Completing Performance Appraisal Reviews through ESR Self Service

A case study by NHS England

Background

NHS England is the body that sets priorities and directions for the National Health Service in England. Its work includes commissioning health care services and the contracts for GPs, pharmacists, dentists and local health services.  We employ approximately 5500 staff, in over 100 locations across the country.

NHS England was formed in April 2013 and began utilising the HR and Payroll modules of the ESR from the outset.  We implemented Employee Self Service during October to December 2013 followed by Manager Self Service during March and September 2014.  Our employees and managers utilise a broad range of functionality through Self Service including changing personal details, recording absence, assignment changes and BI reporting.  We were provisioned for the new ESR Portal in May 2017 and have successfully rolled this out across the organisation.

The Project

We have a yearly appraisal cycle whereby objectives are set at the beginning of the financial year and recorded onto a third-party system.  Objectives are referred to throughout the year at regular 1-2-1 meetings and at interim review which is a formal review of progress, 6 months into the year.  Given the extensive Self Service functionality already being used across NHS England and the familiarity staff already had with ESR, it was logical for us to look at capturing yearly objectives using ESR rather than a third-party appraisal system.  This removed  the need for employees to have a separate log in, realised cost savings associated with the procurement of a third party appraisal system and improved data quality and efficiency by not having to manually maintain a separate database with employee details.

Our regional NHS ESR team delivered a presentation and demonstration of the appraisal functionality available through ESR Self Service and we liked the fact that there were a number of different ways to use the system including objective setting, creation of appraisal questionnaires and Personal Management Plans.  In exploring ESR for the capture and storage of objectives we were keen to retain similar functionality to our existing appraisal system with the added benefit of staff being able to access it via ESR alongside the other functionality that they were already using. 

Accordingly, after undertaking some local testing on the ESR training database (TPLY), we decided that we would initially implement the objective setting functionality with a view to adding an appraisal questionnaire at a later stage, once staff were familiar with the new system.

We used a variety of communication methods to support the initial launch of the functionality and as an ongoing reminder of the actions that need to be taken to ensure the outcomes of appraisals are recorded in ESR.  We have achieved this through face to face training sessions, WebEx sessions (live and a recording has been published on the intranet) and used the Announcements Portlet and Local Links section on the ESR Portal to direct employees to the relevant ESR screens and supporting guidance.

Key Benefits

Utilisation of the Appraisal functionality through ESR Self Service has provided:

• Flexibility for staff as they can enter their objectives directly into ESR or attach a word document detailing the agreed objectives
• Retained an emphasis on a quality appraisal conversation rather than a complex system to record objectives
• Staff were already familiar with ESR Self Service so there was minimal training involved
• Feedback from employees is positive because the functionality is easy to use
• Ability to use the ESR Portal Announcements portlet to remind staff of the need to record their objectives in ESR and to direct them to appropriate guidance
• We haven’t had to create any BI local dashboards to report on appraisals: all the required data is included in the national BI Dashboard

Challenges

Our staff have been using the appraisal functionality since April 2017 so we are still in the process of fully embedding its usage across the organisation.  As we are a national organisation with a large number of locations, ensuring that communication and training is reaching all staff is understandably more challenging than if we were in a single location. However, we believe that the variety of communication and training methods we used during implementation enabled us to successfully reach a lot of people. Ongoing support is continuing to ensure the usage of the PDR functionality continues to be a priority.

Next Steps

We currently use a third party Learning Management System to manage our learning activities and we are in the process of transitioning across to ESR OLM for face to face training recording and delivery of e-Learning to staff. This will also include assigning competency requirements to all employees for Statutory and Mandatory training.  Additionally, as part of our talent management strategy we are looking to apply further local competencies to measure placement on the 9 box grid.  The PDR template will then be updated to include competency requirements and enable integration of learning and talent management into the PDR process, further enhancing the functionality already afforded to staff via ESS and MSS.

Further Information

For further information please contact Louise Bodsworth, Workforce Systems Manager on louise.bodsworth@nhs.net