Key people data identifies £1,043,000 cost saving opportunity at Trust
Liaison Workforce began working with Stockport NHS Foundation Trust to provide the Trust’s HR team and managers with a flexible digital platform in order to deliver learning and development innovation, as well as people support.
Liaison Workforce began working with Stockport NHS Foundation Trust to provide the Trust’s HR team and managers with a flexible digital platform in order to deliver learning and development innovation, as well as people support.
The Trust aims to be more proactive by gaining earlier visibility of data and focussing on
these goals:
- Reach a larger audience for learning and development needs.
- Support a new approach to coaching and mentoring.
- Identify internal mobility opportunities.
- Understand recruitment needs and workforce risk planning for absence, retirement, maternity or unexpected increases in service demands.
Not focussing on the above areas can lead to inequality of learning and development access and HEE budgeting, which will result in large bank and agency costs and an inability to get the right skills, in the right place, at the right time. In order to enable fair distribution of the HEE annual training budget, all managers are required to complete a training needs analysis on a twice-yearly basis. This is currently a manual process via Microsoft Excel and email.
The Solution
Using mii People Planning, Liaison Workforce is delivering this project in order to digitise the manual exercise. It uses a survey-style front end to harvest data but unlike traditional surveys, the conversation does not end there. The solution facilitates signposting and generates valuable workforce intelligence, which provides a forward view. mii People
Planning has saved the Trust 156 manual hours of collating data, and 2,434 hours of admin tasks which are now performed automatically.
The benefit to the Trust is an opportunity to retain more key individuals that are at risk of leaving and begin recruiting earlier to reduce the number of times a position is left vacant, which impacts service delivery.
To date, mii People Planning has identified 114 planned new roles that the Trust was not aware of before this exercise. Of these, 60 out of the 114 new roles are now on track to be worked on ahead of time.
This will also enable the Trust to conduct earlier performance management, providing the necessary support that the individual needs, as well as targeted training programmes for those who have learning and development requirements. During this exercise, mii People Planning has so far helped to identify 35 instances of itchy feet with an opportunity to save
£890k and 6 performance concerns with a £153k saving opportunity.
This means the Trust can save a total of £1,043,000 by acting immediately. The digitisation of training needs analysis allows the managers to get an easier, more intuitive experience aligned to current action plans. It also means the individuals receive a more in-depth level of support, and the time and resource spent on driving manual processes will be substantially reduced.
In addition, all data will be stored centrally and updated on a regular basis. 125 managers completed this exercise out of a possible 397. This means the Trust could save 4 times as much in a quarter – a potential cost saving of up to £4million.
How it works
mii People Planning is a HR SaaS platform which continues the conversation by sending digital nudges and signposts at the opportune time. For example, an email the next day to the line manager, raising key pieces of information that were mentioned in the conversation, such as the need for training and courses available.
It may also send information in 60 days’ time directly to the line manager to nudge them to start a recruitment process or to set up knowledge transfer meetings as somebody in their team is retiring. The next time they have a conversation, the software remembers what the line manager said before, so all they need to do is update it.
It also works alongside any existing systems including Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Electronic Staff Record (ESR), by adding value and delivering outputs that the systems when used alone may not. For example, for a future vacancy mii People Planning signposts the employee to their ATS, whilst for wellbeing, it can signpost them to a sleep app or financial assistance information.
Data harvested from the conversation can lead to actionable, measurable support as well as changes as though you have an army of HR people, rather than a one sided survey that is never revisited.
Next steps
The Trust will now work with Liaison Workforce to embed the targeted and focussed areas of work into the people plan project to help the Trust realise the identified savings shown above.
The data will progress as the conversation continues. The next round of data will be collected in 3 months’ time.
The successful deployment of mii People Analytics and the programme has resulted in:
Business:
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust
Challenge
Developing a flexible digital platform in order to deliver learning and development innovation, as well as people support
Solutions
mii People Planning