Can the current challenges of recruiting and retaining the right level of NHS staffing be tackled through ‘mission control?’

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Recently, reports in the media show the number of NHS staff quitting over long hours has tripled in six years. New figures highlighted an increase across all NHS staff groups in the number of voluntary resignations by some 55 per cent since 2011/2012.

In particular, voluntary resignations citing poor work-life balance were the largest reasons for such departures – with 18,013 such cases in 2017/18, compared with 6,699 in 2011/12.

The NHS data has prompted government and health bodies to declare an NHS staffing crisis, with calls for further investment in staff pay and training.

But what if through analysing and actively monitoring workforce data we were able to spot the signs of disengagement before the resignation letters land on HR department desks and retain more people?

There’s no ‘what if’, the technology already exists.

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Our advanced workforce analytics combine all staff data together automatically finding important insights and informing NHS workforce leaders in a simple, easy to access report. Healthcare organisations gain access to HR analytics to support evidence-based decisions affecting workforce efficiency and effectiveness.

Within minutes healthcare organisations can access and interrogate key areas of workforce information such as payroll, recruitment, rostering, training & appraisals and financial data through a set of customisable metrics within our ‘mission control’ dashboard.

Workforce decision makers can automatically identify hidden hotspots and review past trends and correlation as well as predict future outcomes, spotting the early signs leading to resignation, and then understand the best retention strategies to reduce turnover and associated costs.

It’s reported that health and care services are losing thousands of experienced, dedicated nursing staff who feel as if no-one is sufficiently listening to their concerns and patient care is routinely compromised by chronic staff shortages.

Where there are high levels of disruptive sickness and stress related absence, Liaison Workforce’s Analytics assist in using data from the organisation to provide insight as to the underlying reasons for sickness and can uncover best practice such as better training and education or more flexibility around working hours. healthcare organisation boards can spot opportunities for retention strategies not just for nursing staff but all staff groups using existing data.

With prevention trumping cure, health organisations can also save money by using our insights to improve workforce planning – reducing the levels of stressed workers and the subsequent need for more expensive temporary agency staff to make up the staffing rotas. Improving the mix of substantive, temporary and bank staff against other dimensions such as overtime, avoidable absence and individual employee performance can insure against future staffing crises.

Our ‘mission control’ analytics puts the control back into the hands of the workforce decision makers by identifying the root causes of potential staff resignations and enabling action to be taken to modify the current staffing crises – not only for better workforce but also better patient outcomes.