How flexible working helped the NHS cope with increased hospital admissions
Key lessons from a workforce perspective
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of flexible workforce and the ability of national healthcare systems to be able to respond to sudden increases in demand. The graph below shows how NHS Trusts across the UK have been responding to increased hospital admissions by advertising Covid-related workforce shifts, which enabled them to maintain safe staffing levels.
The ability of these NHS Trusts to quickly respond to changes in workload demand has highlighted the following key lessons for the NHS:
1. Maintain a large and up-to-date staff bank
Even though you may not need the extra workforce right now, ensuring you have access to a large bank means that you have access to healthcare workers that can be deployed quickly at any given time should you experience an unexpected surge in hospital admissions. By proactively maintaining your staff bank’s data, you can save your organisation some crucial time when you need the extra help.
2. Ensure your staff bank onboarding process is as seamless as possible
Healthcare workers often need to complete various onboarding documents, sometimes with duplicated information. Making the process as easy as possible for the healthcare worker, but also for the staff bank teams managing it, will remove hurdles and ensure the worker is onboarded as quickly as possible without compromising compliance
3. Join a Collaborative
Joining a Collaborative means that you can bypass the onboarding process mentioned above and have immediate access to a large regional (or, hopefully soon, national) pool of healthcare workers, which have already been onboarded by your fellow NHS organisations
4. Advertise your shifts nationally
Leveraging technology to help you broadcast your shifts to as many healthcare workers as possible increases your chance of filling them; our data shows healthcare workers living in areas less affected by the pandemic were willing to travel to areas that were badly affected and help ensure safe staffing levels there
5. Harness the power of your data
Business Intelligence platforms such as Locum’s Nest Intelligence, can support you to triangulate data from various sources such as your own workforce data, and UK government data on Covid-19 to forecast and prepare for future demand
Last but not least, take care of your flexible workers and keep them engaged! They are, just like all substantive NHS staff, the heroes that have helped and keep helping us survive these challenging times.