The KSF supports employers to modernise their services and helps them to develop and retain their workforce and engage with their staff. It has enabled employers to directly link the activity of their staff, their competence and development, to employment costs, improved patient care and greater efficiency and productivity. By ensuring that staff are competent to undertake their work, it provides an audit process that supports clinical and corporate governance requirements.
For staff, the KSF ensures career and pay progression and can make a difference to morale and teamwork by giving members of staff a clearer understanding of how they fit into the organisation and how they make a difference to its performance. It shows staff what they have been employed to do, reviews their use of knowledge and skills, and identifies any gaps which need to be addressed as part of an annual system of review and development. It links all this to a single, tiered pay system.
Summary of the benefits of the Knowledge and Skills Framework
- Builds the skill mix of the workforce to drive improvements in patient care.
- Enables cost effective use of training budgets.
- Designs jobs around patient needs and matches staff skills and knowledge to those jobs - improving overall productivity and job satisfaction.
- Helps to address:
- Clinical and corporate governance requirements
- Healthcare Commission's - standards for better health
- the Age Discrimination Act
- Equality and diversity requirements
- Corporate Manslaughter Bill
- By investing time and effort in staff development, recruitment and retention is improved.
- Helps to reduce staff turnover and agency staffing costs.
- Improves staff morale through greater staff involvement.
- Directly links staff activity, competence and development to employment costs, which leads to improved patient care and organisational efficiency.
- Ensures the right people are in the right posts and are effectively applying the necessary knowledge and skills.
- Focuses managers on the continued development of staff.
- Helps organisations to understand what specific learning and development is required to meet both service and patient needs.
- Develop more effective team building.
- Informs and improves workforce planning.
- Develops governance across the organisation through providing clear information on individuals roles, responsibilities and development.
- Uses a common transferable language to describe the knowledge and skills required to deliver services.
- Provides evidence about mandatory training for the NHS Litigation Authority audits (and other regulators).
People in the NHS who have implemented the KSF say:
“The KSF has genuinely assisted the management of performance of staff; individuals are now taking greater responsibility for their development; a major element of our learning and development strategy.”
“Implementing the KSF across the organisation and looking at the consistency of outlines made us realise that we had really variable practices going on - very different requirements for the same staff groups. We have used this as an opportunity to improve our services across the board.”
“The implementation of the e-KSF tool and integration with Electronic Staff Record (ESR) provides a systematic and immediately accessible means of analysing workforce data and informing service delivery.”
“The assimilation of staff onto Agenda for Change pay and terms and conditions of service in itself will not deliver change … the Knowledge and Skills Framework will be the vehicle in which we are able to modernise services, engage with staff and develop and retain our workforce.”