Enhancing the ESR Experience
This year we have continued our focus on improving usability for NHS employees, managers and professional users, while continuing to collaborate with strategic partners to support national workforce priorities. Highlights include:
January: Improved Support for Leavers
The Leavers Dashboard was enhanced with a new P11D portlet, enabling leavers to access all pay-related data electronically. This upgrade improves the user experience and supports the NHS ambition to reduce reliance on paper.
June: Accelerating Socio-economic Background (SEB) Data Collection
We launched a new SEB portlet to make the declaration process more visible and efficient. Before launch, only 900 employees recorded their data over three months; since implementation, more than 18,500 declarations have been made in just five months. Faster and more comprehensive data will help organisations identify and remove barriers to opportunity, improving the experience for current and future NHS staff.
September: Strengthening Data Quality and Security
We amended the Applicant Purge process to increase its effectiveness. The change enables organisations to remove outdated records that can cause duplication and reporting errors, while also strengthening security by closing inactive accounts. Since the change, 170,000 additional applicant records have been purged.
Pay Awards and Pension Updates Delivered on Time
Throughout the year, multiple pay awards were delivered successfully across the NHS. Updates were also made to Total Reward Statements in line with the McCloud remedy, helping eligible pension scheme members to make informed retirement choices.
Improving Workforce Intelligence
We delivered a wide range of enhancements across the ESR Business Intelligence dashboards to reflect user needs, improve data quality and enable more informed workforce decision-making.
Behind the Scenes: Technical Improvements
Not all improvements are immediately visible to users, but technical changes are critical to ensure ESR remains reliable, secure and ready for future development.
Streamlining ESR Content Management
In June we introduced a streamlined approach to updating content on the ESR Hub and Portal by removing the Liferay content staging servers. This has simplified the system architecture, reduced complexity and improved deployment efficiency for content updates.
These enhancements demonstrate our continued commitment to supporting the NHS workforce through a modern, secure and responsive national ESR service. We look forward to building on this progress in 2026.