Programme news

ESR - Supporting the Covid-19 Vaccination Programme

In order to support the roll out of the vaccinations for Covid-19 ESR has been working with NHS England and NHS Improvement to introduce a new set of competencies aimed at helping Organisations identify and track the roles of those supporting the vaccination roll out.  The 14 new role specific competencies have been now been made available in ESR together with vaccine specific competencies which will allow organisations to identify those who have completed this e-Learning. 

Role Based Competencies

The 14 role based competencies support the recruitment drive underway to identify and train those needed to help support the vaccination programme.  Organisations can utilise the competencies in ESR by allocating them as a requirement against specific positions making it easy to identify and report on who has completed the necessary training to support the rollout.

Vaccine Specific Competencies

Covid elearning front page

By adding competencies to the nationally available e-Learning Organisations are quickly able to see who has completed the vaccine specific learning.  Currently linked to the national e-Learning there are Pfizer BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca competencies in ESR.

More details can be found in ESR User Notice UN2979 and UN2981

By adding these nationally any individual who has been allocated the competencies will also be able to benefit from the supporting capability in Inter Authority Transfer should they move around the service.  In addition where an employee works across more than one organisation their Competency records can be synchronised to avoid duplication of training where appropriate.

Organisations can utilise existing ESR BI reporting capability to review the use of the competencies within ESR against the employees.  The BI Compliance Dashboard has a suite of reports designed to help monitor and manage employees and the competencies they require.  The Selective Competency Matching Tab within the dashboard contains a number of reports including giving you the ability to highlight specific competencies and review which employees have those. 

EU Settlement Scheme Reporting within ESRBI

Following the introduction of EU Settlement Scheme recording in ESR, the NHS Team has developed a number of new reports within ESRBI which enable users to return a full picture of the EU Settlement Scheme information held in ESR for employees and applicants.  Also included are a number of action analyses designed to highlight records where action may be required based on the data recorded.

The reporting can be found within the NHS Employment Checklist Dashboard>EU Status page.

EU settled status BI

Employees/Applicants Approaching Expiry

The Employees/Applicants Approaching Expiry analysis is designed to highlight to users where an individual has a settlement scheme entry recorded in ESR but either the Pre-Settled Status Expiry Date is approaching or the EU Leave to Remain Expiry Date is approaching.

EU settled status employees

Users can define the number of days to expiry using the available dashboard prompt (set to 90 days be default).

Employees/Applicants without Verification

The Employees/Applicants without Verification analysis is designed to return individuals where a settlement scheme entry is recorded in ESR but there is no Settlement Scheme Verified Date entered.  Users can then follow-up on records where appropriate.

EU settled status no verification

Detail reporting

The detail tables for employees or applicants return all available fields under the EU Status Extra Information Type form.

EU settled status reporting 3

Users return a full picture of each entry in the form alongside a number of standard employee, assignment, position and organisation related fields.

EU settled status reporting2

Recent Developments

As requested by users through the ESRBI enhancement process, a recent development has been made to the EU Status reporting enabling users to restrict records returned in the detail analysis to only EU, EEA and Swiss Nationals. 

EU settled status restrict

In addition, Nationality and a derived EU, EEA or Swiss National column has been included within the detail reporting to help users focus on those records where further investigation may be required.

EU settled status EU EAA Swiss

Future Developments

As with all the ESRBI NHS Standard Dashboards, we encourage users to share their suggestions for future developments.  If you have a suggestion for any of the NHS Standard Dashboards please raise a Service Request and we’ll happily consider it.

 

Enhancements to the ESR Hub

The ESR Hub was launched in October 2020 and brought together information and supporting guidance about ESR and its services, including content previously held on ESR Knowledgebase (Kbase).  This was the first step in the plan to combine content from all of ESR’s digital platforms. 

Since October we have migrated content from the ESR Support, ESR Infopoint and ESR Education Online websites. 

There is a  new page focusing on ESR Education; detailing the content of courses which are currently available via webinar, along with details of available e-Learning sessions - https://my.esr.nhs.uk/dashboard/web/esrweb/esr-education-and-training

There is a new e-Learning page that provides details of forthcoming changes to e-Learning, where to get help, as well as specific information for Learning Administrators and others who administrate local e-Learning - https://my.esr.nhs.uk/dashboard/web/esrweb/e-learning-user-information

ESR Hub eLearning page

Plus a new section designed to help users with access to ESR; password reset guidance, local ESR System Administrator contact information - https://my.esr.nhs.uk/dashboard/web/esrweb/accessing-support

Accessing Support menu option

Functional brochures, implementation guides, and other supporting material for Manager Self Service and Learning Management, designed to help you better understand functionality and how it can support HR and Learning teams will be added to the the ESR Hub in the coming weeks.  Keep a look out for updates in ESR News. 

ESR Education webinars get the thumbs up

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK the ESR Programme was required to withdraw the face to face education that was delivered to both current ESR Service Users and new Users. As the pandemic continued throughout the summer, the potential to re-introduce face to face courses with social distancing measures in place was unfortunately not an option.

character elearning The ESR Education team began to develop an alternative suite of courses that could be delivered via virtual training.  Mindful that being asked to sit in front of a laptop or PC for up to six hours may not be conducive to a comfortable learning experience, the team set out to redesign the course content.

It was important that the learner journey was a positive one, so the content and duration of the training would have to be as succinct as possible, but still provide the same level of detail and support from the educators.   Additionally, smaller virtual sessions needed to be timetabled so that the Education team could deliver the required number of sessions, albeit being able to increase the number of delegates from 12 -16 to a maximum of 20.

Across the education syllabus the courses were adapted to suit virtual learning, including the Payroll module to allow for it to be made available via e-Learning - enabling unlimited delegates. There was also an opportunity for the team to look at delivering “hot topic” webinars to update Payroll Users about changes to the service and to refresh knowledge in areas where we see a high number of SRs, such as Real Time Information.

Events Calendar Education The ESR Education Team relaunched the ESR Education syllabus in October 2020, using the ESR Hub Events Calendar to promote the education webinars, and the courses are proving very popular; with over 300 attendees joining webinars and courses throughout October to December.

At the end of each session delegates are asked to provide feedback to enable the ESR Education team to look at the content of webinars and courses and see how they can be further enhanced to give users the learning experience they need from ESR. This feedback has already enabled the team to provide additional content that professional Users felt would enhance the courses, and the team have told us that follow up questionnaires will be sent to all delegates around three months after their attendance so they can ensure the training will continue to adapt to meet User requirements and requests where possible.

The webinars have been really well received and are providing a good introduction to key areas of ESR functionality, with delegates commenting that the webinars are a great way to learn specific aspects of ESR functionality, relevant to their role. They also told the team that the webinar delivery and supporting guidance and demonstrations from the educators is very helpful and the team have excellent ESR knowledge – which is great feedback!

 

 

South

Solent NHS Trust move to Manager Self Service and use of Establishment Control

Solent NHS Trust has a headcount of approximately 4,500 and is the main provider of community services to people living in Portsmouth, Southampton and parts of Hampshire; providing services from over 100 clinical sites spread across the area, as well as in people’s homes..  Solent went live with Manager Self Service (MSS) with Payroll Approvals and Establishment Control in October 2020.

The organisation established a project board that met monthly, and smaller working groups that would meet once or twice a week to ensure the detail within the project plan was kept on track.

Training for MSS was initially delivered via face to face sessions by dedicated trainers; however this had to change when the coronavirus pandemic meant restrictions were put in place.  An in-house online training course was developed and added to ESR Learning Management for all managers to complete; this had the added benefit that the project team could monitor how many managers had completed the training. Local guides and process maps were created and added to the Intranet with a bitesize video to provide additional resources.

There are five members of their ESR support team, led by Laurie Hillman – ESR Systems Project Lead and this team worked with all the services within the Trust to ensure managers had the correct staff hierarchies and to ensure the correct ESR URP was provided to managers. The majority of managers had been allocated the MSS with approvals URP; however some managers were allocated Supervisor Self Service access.

Previously, Solent made Solent made all changes in core ESR based on a paper form that had been sent to the HR department. MSS has now enabled managers to undertake the following changes to their employee’s records: 

  • Change of Supervisors in the hierarchy.
  • Change hours.
  • Process leavers.
  • Change of employee information.
  • Enter appraisal dates.

Their Establishment Control project was designed to empower managers to give them the ability to take greater control and have more visibility of their budgets. This project ran alongside the MSS rollout with broadly the same timescales.  The ESR Support Team worked collaboratively with the Finance team to review the setup of positions in ESR.  This gave the team the opportunity to undertake data cleansing, closing positions that were no longer required, and remove positions that had applicants linked to them. New positions were also created where budget had been allocated but were yet to have new staff associated.

The process of cleansing the data has helped the organisation to have a clearer indication as to where the vacancies are, which in turn has helped the recruitment process across the organisation.

Solent NHS Trust has told us they have identified the following benefits from both of these projects to date:

  • Rolling out both MSS and Establishment Control together gave the Trust an opportunity to review its processes and make the working processes better. Managers have greater control of the management of their staff and department budgets:
    • Highlights vacancies and if areas over budget.
  • Transactions should be quicker and there is a reduced risk of things being missed.
  • All transactions are auditable via ESR.

Laurie Hillman
Laurie Hillman said:

Rolling out Manager Self Service and Establishment Control meant being able to streamline processes and save the organisation time.

It encourages managers to take more control of staff and be more accountable for their budgets.  Establishment Control will make it easier for managers to see where their vacancies are in their budgets.

Taking away the need for paper forms and using a fully automated system reduces our carbon footprint and the information is auditable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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