Understanding the pre-hire IAT process
What do you know about the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process in ESR?
IAT is a key automated piece of ESR functionality unique to the NHS. It is designed to remove the manual processes associated with NHS Staff Transfer Forms and therefore reduces the amount of data entry following the appointment of existing NHS staff from other NHS Organisations.
IAT Workshops in the Midlands
In recent weeks, NHS Senior Account Manager Maria Scott has been running on-site workshops for NHS organisations in the Midlands to help them understand the process and the associated benefits.
It is an objective of the National Streamlining Programme to implement pre hire IAT across all regions and across the West Midlands - with ten workshops already run, there is certainly a growing interest in utilising this area of ESR functionality to speed up the recruitment process.
The workshops have been particularly successful when the audience has been a mix of Recruitment, L&D/Training, HR and payroll staff. This has helped the various departments better understand the end to end process and the crucial part that they play to ensure that the IAT is initiated and acted upon in a timely manner, in order to gain the maximum benefits of the data that is transferred both pre and post hire.
The University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust recently participated in one of the largest workshops to date with 22 people and Otto the guide dog - who was happy to sleep through the event!
Dave Mander, ESR & Workforce Information Manager worked with Maria to organise this during one of their regular team training days and attendees from the ESR & Workforce Information Team, Payroll, Learning and Development and Recruitment all took part.
Dave who is currently reviewing the overall end to end recruitment and induction process for the organisation told us:
“To ensure that our new employees get the best possible experience when they join our Trust we are currently undertaking a review of certain processes and looking to move them between the various departments that manage ESR such as Resourcing and Payroll.
Part of this review has included how we transfer an employee’s service history and training details from other Trusts, the benefits of this would reduce the amount of training we would have to provide during their initial starting period and enable our Learning and Development team to streamline induction offerings to suit the training needs of the new staff. This would also provide the correct information regarding annual leave entitlement as this also links to our e-Rostering system.
One of the most important tasks to get right first time is the Pre-hire IAT’s and we understood that it was vital to give our staff the correct training and support to do this, so Maria kindly offered to deliver some training for us at UHCW and we were delighted with the turnout on the day.
The group enjoyed the workshop and asked plenty of questions of Maria, and I am sure from the feedback we have received that the group found it very informative. It will certainly help us going forward and we hope that our use of IAT will help reinforce a level of confidence amongst our new starters when they join us and use Employee Self – Service to update their Mandatory training on line”.
In another part of the region Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS FT organised an IAT workshop for members of the Recruitment, L&D and ESR workforce teams and Sue Sutton, ESR Self Service and Data Input Manager shared their experiences;
“The training that we received before we implemented a Trust process at the beginning of May was great because it brought together ESR, recruitment and L&D so that all departments can see the benefits of running Pre-hire IAT’s.
The Recruitment team find it easy and we plan extending access to all users. Our L&D team found the session interesting, in that it showed the correct way to use ESR and the IAT process to reduce the need to train or retrain NHS staff as their records move with them. This fits into what we are planning to do with our induction programme and with a regional plan to streamline mandatory training”
The Benefits of IAT
The Inter Authority Transfer process is intended to meet the following business requirements:-
- Remove the completion and mailing of paper Staff Transfer Forms between NHS Organisations.
- Reduce the staff transfer processing costs at Organisation level by automation of the process.
- Reduce the time delay in obtaining current NHS staff information following transfers.
- Improve the range and quality of data transferred between NHS Organisations.
- Facilitate the earlier production of Contracts of Employment as a result of more timely and accurate data transfer.
- Securely transfer immunisations and vaccination checks data at the pre-employment stage to Occupational Health Advisors.
- Transfer pre hire data related to statutory and mandatory competencies to aid induction programmes and remove duplicate training and associated costs.
- Assist in paying staff correctly from commencement of employment, reducing the need for retrospective corrections.
- Enables the standard NHS Employers Reference to be sent to an applicant’s previous employer for completion and returned to the requesting organisation electronically.
And finally Maria commented: “It is really important that organisations understand the real benefits that the IAT process brings and how this can support their recruitment and induction processes, which speeds up the time to hire, ensuring key staff are ready to undertake their role quickly”.
If you would like to run an IAT workshop on site in the Midlands then please contact Maria directly on maria.scott2@nhs.net
For more information on the IAT process refer to the Guidance on KBase here or look at our on line e-learning here
Supporting your e-Learning users
Background
Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust has 1660 talented and dedicated staff who provide community-based health services for adults and children in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and surrounding areas. Other services include district nursing, health visiting and running four community hospitals providing very specialist community care.
Implementation
The Trust had an objective to implement and utilise ESR Self Service for their managers and employees - which was successfully realised three years ago. Since then, the Organisational Development (OD) team has been managing and assigning competences to all staff in order for them to track their mandatory training compliance
Though, in their own words, this has been a challenging and intricate task the process has been guided and supported by Simon Savage, the team’s Mandatory Training Competences Lead. Simon has ensured that ESR is configured appropriately and has also followed up on the automatic reminders which go out to staff when their competences are due to expire; creating reports for managers so they can see which staff are non-compliant in which topics.
Simon and the OD Team administrator, Georgie Shuker have provided a drop-in service and facilitated staff visits to the training centre for ad hoc face-to-face ESR support, which also proved to be very useful for staff.
In addition, the Trusts OD Team (ESR) website pages provide additional support with the most up-to-date guides for staff; ensuring that it is up to date when enhancements are made to ESR.
Deborah Hammond, Learning and Development Manager said:
“Having an up to date website reduces the amount of queries raised as our staff can find the answers to most FAQs via this. Our most common queries are usually to do with e-Learning certifications not completing and these errors – if not basic user errors - tend to be due to technical issues, which we pass on to our IT Service Desk to resolve. The other common query relates to staff who access courses instead of certifications and then query why their compliance matrix is not showing green; so, with Simon’s help we have created strategies to ‘mop-up’ staff who have made this basic mistake and convert the courses without them having to repeat things.
Our current core MT compliance is 92% - the best it has ever been – thanks to the hard work and dedication of Simon getting our competences set up and running as they should be used. The ESR Development Road Map is set to bring us, as users, a lot more change in the coming months, and our staff support service and website will be a very important part of our strategy to help our staff to feel prepared for the exciting changes ahead”.
The benefits of having a dedicated ESR Steering Group
Experiences of The South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Background
Employing circa 4,500 staff, the Trust provides mental health, learning disability and specialist children's services across South Staffordshire and mental health and learning disability services in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and Powys. We also provide some services on a wider regional or national basis.
The ESR Steering Group
The SSSFT ESR Benefits Realisation Working Group was formed several years ago. Its objective was to ensure that ESR was being used as effectively as possible across the organisation. The group consisted of essential members - core ESR users from Finance, HR and Organisational Development, and then optional members – Managers and Admin Staff who were called upon from time to time to tap into their experience and knowledge and gain their support. Under the Working Group’s steerage the Trust implemented:
- Self Service for Staff and Managers;
- Position Based Access Control (PBAC);
- Establishment Control;
- The Streamlined Junior Doctors (Deanery) interface;
- The NHS Jobs interface;
- Competencies against positions;
- Full use of OLM for both mandatory and non-mandatory training courses;
- Recording of appraisal dates.
If the group members weren’t already, they soon became ESR Champions valuing the efficiencies of the integrated end to end system. Their enthusiasm for making ESR work for the Trust saw them score 92% on a previous ESR Health Check, when their ESR usage was assessed by the NHS ESR Central Team in January 2014.
Once the Group had maximised the ESR benefits available at that time, it was disbanded. However, the close working relationship continued between Core users and “all things ESR” became an Agenda item at the monthly Finance / HR meeting. The on-going collaboration and enthusiasm for the system has enabled the Trust to continue to gain maximum efficiencies through its use of ESR. The Trust has gone on to implement an electronic expenses and rostering system that interfaces with ESR. The rostering system has been made available to not only rostered 24/7 services, but has been rolled out Trust wide so that all temporary variations to pay are collected through the system and then transferred via the interface into ESR. More recently the Trust has trained Managers to use BI reports, implemented pre-hire IATs and has moved 1000+ staff requiring a 3 yearly DBS check under its T&Cs onto the DBS update service, giving assurance around their safe staffing agenda.
When the ESR Road Map was announced, the Trust reconvened the Group and renamed it the ESR Enhancement Implement Group (ESR EIG). The Groups objective is to review the enhancements being delivered as part of the ESR Road Map and to identify, agree and coordinate the implementation of these enhancements, always with service improvement and maximisation of efficiencies in mind. This is detailed in the group’s Terms of Reference.
This also enabled the Trust to be one of the first organisations in the West Midlands to undertake an ESR Assessment with their NHS Regional Account Manager and Functional Advisor in December 2016. The Assessment report that followed has further enabled and supported them to move forward on a number of key ESR projects that they want to implement with the support of the NHS ESR Central Team.
The group meets on a monthly basis, documents its meetings, and sends a summary report to the Finance & Performance sub-committee to so that its activity is formally communicated and reported upwards. Achievements to date include:
- Using a phased approach, moved to on line payslips (May 2017);
- Writing a Business Justification to request an enhancement to the appraisal module to support the “Clinical Supervision” process.;
- Increased the percentage of email addresses held against assignments from 91% to 100% by March 17;
- Gained approval by NHS Digital concerning email secure domain for our local email address. The trust is the first in the country to have applied for this status and this will, in due course, enable us to maximise the benefits of the ESR Notifications released in December 2016;
- Has created its own bespoke appraisal template to manage appraisals and talent via ESR rating scales from July 17;
- Will be rolling out the new ESR Portal to all employees by the end of August 2017. Internet users are already accessing the new landing page;
- Has reviewed its recruitment processes in order to undertake the pre hire IAT process at the applicant stage, to support their time to hire and induction timelines.
Conclusion
“As ESR is the single workforce system for our organisation, setting up a working group with representatives from different areas of the Trust was a must do for us. The result is that we maximise the opportunities and benefits from the recent and forthcoming changes to the system. The quality of workforce related data and processes are improved, releasing efficiencies and redirecting as many resources as possible towards front line patient care”.
Belinda Lucas – ESR Lead & Pay Services Manager