different types of access, and provided training for the three main ESR MSS functionalities (changing supervisor, changing hours, termination of employment).

With this regular level of activity and guidance from Nelson Manager Self Service was successfully implemented within the established timescale of 40 days.

As the Trust prepared to launch MSS Gary Dawson, Projects and Policy Lead said:

I’d like to thank you for all your hard work over the past few weeks.  As you are aware we intend to launch Manager Self Service across the Trust this weekend and you’ve been fundamental in helping us get to this position. Your expertise has clearly prevented us wasting valuable time and you’ve been able to support us to answer a vast number of questions

Expanding the use of OLM, Competencies and BI Reporting at Humber Teaching Hospital NHS FT

Humber Teaching Hospital needed some support with their use of the ESR Learning Management and Jess Brooks worked with the team to expand their Learning Catalogue, Competencies, and associated Business Intelligence reporting.

As some of the duties around reporting and catalogue maintenance were being redistributed between teams, Jess assisted by providing some training sessions and providing support to the Learning Administration Team as they created new courses and Learning Certificates. 

In addition, Jess also helped them to map their Recruitment processes, so that they could get the most out of ESR in terms of efficient use of the system, the IAT process, and the Applicant Dashboard.

Describing the contribution that Jess had made to the project Angela Brown, Senior Administrative Assistant, Learning & Development Team said: “Jess was so helpful and fitted me in to her busy schedule within minutes. Jess is always so supportive, encouraging and incredibly knowledgeable, and knowing she is there to support me when in need means the world, I would be well and truly lost without her. Jess made what would have been hours of work and getting it wrong, easier to grasp and completed in no time.”

North Lincolnshire & Goole – Implementing Self Service and OLM

When Bron Driver first joined the ESR team the first organisation she was asked to support was North Lincolnshire and Goole (NLAG) who were embarking on an ambitious programme to roll out Self Service and maximise their use of ESR functionality.

This began with learning management; they previously used an external booking system and manually moved the enrolments into ESR after the event. In order to prepare them for Self Service, their entire training catalogue required cleansing and updating so learners could book directly onto classes in the system.

They then required support with annual leave, setting up accrual plans and making sure the data was accurate prior to go live in April.

Most recently they have started to look at Appraisals in ESR and they have received BI training and moved to national Core Skills Training Framework competencies. Despite the challenges of COVID the work has stayed on course with the help and support of Bron.

Lauren Wilkinson, Training and Development Manager(NLAG), expressed her thanks for Bron’s help and support;

Having support from Bron over the last year has supported the organisational developments and streamlining. Whether it be the cleansing of data during the implementation of Manager Self Service or providing experience and knowledge with particular focus on the Portal, Self Service HR and Learning Management, OLM functionality and also Annual Leave, Bron has been an absolute pleasure to work with.

Bron is always passionate about helping our organisations and shares her wealth of knowledge in ESR ensuring that we maximise the business benefits.

The ESR Implementation Advisor is such an important role.  We have wanted to implement functionality quickly in our organisation and sometimes that is difficult when you don’t understand the system, and haven’t got time to research; Bron always points us in the right direction, saving us time.

South Warwickshire NHS FT – Implementing OLM

One of the organisations that Graz has supported in the Midlands and East region is South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust, as they felt that they could be using the ESR Learning Management system much more effectively.

Support was provided to ensure that the mass upload spreadsheets provided by the NHS ESR Systems Integration Team were accurately completed when correcting competence requirements and competencies held for employees. In addition, new Learning Certifications were created in line with ESR best practice and auto-enrol was activated.

The work undertaken has ensured that employees are now completing the correct courses and are being awarded the required competencies. This has also led to a significant decrease in the time taken to report on training compliance.

Hayley Fletcher, L&D Lead at south Warwickshire told us:

Graz has been working with myself at SWFT for the last 18 months and has been an absolute asset to the work we have completed in ESR.  We have worked together extensively on the National CSTF competencies, enabling us to start the roll out of MSS across the Trust which has been a real positive step forward, and we have had some fab feedback from Manager’s around this.

It is now allowing us to open up conversations with other departments and our Implementation Team to look to implement the Applicant Dashboard and investigate Appraisal and other functionality with ESR going forward. 

You never feel like anything is too much trouble and I have felt comfortable and confident to pose any questions to Graz, she always responds as quickly as possible and is always happy to work through any questions and queries I have had.

The NHSBSA ESR Team has recently welcomed three new Implementation Advisors. The team now consists of seven Implementation Advisors across England:

Bron Driver Jess Brooks	North of England
Graz Leonowicz Karen Ledsham	Midlands & East of England
Nelson Boto Jo Stanger	South of England
Ghatera Sadegh	London

If you would like support with an ESR implementation project or could benefit from having the expertise of your regional Implementation Advisor then please contact your NHS ESR Functional Account Manager.

ESR Webinars - your opinion counts

When we run webinars, either regionally or nationally, we are always keen to know if the attendees received what they needed from the session in terms of information and learning.  Attendee feedback helps us shape content for future webinars.

In October and November the NHS ESR Team ran a series of ESRBI webinar workshops based on various aspects of report running and report writing within ESRBI.  The webinars were very popular and well attended, with two of the webinars being re-run to accommodate the demand.  In this article we thought we would share how the feedback from these ESRBI webinars has been used to shape future sessions.

ESRBI Webinar feedback

When delivering webinars we structure content to support as broad a range of experience and abilities as possible, which is reflected well in the graph below - showing the responses to the Intermediate report writing workshop.  We would aim for a return of 3 which is midway between easy and difficult.  A return of 3 was also the most common return within the basic report running workshop.

The report running workshop was in part aimed at managers or those with responsibilities towards Self Service in ESR.  The responses from the basic report running (re-run) webinar below are encouraging.

The aim of any of the NHS ESR webinars is to provide useful content to attendees and the graph below; taken from the Basic Report writer’s workshops, shows we are hopefully delivering content that the majority of attendees find useful or very useful.  Across all of the BI webinars the most common return to the question below was 5.

Across all of the webinars we saw an attendance rate of around 60%.  It is important that anyone who registers for any ESR webinar, but subsequently is unable to attend should contact the webinar organiser to cancel their registration, as this will free up a space for someone else who may be able to attend. This is really important, as most webinars have a limit to the number of attendees that can take part.

Actions Taken

Following feedback received after the initial report running webinar we were able to change the way the sound content was delivered, provided a wider introduction to the event, included a second team member on the webinar in order to answer questions during the event, and reiterated the request for questions in advance of webinars so that content could be tailored in a workshop style format.  This led to further questions being submitted which were then addressed during the next webinars and re-runs.

Future Webinars – attendee feedback

The presentation yesterday on BI Basics was very good, professional, informative & easy to follow. I picked up a few bits which I had been fumbling through in the past. The webinars are a great way to educate us in a very engaging way without the travel. Can we have some more please!”

Penny Barnes, Deputy Payroll Services Manager, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.

 All the feedback we received has been considered and where we can, will be incorporated into future ESRBI webinars. Areas such as including reporting on payroll based data within ESR, reporting on learning data, a run through of the basic terms and covering briefing book functionality will all at some point be part of a future ESRBI webinar.

Thank you for your continued engagement and feedback.