OUR CLIENTS

South West London Provider Collaborative: Recruitment Hub

The business case was well argued, but more importantly was skilfully landed with key stakeholders. The arguments presented by Camburg were intuitive, realistic and demonstrated their deep understanding and experience in the sector. Their input is helping the Trusts make significant efficiency savings. We are now better equipped to deal with the workforce challenges we will be facing over the coming years.”

Kelvin Cheatle
Director of Workforce at Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Visiting Professor at University College London

The challenge

Four South West London (SWL) Acute Trusts were seeking to understand the opportunity to transform and collaborate on their recruitment functions in order to drive efficiency savings and service quality improvements.

This was explored against the backdrop of the NHS Ten Year Plan, The NHS Interim People Plan, Lord Carter Report and increasing financial pressures throughout the system. The four Trusts recognised there might be a series of initiatives that would benefit from a collaborative approach. These initiatives would optimise delivery capacity and capability allowing the Trusts to maximise savings and improve outcomes. The renewed emphasis on system working from NHS England highlights the importance of collaboration between organisations which all four Trusts were keen to pursue.

Approach

Camburg created and delivered a business case, adopting the following approach:

Desktop research

A high-level review of collaborative recruitment hub trends:

  • Analysis of key trends in the NHS, wider public and private sectors
  • Identification of next generation enablers to future-proof services.

Data analysis

A high-level review of data across in-scope organisations, including:

  • Analysis of National Health Service Improvement (NHSI) data returns (July 2018 submissions)
  • Internal variation analysis
  • Comparative analysis of Human Resource (HR) and recruitment metrics across SWL.

Leadership interviews

Interview with HR Directors and other senior leaders from across the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP):

  • Ascertained Trust appetite and ambition
  • Developed success criteria
  • Understood the current strengths and challenges across the recruitment functions of four Trusts.

Leadership validation

Leadership review and validation of success criteria:

  • Used strategic fit and deliverability criteria to assess delivery model options
  • Identified and developed recommended approach based on strategic fit and deliverability criteria.

Outcomes

The SWL London Collaborative accepted our recommendations and has undertaken the creation of a single recruitment hub. The ‘hub’ is really a set of related initiatives (see below) that when taken together will have a transformative effect on the attraction, recruitment and retention of the SWL Collaborative organisations.

As of May 2021 the Hub has delivered an extra 800 staff for the vaccine campaign, has over 2000 recruitment campaigns and is shortlisted for a HSJ award.

Hub initiatives

  • Creation of a transactional centre of excellence
  • Workforce planning, recruitment processes, international recruitment
  • Recruitment systems
  • Streamlining or passporting between the four Trusts
  • Talent management and succession planning
  • Place based recruitment
  • Electronic Staff Record (ESR) utilisation
  • Widening participation and engagement
  • Bank staff recruitment
  • Medical staff recruitment
  • Apprenticeships
  • Resourcing business partners
  • Stay interviews and re-hire fast track
  • Pre-boarding/onboarding and induction
  • Rotations
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