The Pace Of Change

In the December edition of ESR News, we summarised the scale of the journey that ESR had been on throughout the year.  On reflection, 2017 was a major milestone in the overall progression and development of the ESR solution. Since full roll-out completed in 2008, 2017 was the single most important year in ESRs development, from the perspective of pace and scale of change. 

The process of defining the Development Roadmap began in early 2016; later that year, we were able to deliver the first areas of improved functionality for our users.  The on-line payslip capability and access to Employee Self Service from the internet were two key milestones in the Roadmap.

The real transformation work then gathered momentum during 2017, with developments including:

• Delivery of a ‘front end’ Portal for all users of ESR:
  • In February 70% of users accessed ESR via the Portal – my.esr.nhs.uk (with only 18% using the Mhapp route and 12% having used both during the month).
  • Over 399,000 NHS employees have now opted-out of receiving paper payslips by using the simple opt-out capability via the Portal employee dashboard (directly removing administrative costs associated with printing and local distribution).
• Delivery of user interface developments for Self Service – both manager and employee – including the rendering of the Portal and Self Service for mobile devices;
• Expanding the internet access to managers using self-service, through a two factor authenticated solution. This was extended further with the ability for professional users to access Business Intelligence dashboards on the internet and mobile devices;
• Inclusion of alerting and benchmarking capabilities within the Business Intelligence solution;
• Delivery of further portlets – including the ability to update class attendances directly through a portlet (including access on mobile devices).

The last major milestone in the Development Roadmap for 2017 was the delivery of the Oracle 12.2 upgrade in December – by far the largest technical development and release that the ESR Programme has undertaken to date.  This upgrade has placed the ESR solution on the latest version of Oracle software - from both a support and development perspective. The release in December also included significant process improvements in OLM for Learning Administrators.

During the course of 2017 the ESR Programme has delivered ground-breaking technology to your ESR solution; technology that for some users was long awaited. Whilst significant sections of our user base tell us that these functional changes have been a game changer, this level of complex development and pace of change can introduce particular challenges. Indeed, we acknowledge that in early January, immediately following Release 37, there were issues with solution performance/response times for some organisations and in certain areas – this being a valid cause of concern amongst users. As a Programme, we pride ourselves on the change success rate; and whilst Release 37 is very much considered a success, we apologise for any inconvenience that these isolated issues may have caused.

As we look forward, the ESR Programme Team will continue to prioritise and address any issues that are identified. However, issue identification and resolution is optimised in partnership with you as users, helping us to identify such issues early and raising detailed Service Requests (SRs). To this end, and by way of further support, we have published a ‘hints and tips’ guide to raising SRs to assist in better understand how to prioritise SRs – you’ll find it in this edition of ESR News.

ESRs next major release, in March 2018, will see the final development from the 2017/18 Roadmap. This will signal the end of the ‘Enhance Project’ of user requirements. However, the ESR Programme will not be stopping there. During 2018, we will continue to work with users to identify functional improvements for possible release to the solution. 

In this edition of ESR News there is an article detailing the proposed improvements in Release 38, but in summary they include:

• Release of the final developments of the Reporting Roadmap – which will then lead to the decommissioning of the Discoverer tool during Q3/Q4 of 2018 (you can read more about the BI changes in this edition of ESR News);
• Delivery of a new functional solution to replace EDI to all organisations – currently concluding a successful pilot phase;
• Continued development and improvement of the Portal, as we move towards the removal of the legacy access route to ESR (mhapp). Within the Roadmap article in this edition of ESR News you will find information outlining the current position and indicative dates for the removal of mhapp.

We are also planning for work beyond March, with provisional plans including:

• The delivery of interface capability to the GDC and HCPC;
• Working with the key national forums to look at how we can develop ESR to further support Streamlining;
• Improved capability for the recording of apprentices – based on requirements developed with HEE.

During the last 18-months, together, we have redefined ESR; we have increased the number of NHS employees who interact with ESR and we have reinforced ESRs’ place at the heart of workforce management for the NHS. As a Programme Team we will continue to work with our User Forums to ensure ESR continues to meet the needs of the NHS, and as user organisations, there are established mechanisms by which you can support these objectives, including: 

• Use your regional ESR Special Interest Groups (SIG), encourage your employees to put ideas and suggestions forward for functional change;
• Ensure that all of your end users are aware of key ESR information (e.g. planned downtime and improvements to functionality). The portal capability has a broadcast message capability that will be useful and there is also an ESR App that can be downloaded, providing system information and national push notifications. Visit your App store (Apple or Android) and search for MyESR.  Your users can also follow us on Twitter - @nhsesr – where we tweet the dates and times for planned downtime;
• Raise SRs when things don’t work as you would expect, at an appropriate priority level.

Delivered in partnership with our supplier (IBM), the ESR Programme is uniquely placed to provide an NHS system and service that is led by the NHS for the NHS. By working together to better understand development and service opportunities, identify and resolve issues and share best practice use of ESR, collectively we can ensure the NHS maximises its use of the NHS Asset that is ‘Your ESR’.