Delivering Training during a pandemic

The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care (NCIC) System was formed in October 2019 with the acquisition of North Cumbria University Hospitals by Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.  As a result of this acquisition the HR team underwent a restructure, as did much of the newly formed organisation.

The HR team delivered training in person; traveling to deliver ‘HR Systems Education Clinics’ to groups of managers. These sessions included topics such as:

• What is ESR?
• Why is data quality important and what is it used for ?(locally, regionally and wider health economy),
• Employment forms managers needed to complete (starter, change, leaver) and why we ask for the information we do,
• Supervisor/employee Self Service (recording appraisals and absence, viewing payslips on line etc.),
• Importance of the supervisor hierarchy,
• Electronic expense and timesheet systems,
• Approvals/approver process,
• Counter fraud,
• Scenarios, issues and answers, and
• Where to find help and support.

We found these sessions really useful to engage and educate our managers and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  We ran this alongside individual training for new supervisors about how to record absence and appraisals and approving various claims on our other systems.

Post merge

It took the team a few months to review, align and consolidate processes in the team.  Given the amount of change in the new Trust, the teams were busy keeping on top of BAU and had little time to sit down and re-evaluate everything.

Impact of COVID on training

Once processes had been aligned, we needed to communicate any changes to our customers.  We used our usual channels of communication; direct email to managers/supervisors, Trust news, intranet and email signatures – however, not all the messages were getting through.  Due to the pandemic and restrictions on face to face engagement we were unable to restart the HR Systems Education Clinics. That coupled with the fact that managers were also very busy and wouldn’t be able to spend any length of time in an MS Teams session, we had to think differently, and this is where we developed the bitesize webinar sessions.

Bite Size ESR Webinar Sessions

We started with Employee Self Service to help new starters and staff who had been away from the workplace for any length of time navigate ESR, view payslips, change bank account details etc. 

Our managers were confused as to why the appraisal compliance in their areas was not as high as they expected.  The team performed some analysis on what had been entered into ESR and it became apparent there were data quality issues.  To help managers improve their data quality we ran live webinars specifically about appraisal recording covering areas such how to record the appraisals so that the activity was picked up in the appraisal reports.  The compliance rate increased quickly as managers that attended the webinars knew what was expected of them. Another addition to our bitesize webinars covered which HR forms managers need to complete and when, the purpose of ESR is also included, along with the importance of data quality and how we are measured on this.  There are pre-recorded versions of all our webinars available on the intranet which staff can access on or off the Trust network for maximum flexibility.

Feedback from managers and attendees has been positive and this has shown in the increase in correctly entered information.  These sessions for managers have not replaced the remote 1:1 new supervisor training; they’re purely for refresher or point of reference purposes.

I found the webinars very useful, as a busy manager/clinician it was great to have some easily accessible training that only took half and hour. Easy to access wherever I was, so no travelling or swapping appointments etc. Great use of time would be grateful for more in the future.

Gail James, Specialist Respiratory Nurse/Joint Team Lead

I found the bitesize session that I attended extremely helpful. The fact that they were short and to the point and on a specific topic was really helpful and meant that I didn’t have to shuffle meetings and priorities about so much to be able to attend. They were much more accessible because of this. The training was specific to my role and also gave me confidence that I knew where and who to ask for help on that topic should I need it in the future. I would recommend them to anyone.

Marti Irving, Communications & Engagement Manager

Future Sessions

Commenting on the success of these sessions and plans for the future Julie Thompson, Head of HR Services said “These sessions have proven to be extremely popular and there are two further topics we are working on which should be live in the next few weeks: recording absence in ESR, and recording clinical, management and safeguarding supervision.”

For further information please contact Julie Thompson: Julie.Thompson2@ncic.nhs.uk