Supercharging staff banks with hands-on compliance expertise

Dr Nicholas Andreou,
Locum’s Nest Co-Founder

Over the years we have spent a considerable amount of time studying and understanding the drivers of having a successful staff bank and have seen and helped develop best practices across dozens of organisations. As we see it, an organisation’s staff bank team has a key objective: to nurture a large pool of competent contingent workforce ready to be called to cover vacant shifts at a moment’s notice. For this mission to be delivered, one would need 3 key ingredients for a successful recipe: 

1. The ability to push shifts to the entire contingent workforce in a timely manner so that it can be deployed without delay

2. The ability to maintain a competent (e.g compliant to the statutory and mandatory requirements) contingent workforce on its books

3. The ability to recruit and onboard candidates onto the staff bank quickly

Of course, the first of those ‘ingredients’ is covered by mobile shift-matching technologies such as our flagship solution Locum’s Nest Match. But, interestingly, over the years we have found that recruiting and retaining a compliant contingent workforce (ingredients 2 and 3) can be as important in delivering the key objectives of a staff bank department.

Time and time again we have seen how staff bank teams powered by good, reliable and innovative technology can typically increase their size tenfold. 

Through our proprietary recruitment and digital passport platforms we make it extremely easy for someone to apply to join a staff bank, submit their pre-employment checks and have them processed. Now, we’re able to take this a step further and offer a fully flexible concierge service, boosting our NHS partners’ in-house compliance capabilities, thereby ensuring candidates are cleared to work even faster.

We found that the best way to do this was not with complicated and eye-wateringly expensive outsourced bank agreements, but through having a select team of experts that can be called in to clear backlogs helping organisations reap the benefits of an engaged staff bank. 

With that in mind, we’ve partnered with ACI - a leader of compliance solutions in healthcare recruitment - to offer our partner healthcare organisations unique end-to-end support for onboarding candidates and to boost their compliance capabilities.

About ACI:

• The absolute compliance experts with over 16 years of experience

• Already covers the onboarding of over 50% of temporary staff, working with doctors, nurses and allied health care professionals of all grades and specialties 

• Certified trainers and occupational health fitness to work providers

• Has a proven track record for providing outsourced compliance services for medical locums reducing costs to the NHS

• Experts in the field of doctors’ revalidation and appraisal services to designated bodies and appraisal services to individual doctors

When I spoke to Kate Lewis, ACI’s Managing Director, she put it simply:

“ACI are excited about partnering with Locum’s Nest and are looking forward to a long, harmonious working relationship.  We first met Nick 2 years ago at a GMC conference and were really impressed with the technology behind Passport – now Passport Plus.  At that first meeting we identified that both parties could marry each other’s skills and expertise to provide the NHS with a compliant, quality workforce.  ACI are passionate about quality, patient safety and the health and wellbeing of candidates.”

ACI flexibly helps healthcare organisations with a candidate’s:

• Pre-employment checks

• Statutory and mandatory training

• Bespoke (to the organisation) checks

• Payroll enrolment

Our partnership with ACI is boosted by the recent release of our new PassportPlus product which enables healthcare organisations to stay one step ahead of their workforce compliance by automating recruitment and onboarding flows. Using PassportPlus, admin teams are able to digitally manage recruitment processes from beginning to end, have full control and choice of candidates through the NHS-compliant 'digital passport' and securely store employment documents and set expiry alerts – great for maintaining the compliance of substantive and contingent workforce.

With the brand new PassportPlus-ACI service, healthcare organisations will be able to:

• Significantly reduce the administrative burden on admin teams associated with pre-employment checks for new bank requests

• Streamline and speed-up onboarding of new bank members, enabling them to start covering shifts quicker

• Leverage information already available on the Locum’s Nest Digital Passport and avoid duplication of work

As our Head of Operations, Maria Elisseou, the architect behind this pioneering collaboration, earlier said to me

“For me, creating a fantastic end-to-end service for our NHS partners was an absolute priority. Our technology products, Locum’s Nest Match and PassportPlus, do a great job at inviting healthcare professionals to express interest in joining staff banks and provide an even better way for them to find, book and work bank shifts. Now with our unique work with ACI, the often labour-intensive staff bank onboarding process is made super-simple without the excess cost.”

You can discover our PassportPlus product here or request to receive additional information about this partnership here.