Development Road Map Update

Delivering the Development Road Map

It’s almost twelve months since we began delivering the Development Road Map; our most ambitious and challenging strategy since the first stages of ESR roll out in 2005.  Starting with Employee Self Service via the internet in September the ESR solution has been changing at considerable pace, with the deployment of the new Portal to our beta sites during January and February being the first glimpse that users had of the exciting new technology that was being introduced into ESR. At the end of March we fully deployed the Portal into ESR as part of Release 34, signalling the start of our provisioning plan.

As of the end of June, 139 NHS organisations in England have been provisioned, giving them access to the Portal and new improved functionality. Initial feedback from users has been very positive, and to date this continues to be the case with increased usage across all of the portal capability.  One of the key objectives for the Portal and enhanced functionality was to significantly improve the user experience for NHS employees interacting with ESR.  Introducing new technology that makes ESR intuitive, easy to navigate and accessible across both a range of devices, and from anywhere in the UK, has further enhanced and enriched the experience of NHS employees. A good example of how the portal has already enabled efficiencies is demonstrated by metrics reporting that 214,483 NHS employees have opted to switch to on line payslips as a result of the improved access via the internet and Portal functionality, and this number continues to increase month on month.  As a result, paper printing (and associated costs) has been reduced along with the onward distribution overhead at a local level. There is also a compelling case that electronic access to payslips, via secure employee login is more secure.

The Portal isn’t just being made available in England, it’s also being rolled out across NHS Wales, and you can read more about the approach being taken in Wales later in this article.  More information about the enhancements in Release 35 that was deployed into ESR at the end of June can be found in the accompanying article in this edition of ESR News.

With a continued focus on increasing efficiency, having easy access to personal data, payslips and e-learning via the Portal - amongst other workforce related data – will not only support local efficiency plans but also enable NHS Organisations to encourage their employees to undertake transactions in a more productive way.

It’s important at this stage in delivering this ground breaking plan to extend our thanks to all those individuals involved in the Beta deployment, and to those who worked alongside the ESR team to develop the user requirements, and later turn those requirements into the solution offering we now have; your contribution and feedback has been invaluable.

Provisioning and Roll Out

The Portal is an essential new tool that NHS HR Directors can use to positively contribute to their efficiency and productivity targets, and more importantly support their staff engagement strategies.

Our provisioning approach gives HR Directors two options; switch over with on-site support from our NHS Account Manager and Functional Advisor teams or switch over as an Independent site, using the helpful guidance and tools that have been developed by the NHS Team.

“Provisioning across to the new ESR Portal was extremely easy and it took less than 2 hours.  All the relevant information and guides were sent to us beforehand allowing us time to ensure that the correct IT infrastructure was in place.  The User guidance was informative and easy to follow.  The Portal was very easy to configure and customise the portlets.  We now look forward to rolling out across the Trust over the next few months to enable Staff to use it”.

Mark Preston, Director of Organisational Development and People, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

During July to September we will continue to write to Directors of HR to inform of their organisations allocated date for portal provisioning; to date a further 95 organisations have agreed a provisioning date with the NHS team.  It’s important to note that all organisations will need to be provisioned by the end of September. However, organisations can request to go live earlier without on-site support – on a first-come-first-served basis, by submitting a request to the NHS ESR Central Team at esr.pmo@nhs.net.

Case Study: ESR Portal Deployment – The NHS Wales approach

Velindre NHS Trust and hosted organisations were one of the initial beta sites and went live with the new ESR Portal towards the end of January 2017. Being a pilot meant that the deployment was done in a controlled way with initial access being made available to the ESR Project Team and then extending to Workforce, Corporate, and Finance departments. In mid-February the portal was then rolled out across the organisation.

Preparing for the go live was just as important as the event itself, with the trust team taking a proactive approach to staff engagement and marketing, giving presentations to Local Partnership Forums, Senior Management Teams, Workforce Managers, Business Partners and the Learning & Development community. This provided an opportunity for the organisation to ‘impact assess’ its Portal readiness from an IT, cultural and business process perspective.

A communication and engagement toolkit was developed to support engagement that included presentations, posters, step guides and other ‘readiness’ tools.

“The deployment of the ESR Self Service Portal has transformed ESR from a ‘clunky and dated’ system to a workforce system of choice for the employee and manager alike. Personal data is immediately visible to the employee to view and update, with the Manager Dashboard providing almost real time absence, compliance and appraisal data with easy ‘drill down’ capability that turns data into intelligence. I believe the new portal is game changing in the use of ESR Self Service; its functionality takes us to a different place in terms of ease of access and usage. It is fantastic!”

Hazel Robinson, Workforce & OD Director, NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership 

Within 6 weeks of the Portal going live almost 50% of the workforce had logged into and continued to return to the Employee Self Service Portal to view payslips, request annual leave and access e-learning materials.

To help increase awareness and usage a series of weekly global emails were distributed around key calendar events encouraging employees to log into the Portal to view their pay slip prior to pay day and suggesting employees view their annual leave entitlement during the month of April.

These weekly emails have continued with messages encouraging employees to access their Total Rewards Statement or check their compliance with statutory and mandatory requirements etc.

The success of the beta pilot has resulted in an agile deployment plan for the remaining NHS Wales organisations.  Portal Assessments have been undertaken with the Workforce Director, Head of ICT and ESR lead for each organisation that included looking at:

• Their degree of IT readiness with Internet Explorer 11 and Java
• Their maturity of Self Service deployment and usage
• Their compliance with transition from Moodle (the NHS Wales legacy e-learning platform) to the ESR e-Learning solution
• Their compliance with ESR best practice and NHS Wales world class standards

The assessment also included a demonstration of the Portal, which without exception was enthusiastically received by all Workforce Directors, resulting in a Portal provisioning timescale for Wales commencing in May 2017 and concluding by September 2017.