Your ESR News

A message from the National Programme Director

As I reflected on 2024 - and considered the scale of change activity delivered in an NHS environment with so many competing priorities, I continue to be proud of the achievements that we have collectively delivered in supporting our NHS colleagues.

Indeed, what I would consider to be one of the best sources of illustration - within this edition of ESR News are great local case studies covering a breadth of ESR enabled capability, ranging use of the application technology – including using the Portlet capability to support local Flu Vaccination programmes and leveraging technical data integrations to streamline the National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP) processes, to specific functional usage – including using ESR to support establishment control, flexible working requests and onboarding using the Applicant Dashboard. All of this is packaged alongside other updates about national ESR services and local engagement - including feedback from the newly reformed London Big Special Interest Group (SIG).

As in previous years, I never fail to appreciate that colleagues are working incredibly hard to deliver high quality care – often alongside many operational challenges and priorities. I am once again delighted with the levels of engagement, continued support to the ESR Service team and local ambition to optimise use of ESR – all with the aim of supporting your People.

Working in partnership with NHS organisations and collaboratively with our sponsors - DHSC, and delivery partners in NHS England and NHS Wales, 2024 has been another successful year in terms of service growth.

I would once again like to thank IBM, our technology and service partner, and colleagues within the NHSBSA ESR service team, who together have worked tirelessly to maintain a high-quality service. Ensuring service stability and security remains, and will continue to be, our highest priority.

ESR System Usage and Developments

Optimisation of ESR has continued to grow during 2024. Driven by our Standards and Level of Attainment framework, there has been a renewed focus on Manager Self-Service in particular. Throughout the year, NHS organisations have continued to strive to optimise their use of functionality within ESR and realise many of the associated efficiency and productivity benefits. Having reflected on feedback, we have subsequently reviewed and updated the Standards and Levels of Attainment – please see an update about the Assessment in this edition of ESR News.

Our collaboration with key strategic stakeholders and delivery partners has continued - particularly in relation to supporting workforce policy in England and Wales - including successfully delivering the various pay awards in a timely manner, impacting every NHS employee.

Ensuring that ESR can meet the needs of the NHS remains a priority for the service team. During 2024, as with previous years, there has been a busy development calendar looking at existing capabilities of ESR and enhancing the user experience for NHS employees, managers and professional users. Some key highlights include:

• In May, ESR moved to using the most recent version of the Oracle Learner Homepage. This ensured that ESR is on the correct technical path to take advantage of improvements developed by Oracle - I am also pleased to advise that this includes developments proposed directly by the NHS that we had been unable to incorporate into the previous version.
• In June we launched the new Leavers Dashboard, designed to ensure that ex-employees are still able to access their pay information up to 90-days after they have left their employment. The Leavers Dashboard is a significant enhancement to ESR and not only supports national policy in relation to increased efficiency - by removing the need for local administration of queries after leaving (such as earnings information), but also supported another ESR strategy to remove printing services (payslips etc). You can read more about this in this edition of ESR News.
• In August we withdrew all national printing for payslips and other pay related information. Although over 90% of employees had already opted out of paper payslips, this change was strategically important and again, like the Leavers Dashboard, fully supports the ambitions of delivering operational efficiencies, removes risks associated with sensitive data and supports an environmental ambition to reduce our carbon footprint during the delivery of Services.

Alongside ESR solution developments, our engagement and collaboration in relation to wider workforce transformation has continued to be a priority. Our role in supporting parts of the Future of HR & OD report has continued this year, and the work of our regional teams to encourage the optimisation of ESR Self-Service functionality is a key enabler in support of this vision. Whilst there is a lot of focus on digital transformation, the NHS must complement such tools by maintaining a focus on redesigning processes using the technology and tools that we have available to us – both today and in preparation for the future. As we move into 2025 our regional teams will continue to provide valuable support, guidance and practical assistance to support organisations on a journey to reshape business processes, optimise efficiency and release transactional activity from corporate teams. Whilst such optimisation will benefit NHS organisations and your employee experience today, it will also support your preparation for implementing the Future NHS Workforce solution.

The Future NHS Workforce Solution

During 2024, the Future NHS Workforce Solution Transformation Programme has continued at pace, with the procurement exercise progressing to source a supplier for the future solution and service. As you may know, the supplier of the new agreement will also take on the running of the existing ESR solution and service, that will be succeeded by the future solution.

The programme has very recently completed the third stage of the procurement process - Negotiation and Proof of Concept (PoC). This involved the suppliers demonstrating how their proposed solution(s) could deliver some specific scenarios and functionality, including: new hires, staff transfers, leavers and working across multiple organisations. Several volunteer colleagues from across NHS England and NHS Wales helped the programme during this PoC stage.

Earlier this month, the programme moved into the next stage of the procurement process, Invitation to Submit Final Tender. This stage is where the bidders will refine their tender submissions and proposals based on feedback from the previous negotiation stage, and feedback from the proof-of-concept exercise. It will take several months for this stage to complete, ahead of evaluation, preferred bidder selection and contract award planned during Summer/Autumn 2025.

In parallel to the procurement, the Programme also ran a series of webinars, ‘Potential Unlocked’, aimed at senior and strategic leaders.  These webinars were attended by over 1000 colleagues from across England and Wales.  Based around the programme’s strategic messaging that was launched in May (Wales) and July (England), the webinars focused on key things that NHS organisations need to be doing now in preparation for the Future NHS Workforce Solution, covering four themes: Transforming; Optimising use of ESR; Data Quality; and Keeping Engaged. You can join the Programme’s FutureNHS workspace to access the webinar recordings.

Chris Price, Transformation Programme Director comments;

I would like to thank everyone who has supported the programme throughout 2024, enabling us to progress to the next stage of the procurement, to plan. Whilst there remains a lot of work to finalise the procurement, I remain confident as we move into 2025.

Coming Soon in 2025

Future NHS Workforce Solution: Organisational Readiness Survey

To understand more about your organisation, nationally, the NHSBSA is asking all Chief People Officers (CPO) and Human Resource Directors (HRD) across England and Wales to complete an ‘Organisational Readiness Survey’.   The survey will launch in early 2025, and initial communications are currently being sent to CPOs/HRDs in preparation.

The Future NHS Workforce Solution Transformation Programme is delivering the survey, and all results will inform the national implementation plan of the future solution.

CPOs and HRDs will be asked to collaborate on gathering the information with Chief Information Officers, ESR leads and IT leads.

This is your chance as an organisation to be further involved in the preparations of the future solution, and your contribution will help the Programme team to provide the smoothest implementation and transition possible, for all organisations.

If you’re an ESR Lead you will receive your survey link from your Chief People Officer () or HR Director (HRD). If you’re a CPO/HRD and you’ve not received any initial email, please contact the programme directly.

Thanks, and Best Wishes…

Finally, I hope that you find this December edition of ESR News both interesting and useful. As referenced above, there are great case studies included that really do illustrate how the NHS is maximising their use of the solution to meet local and national objectives.

On behalf of the NHS Business Services Authority and the ESR Service team, may I express our thanks for all of your support throughout 2024, and wish you a Merry Christmas and offer Best Wishes for a healthy and happy 2025.

ESR Self Service Standards and Levels of Attainment for 24/25

Following the launch of the ESR Self-Service Standards and Levels of Attainment Assessment last year, the Standards have been updated this year and NHS organisations are being invited once again to meet with their ESR Functional Account Manager to complete their Assessment for 24/25.

This assessment is intrinsically linked to the Enabling Readiness workstream of the Future NHS Workforce Solution programme that aims to deliver and enable wider workforce transformation as part of the national people digital collaborative across NHS England and NHS Wales.

Consistent with last year, the Assessment examines the digital systems, processes and culture that exists within NHS organisations today and is designed specifically to help Chief People Officers (CPO) and ESR Leads understand where they can introduce transformational change in relation to systems and processes; this is particularly important to the wider readiness activity that will inform plans for the transition to the future NHS workforce solution.

At the beginning of December 106 organisations had completed their Self-Service Standards and Levels of Attainment ESR Assessment, and a further 108 organisations have a date planned in the diary post December into the New Year. This means that 214 organisations out of 308 across England and Wales have completed or have an ESR Assessment booked.

The map below shows the percentage of completed assessments in each region in England and Wales.

Reflecting on feedback, some new standards were introduced this year, along with updates to some of the previous standards. The 10 Standards for NHS England are shown below (new referenced by *). There are separate Standards for user organisations in NHS Wales.

The 10 Standards were agreed following a review of the 23/24 process, including feedback from NHS organisations. This resulted in an opportunity to refine the standards so that the output from the assessment is driving optimisation in the areas of ESR functionality that will bring efficiency, improved user experience for NHS employees and help organisations to build the foundations in readiness for the transition to the future NHS workforce solution.

The ESR Assessment has been extremely well received by Chief People Officers and their Deputies from across the NHS.

Rachel Cust, Assistant Director of Workforce & Organisational Development at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust said:

With excellent support from our ESR Regional Team and our internal ESR Steering Group and Champions Network, we have been continuing to optimise our use of ESR so that the transition will be as seamless as possible for our colleagues. Manager self-service is well embedded and our WoVEn scores have (and continue) to improve. Completing our ESR Standards Assessment guided us towards our remaining key focus area (establishment control) and opened doors to sharing learning with other Trusts.

Lisa Cain, Associate Director of Workforce Systems at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust said:

Since the assessment last year 23/24 and the revised standards this year has helped UHD drive ESR Optimisation forward, although we use it incredibly well we always strive to do better and use as much functionality as possible with considerations of Appraisals and Employee Relations functionality. During the assessment it was highlighted there were elements of Standard 8 (Data Completeness) that were not being achieved. We made the necessary changes immediately to raise us to Level 2. Following our Optimisation meeting, we have reviewed other ESR functionality which will help us to move forward and put us in an optimal position for the transition to the Future NHS Workforce Solution.

Keeley Cooper, Associate Director of People Services at Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB said:

We found the Standards Assessment process really useful, as it’s made us think about how we currently use ESR and how we want to use it in the future.  It’s helped us prioritise the developments that we think we should be focusing on over the next year and with Steve’s help, we have already identified some quick wins and some longer-term goals to maximise ESR for our organisation.  We are looking forward to how we can develop our optimisation of ESR further. This will help progress us forward and put us in a optimal position for the transition to the new future workforce solution.

If you haven’t yet been invited to undertake your ESR Self-Service Assessment, your NHSBSA ESR Functional Account Manager will be in touch in the very near future. However, if you do wish to request an ESR Assessment then you can contact your NHSBSA ESR Functional Account Manager, and they will book you a date for this to be completed.

 

Introducing the new ESR Leavers Dashboard

In June 2024, the NHS Leavers Dashboard was implemented as an enhancement to ESR.

This important new functionality was developed following requests from the service and is designed to allow ex-employees access to their payslips, P45’s and P60’s for up to 90 days once they have left an organisation. As part of local leavers processes employees should be advised to access and download all pay related information before their access to ESR in that organisation is terminated, but by enabling access to this important information after they have left this functionality not only reduces the admin burden on busy payroll teams it also reduces anxiety for ex ex-employees who may need to download their pay related documents.

At the end August 2024 the central print facility was withdrawn, resulting in a complete shift to online pay related information for NHS employees in England and Wales, and the launch of the Leavers Dashboard further alleviates the pressure on organisations to print payslips, P45’s and P60’s once people have left.

This major enhancement also supports the national greener NHS ambition; by removing the need for printed material and removing delivery and distribution costs. It also increases security for employees and avoids potential data breaches when printed material can go missing.

How does it work?

Once a Termination Date is entered into ESR and the employee logs into ESR, they are prompted with a message to save all pay details required and are informed that the ESR Leavers Dashboard can be accessed if made available by the organisation.

Once in the ESR Leavers Dashboard the employee will see three portlets: My Payslip, My P45 and My P60 arranged as shown below:

Leavers and employees who have moved to another NHS employer are now able to log in to ESR using their credentials or MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication). It is recommended that all employees enable MFA for their account, regardless of whether they are leaving. Besides the increased security against their user account this also enables them to reset their password via this method. This means that the employee no longer needs access to the work email account to reset their password, which has obvious advantages for ex-employees where this may not be possible.

For leavers MFA must be enabled before they leave, and they will need access to the device they used to register after leaving as this cannot be changed.

The ESR Leavers Dashboard can be available for ex-employees for up to 90 days after their termination date and access is managed locally by the NHS organisation that they have left.

This enhancement has been widely welcomed by the service since being launched.

Laura Sams, Deputy Head of People Services at Lead Employer North East & North Cumbria told us:

Due to the large number of leavers we process during August and September the Leavers Dashboard has significantly saved time. Giving the ex-employees access to their documentation after ending employment has reduced the queries and requests from leavers.

Further information about the ESR Leavers Dashboard is available on the ESR Hub, or you can contact your NHSBSA ESR Regional Functional Account Manager for guidance.

 

The importance of using Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process in ESR

The Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process is an important function for ensuring that NHS employees data is transferred in a timely and accurate manner, thereby streamlining process and improving data quality. We recommend that Trusts utilise this capability and embed it into their recruitment/onboarding process.

What is IAT in ESR?

Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) is an automated process that removes the manual processes associated with NHS Staff Transfer Forms - reducing data entry following the appointment of existing NHS staff from other NHS Employing authorities. Specifically, a Portable Data Set (PDS) of the employee’s data is transferred between NHS organisations (within ESR).

IAT should be used when an employee who works in one NHS Employing Authority is leaving to work for another NHS Employing Authority, following the offer accepted stage.

For NHS Organisations to receive the benefits of IAT, best practice should be followed, ensuring that the relevant User Responsibility Profiles (URPs) and Roles are allocated to users.

National IAT Usage

Over the past 2 years, circa 160,000 IATs have been run by organisations capturing the movement of NHS staff. The graph below shows a breakdown by region during this period.

There are large spikes of IAT use during September 2022 and September 2023 - this is due to Resident Doctor rotations between NHS organisations.

The diagram below shows how IAT works when used according to best practice.

The Benefits of IAT

The Inter Authority Transfer capability is an integral part of the recruitment and transfer of employee information process, and helps deliver many business benefits and needs, such as:

• Improves the range and quality of data transferred between NHS Organisations, including a complete employment service history from Organisations using ESR.
• Facilitates the earlier production of Contracts of Employment as a result of more timely and accurate data transfer.
• Securely transfers details of immunisations and vaccination checks at the pre-employment stage to Occupational Health Advisors (role holders).
• Transfers pre-hire data related to statutory and mandatory competencies to aid induction programmes and remove duplicate training and associated costs.
• Assists in paying staff correctly from commencement of employment reducing the need for retrospective corrections.
• Enables the standard NHS Employers Reference to be sent to a previous employer (internal or external) for completion and returned to the requestor Organisation electronically.
• Highlights at the pre-hire stage, in the standard factual reference notification, an indication as to whether employee relations information exists for an employee.
• Reduces processing costs at Organisation level by automating key tasks and reduces the time delay in obtaining current NHS staff information following transfers.

IAT also supports the efficient onboarding of new starters by enabling a more robust new starters process with reduced repeat administration and having an onboarding process that is effective and professionally managed. It also gives a richer and more efficient induction to new employees joining the organisation.

NHS Organisations are asked to review their recruitment and onboarding processes to ensure they are optimising the full benefits of IAT for the employee, the organisation and the wider NHS.

Further information

If you require any additional information on IAT, it can be found in the ESR User Manual (once logged into the ESR Portal) or please contact your regional NHSBSA ESR Functional Account Manager.

An update about ESR Education

Different groups of staff access ESR, from professional service users - such as HR and Payroll, to Managers, Supervisors and Employees.  All users have an important part to play in ensuring that the data in ESR is correct and complete. In order to achieve this, it is vital that all ESR users maintain an understanding on the effective use of functionality available in ESR.

To help support this requirement, the ESR Service offers a comprehensive education programme that is available to all ESR users at no additional cost. The programme, delivered in partnership between the NHSBSA ESR Service team and IBM Education team, aims to meet the varying needs of ESR users, and over the past 12 months has undergone significant redesign to better align to user and service needs.

The following educational support is available:

• The Online ESR User Manual
• ESR Education Online Learning
• New Starter Packs
• Online Webinars and Workshops
• Regional Face-to-Face Training

The Online ESR User Manual

The online ESR User Manual was redesigned in January 2024.

The streamlined design has 42 sections which contain numerous, easy to find functional subdivisions, as shown below.

Feedback from users has been positive, with a consensus that this is now easier to navigate and find specific functional guidance.

Additionally, the user guide is now fully searchable using the ESR HUB search content feature.

The metrics for October show the search function is extensively used, with “Payslips” being the term most searched for at 11,044.  This was followed by “Pensions” with 1,292 searches and “Learning” with 1,256 searches. 

ESR Education Online Learning

The ESR Education team has created a range of e-Learning resources that allow users to learn or refresh their ESR knowledge at their own pace.

The e-Learning available is split into three categories:

• ESR Portal Dashboards
• Portal Administration
• How To Guides

This additional offering is designed to further complement the ESR education and learning offerings, so as to provide maximum flexibility of access for your NHS staff.

ESR Portal Dashboards 

This section is designed to help ESR users understand the different dashboards that are available.

By selecting any of the options you gain access to a step-by-step tutorial for the relevant ESR dashboard.

If you are new to ESR or want to refresh your knowledge, these resources should give you the guidance you need to get you started.

Portal Administration

This section is designed to help ESR users to understand the different portal administration roles.

How To Guides

These resources have been specifically designed to help users understand how to undertake tasks in ESR that they may not have done before, or where they need to refresh their knowledge.

Users can navigate to the remaining e-Learning modules via the pre-defined ESR functionality categories.

New Starter Packs

For inexperienced users of ESR, specially designed new starter packs are available. 

The new starter packs guide new users through the online resources to ensure that they have the knowledge to get them up and running with ESR within their organisation.

Online Webinars & Workshops

Throughout the year there is a wide range of national and regional webinars and workshops that are available for ESR users. Information about these events: dates, locations, times and registration links are all available by visiting the ESR Events Calendar.

Delegates are required to register for the webinars, and the link is provided via the ESR Events Calendar.

Feedback from the webinars

The host was very clear and explained concepts in a structured and methodical manner.  Being able to access these training sessions is truly appreciated.  Thank you for making these events available - ESR BI – Creating BI Content

 

Trainer was very clear and professional, and I like the style of demonstrating then showing the slides for consolidating – OLM – Enrolments and Subscriptions

 

Great webinar and great host - I felt engaged the whole time and really found the live demonstrations useful. It was also great to see them recap what was covered in the demonstration - very thorough. The pace of the host was great, and her tone was very uplifting and easy to listen too. ESR can be a tricky system sometimes, but the host made it look easy and I learnt a lot – HR – New Starters

 

Regional Face-to-Face Courses

The provision of regional face-to-face Education started during February 2024 (see User Notice 3418) and takes place at locations that are hosted by NHS Organisations. This reduces the requirement for users to undertake extensive travel and means that the learning is shared between groups of Organisations in the locality.

ESR offers the following courses on a regional basis:

• ESR Business Intelligence (ESR BI) – Creating BI Content – 1 day.
• ESR Business Intelligence (ESR BI) – Customising National BI Content – 1 day.
• Oracle Learning Management (OLM) – Creating Catalogue Content – 1 day.
• Oracle Learning Management (OLM) – Enrolments and Subscriptions – 1 day.

The regional face-to-face training can take place up to 2 days per month where, for a maximum of 10 delegates, the training can be any combination of the courses listed above.

If you are interested in hosting regional training courses, please provide your expression of interest as follows:

1. Email - ESR.IS-ESRCourseReg@nhs.net
2. Email Title - Expression of Interest – Regional FTF Training

Email Body - please confirm:

1. 1. Your region, room capacity and availability*
   2. Your contact details
   3. The courses you would like to be delivered at your site.

* To ensure an optimum learning experience IBM are looking for host sites that can offer a room with a minimum capacity of 10, to accommodate 9 delegates and the trainer.

 

Feedback from the Face-to-Face courses

I would like to say a big thank you to the trainers. I have been in the role for 15 years and know my way around BI reports for what I need, but this gave me a deeper insight into the workings of reports and what goes on behind them – North West

 

I found the BI face to face interactive training really helpful; the facilitators were so friendly, engaging, patient and supportive. It was so much easier to ‘bounce’ questions around the room and I certainly felt I could confidently shout up if I didn’t understand something.

I also feel there was much more flexibility on the individual sections of the training, so we could speed up on the sections where everyone was pretty confident with and focus more on the sections where one or more of us needed more knowledge or practice on.

I would absolutely recommend the face-to-face training!

Rachel Breese - Workforce Information & ESR Team Leader – Wirral Community Health & Care NHS Foundation Trust

The ESR Education programme is specifically designed to support ESR users at all levels. Our team is here to help and support you to ensure that local knowledge and expertise is maintained, and that ESR is used following best practice guidance. If you want to know more about we can support your ESR education needs please contact your regional NHSBSA ESR team.

Accurate ESR records vital for NHS clinical information platform

The NHS England National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP) has been rolling out to surgeons in England for the past 12 months, giving them online access to individualised quality metrics regarding their own practice. Developed by the Getting It Right First Time programme (GIRFT), NCIP is now available for almost every surgical specialty, and is used by 1 in 3 surgeons.

Trust Workforce Leads can help improve patient safety and clinical quality by keeping up to date records of their consultant staff.

ESR is a key component behind NHS England’s National Consultant Information Programme, an online data platform that shares outcomes and activity metrics with consultant surgeons. While no ESR information is displayed in NCIP, the programme uses a feed from ESR records to identify the Consultants practising in each specialty in each Trust. These Consultants are then given an NCIP account using their Trust email (as recorded in ESR), allowing them to review their surgical activity and improve clinical care and patient safety.

By providing this critical authentication data, ESR is helping thousands of Consultants to access their own outcome data.

NCIP also provides elevated access to Specialty Clinical Leads and Appraisal Leads who are identified using the supplementary role field in ESR. Trusts should make sure this field is accurately completed to ensure access for all those who are eligible.

 Trusts can help ensure the data NCIP uses is as accurate as possible by:

• Ensuring the ESR records for your consultants are as complete and up to date as possible.
• Ensuring the contract end date is recorded when a consultant leaves their role.
• Making sure the supplementary role field is completed with either Appraisal Lead and / or Speciality Clinical Lead where required. The ESR User Manual guidance for maintaining supplementary roles can be found here.

 

There are currently nine surgical specialties live in NCIP, including orthopaedics, urology and gynaecology, and the team plans to include all clinical specialties in time.

You can read more about NCIP here: https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/associated_projects/ncip/