ESR Education – a new way of working

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the ESR Education team had to follow government guidelines and cease all face-to-face education delivery. Whilst this presented new challenges it also gave the team the opportunity to look at alternative ways to continue to train ESR professional service users.

Working with the NHSBSA ESR team, the Education team developed a plan to deliver some courses by webinar and move those courses with low attendance to e-learning.

The webinars proved to be successful; many ESR professional service users were working remotely and by giving them the opportunity to continue to develop their knowledge and skills of ESR, the ESR Education team had found a winning formula.

The success of both webinar and e-learning methods of delivery enabled the team to begin to plan the post-pandemic education delivery and in collaboration with ESR users - in a series of focus groups, feedback was gathered that enabled the ESR team to deliver further improvements to user education.

The focus groups highlighted that smaller, targeted/ad-hoc educational webinars would be beneficial in all areas of ESR. Delivery of these ad-hoc webinars commenced in October 2021, with an initial focus on payroll hot topics.

Both the formal and ad-hoc courses have been received positively - with excellent attendance as highlighted in the comparison data below – over 230% increase in the number of delegates reached by delivering ESR education in this way.

The focus groups also highlighted that both the BI and OLM courses, whilst working well via webinar, worked better when delegates had the opportunity for practice and networking. With this information, and following the recent lifting of restrictions, the ESR Education Team is pleased to announce that face-to-face education will recommence in June 2022, at the Warwick site - a User Notice will be distributed in May 2022 with dates and joining instructions.

The ESR Education team will continue to review the education being delivered, using feedback from ESR users, SRs, IBM CRMs, NHSBSA ESR team and the Education team to ensure delivery continues to meet user needs.

If you are reading this and think there is something missing from the ESR education offering that you or your colleagues would like to see covered, please contact your IBM CRM or NHSBSA ESR team Functional Account Manager - all feedback and ideas are welcome.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those users who took part in the focus groups and who took time out of their working day to assist the ESR Education team in making these latest changes to the Education offering such a success.