Discover Your ESR - A Trust’s story…
On the 1st November 2018, we launched our new strategic tool ‘Discover Your ESR’. 
This web based tool is designed primarily for NHS leadership teams and decision makers, providing a valuable resource for strategic and operational leaders to gain greater understanding of the overall potential of the ESR solution. The tool uniquely presents the ESR solution in a business driven format, segmented into current strategic workforce and operational business challenges.
Since its release, almost 65,000 unique visitors have accessed the tool. The National Landscape section that outlines how the ESR solution can support organisations in addressing key national directives is a key section of the tool for our users. Split into strategic workforce issues around a wheel, the most visited areas of the tool at the moment are Workforce Planning, Financial Controls and Skilled Workforce. Areas of particular interest also include the ‘Financial Business Case’ section, which provides a breakdown of cost and service improvements available, and ‘Start a Conversation’ sections, where it guides the user to undertake activities within their own organisation that then help to define their journey to embedding ESR in to their workforce strategy.
The tool has been used by our Regional Account Manager and Functional Advisor teams whilst assessing each organisation’s usage of ESR, but the tool can be used as a standalone resource to help Workforce Directors develop their knowledge of ESR as a strategic tool.
One Trust in the South East region has harnessed the opportunity to learn more by using the Discover Your ESR tool to evaluate the organisations usage, with a view to ensure it fully maximises the system to the best possible effect. Here is their story…
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
Sally Spencer, Workforce Information and Planning Manager and Nicky Burgess, Workforce Information and Planning Officer.
The launch of ‘Discover your ESR’ provided us with the perfect opportunity to investigate ways of optimising our use of ESR. Using the questions provided in the Executive Summary for each of the 7 challenges, a RAG rated spreadsheet has been created and a member of the workforce team allocated a business area. We have independently reviewed these, looked at the questions and assigned a red or amber status.
This enables us to put each of these under a high level of scrutiny and identify the areas for improvement.
Leads have been appointed and have been allocated a specific programme to assume responsibility, such as our HR Transformation lead who is applying our values (Assuming Responsibility and Striving for Continuous Improvement) in collaboration with this helpful tool.
We are planning to us the tools available within Discover your ESR to help develop better processes on the back of reading the Lord Carter paper in the National landscape section. The Operational Alignment section in each segment, or business challenge, contains some fantastic pointers to help us with our senior team conversations and the Financial Business Case section has invaluable information that can be injected into an effective business case.
We look forward to seeing the outcome of this project and to fully realise the benefits ESR can offer to our organisation.
It’s great to see how one organisation is fully embracing the potential in the Discover your ESR tool and we look forward to hearing more about their project in the future and sharing that with you.
Have you used the Discover your ESR tool yet? www.discover.esr.nhs.uk
For further information about the tool or if you would like to arrange a demo for your organisation or regional SIG group, please contact your regional NHS ESR Functional Account Manager.