Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning

Step 3 - Defining the Required Workforce

Are you considering your healthcare workforce plans? The Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning can help.

Step 3 of the methodology, developed by Skills for Health – Workforce Projects Team, focuses on defining the required workforce needed to deliver reconfigured services. This means workforce planners must consider which types of staff are best suited to carry out particular activities, which may lead to new roles and new ways of working.

Determining the types of people needed, as well as the numbers, is called establishing the ‘workforce demand’. Planning the workforce demand has to be performed as part of the wider service and financial planning processes. Therefore to work out workforce demand, planners must consider their existing service model and the challenges of changing its deployment and skills.

This third part of the Six Steps Methodology takes users through the analysis of workforce demand. This involves evaluating activities by establishing the key tasks in the new service model, confirming the required numbers of staff with the appropriate competencies will be modeled, as well as new ways of working and the costs of different blends of skill mix to be measured.

Workforce Projects Team have developed a range of resources and tools to help users and work alongside Step 3. These include the NHS Benchmarking Database, the Hospital at Night Self Assessment Tool and the UK wide Competence Framework.