NHS England and NHS Improvement has committed to ‘support every NHS employer to streamline their induction and onboarding processes to reduce duplication and to recognise previous training and skills passported from previous employers.’ This commitment in the NHS Long Term Plan and the Interim NHS People Plan forms part of the core aim of making the NHS the best place to work and creating a more agile, flexible workforce through improving people practices.
A large proportion of the NHS workforce move from one NHS organisation to another during their career, and many work in more than one organisation at the same time. NHS England and NHS Improvement, in partnership with Health Education England, are leading on a national piece of work, titled enabling staff movements, that will improve staff experience by avoiding duplication and ensuring employment, deployment and induction practices are tailored to the needs of our staff.
The benefits of implementing streamlined processes to enable staff movements include:
- reduced overall time to hire successful candidates
vacancies filled quicker, meaning less reliance on temporary or agency staff
- improved quality of data through increased use of the Electronic Staff Records (ESR) system
- reduced duplication of mandatory and statutory training
- reduced risk through more robust pre-employment checks
- improved staff experience, which in turn can improve patient care
- savings in both time and money, increasing productivity.
The enabling staff movements initiative builds on the significant learning, good practice and achievements delivered by the NHS Streamlining programme, which was led by NHS Employers and took place between 2017 and 2020. The programme was a collaboration of regional and system-level initiatives and took positive steps to understand and overcome barriers, while enhancing and making best use of national systems such as ESR and the Core Skills Training Framework.
These pages bring together the information you need to help you understand and enable staff movements. This includes the NHS Employers Streamlining Resource Hub which contains guidance, case studies and resources. Further information on enabling staff movements is also available in the doctors in training and staff passporting section and from other key stakeholders including ESR, NHS Jobs and the Skills for Health Core Skills Training Framework.