Six Steps: Step 3

Defining the Required Workforce: identify the skills required and the type/number of staff to deliver the new service model (workforce demand)

This step involves mapping the new service activities and identifying the skills needed to undertake them and the types and numbers of staff required. This will involve consideration of which types of staff should best carry out particular activities in order to reduce costs and improve the patient experience even where this leads to new roles and new ways of working.

What are the key tasks within the new service delivery model?

Can the required numbers of different staff with the required competences be modelled?

Can new ways of working be considered and can the costs of different blends of skill mix be measured?

Step 3: Resources >>>

Productivity Briefing Paper >>>

What is this resource?
This resource is a national and international literature review of productive time which has been written by Dr Keith Hurst, senior lecturer at the Nuffield Health and Social Care Group at Leeds University. The review contains a summary of productive time, productivity, performance, efficiency, effectiveness and related literature.

The information gathered is presented following five broad headings:

• Publication's country of origin
• Health services to which methods, findings and recommendations apply
• Methods used by authors to analyse productive time
• Productive time data
• Recommendation themes.

Skill Mix 'How to Guide' >>>

What is this resource?
The guide explains why skill mix reviews should be carried out, looking at how they fit in with both the supply and demand sides of workforce planning. There are some brief step by step instructions of how to carry out a skill mix review within an organisation.

Skills Escalator >>>

Care Pathways 'How to Guide' >>>

What is this resource?
This is a guide to care pathways. A care pathway describes all the activities that need to happen as a patient with a particular condition moves through the care system. The guide describes, in detail, what a care pathway is and why knowing about them is important to workforce planners and the planning process generally. It explains some of the uses of care pathways, as well as some limitations and it ends with a section describing the key steps to mapping a care pathway.

Workforce Risk Assessment Process 2008/9 >>>

What is this resource?
This report summarises key issues from the joint event run by Workforce Review Team (WRT) and the Department of Health (DH) based around WRT’s workforce risk assessment (WRA) process for 2008/09 and beyond. It is intended to inform SHAs’ and employers’ planning and decision making in the context of medium term workforce trends. It also highlights areas of the workforce that require particular measures and which may require DH involvement, many of which are currently under active consideration in addition to the work of SHAs and looks at how to take the WRA process forward into 2008/9 and beyond.

The Good Indicators Guide >>>

What is this resource?
Indicators are a fact of life for every NHS local authority, and social care organisation. For the most part, you will have little or no choice over the indicators that are used to measure performance in your organisation. If you don’t fully understand the indicators you have to work with; if you think they paint an inaccurate picture of how things really are on the ground; or suspect they are fundamentally flawed in some way – you can find yourself locked into an unhappy relationship with a performance measurement tool that you can neither challenge nor improve.

Going Lean in the NHS >>>

What is this resource?
Going lean in the NHS is a short introductory guide explaining how ‘lean’ thinking can be used to improve productivity, reduce waste and lower NHS costs.

How to Change Practice >>>

What is this resource?
Understand, identify and overcome barriers to change’ provides practical suggestions based on evidence and experience to help get NICE guidance into practice. The guide is split into three parts: part 1 discusses the types of barriers to change encountered in healthcare, part 2 offers practical suggestions for how to identify the barriers to changes in your organisation and part 3 shows how to overcome these barriers plus highlights potential levers to help people do this. Real life examples are provided illustrating how the methods described have brought about positive changes in a range of situations.

Step 3: Tools >>>

Hospital at Night Self Assessment tool >>>
Supports users to implement Hospital at Night in a mental health setting. Building a picture of what activities are required and developing new ways of working supports steps 3 (3.1, 3.2 and 3.4).

What does it do?
This tool will help mental health trusts initially implement, or extend their Hospital at Night service and allows trusts to see the impact of progress over time. The tool will be of help to those who want to integrate multiprofessional teamwork out of hours, handover and patient prioritising supporting clinical governance and management out of hours.

NHS Benchmarking Database >>>

What does it do?
Good data is an essential tool in planning your workforce or services. The NHS Benchmarking Database tool is designed to provide you with a one stop access point to a range of acute sector, mental health, maternity and PCT NHS data sources. You can access over 200 different variables and compare your organisation to single or multiple organisations across the service.

Doctors Rostering System (DRS) >>>
Assists users manage their junior doctors rotas, their monitoring requirements and future rotas. Support step 3 section 3.2.

What does it do?
DRS Version 3 uses complex mathematical formulas to calculate duty and weekly hours and based on the implementation of rest, prospective cover and leave it produces the correct banding for the junior doctors working around the study. The percentage of monitoring carried out on the study is influential to the outcome of the analysis. To ensure a higher percentage of returns within a study DRS Version 3 introduces a new feature called WENDY. This enables junior doctors to enter their diary card online which ensures instant update, faster and more accurate analysis of the monitoring study.

The Calderdale Framework >>>
Assists users to understand what key tasks are within the service delivery model and the numbers of staff required. Supports step 3 section 3.1. and 3.2.

What does it do?
The Calderdale Framework (CF) provides a clear and systematic method of reviewing skill mix and roles within a service. This process should be carried out in conjunction with the Skills for Health (SfH) Competences (www.skillsforhealth.org.uk). It is wholly transferable to any setting and can enable delegation to support staff or blurred boundary working to be implemented.

HaNBleep >>>

Multiprofessional healthcare teams across England can now benefit from the new HanBleep software system from Skills for Health – Workforce Projects Team. Trusts can download the software for free, along with extensive accompanying documentation setting out what needs to be done in order to successfully implement the system.

UK wide Competency Framework >>>

Assists users to understand what key tasks are required for workforce planning Supports step 3 section 3.1. and 3.2.

What does it do?
The framework encompasses the skills and competencies required at both strategic and operational level, for all types of staff, including chief executives, directors, clinicians, service development managers, ward managers, workforce planners, and contributes to the building of capability in human resource management identified in the HR in the NHS Plan.

Competence Application Tools >>>

Supports step 3, section 3.1. by mapping healthcare activities and the skills and competences need to undertaken them. Functional analysis maps the activities and their associated skills for a given service area.

The competence search tool enables you to search the database for specific competences. You can search by entering a key word that will search the competence titles, summaries and key words. You can select and browse the various suites/frameworks using a drop down menu or select and browse competences mapped to specific KSF dimensions/levels. From your search results you will be able store lists of competences.

The NHS KSF competence mapping tool enables you to use the KSF outline of a specific post to select and find competences in the database that are mapped to the post’s dimensions/levels.

The Health Functional Map is another tool to help you find relevant competences. The tool is based upon the Skills for Health “Health Functional Map” and covers all of the functions that are needed to deliver effective health care services. It contains a breakdown of levels, starting with broad functions, drilling down to more detailed functions. The end point of the map is where National Workforce Competence (NWC) and National Occupational Standards (NOS) sit and from where you can add them to your profiles.

The self assessment tool enables you undertake an assessment of your own abilities against competences in lists/profiles. Results are shown graphically so you can easily see your where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

The team assessment tool enables you to undertake a skills mix analysis of your team. It can show you where the team has gaps in competence as well as showing which competences are met and by whom. It can also predict the impact of skills loss when a team member is leaving.

The Career Framework tool contains lists of competences that have been have been mapped by Skills for Health to actual job descriptions. They have not been externally validated, and they are not intended to be an exemplars of any kind, but simply example lists of competences which you may consider useful when working with similar jobs, or looking at care pathways.

Career Framework Tool >>>

Supports step 3, section 3.2. by mapping healthcare actvities and the skills and competences need to undertaken them.

This tool is a resource that describes jobs in terms of their career framework level and a range of competences associated with the job roles. They have not been externally validated, and it is not intended to be an exemplar of any kind, but simply a list of competences which you may consider useful when working with similar jobs, or looking at care pathways.

Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) >>>

Supports step 3, section 3 by enabling users to take into account their existing workforce. It also aims to tackle section 3.2 by analysing what workforce is required to perform the designated tasks and 3.4 how users plan to achieve this.

What does it do?
SHAPE provides SHAs and PCTs with a unique and comprehensive, robust, evidence-based resource system, bringing together existing national data sets of clinical activity, human geography and healthcare estate assets, supported by Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology. In addition, the scenario planning features can help planners to determine the service configuration that provides the best affordable access to care.

IView >>>

What is it?
iView will enable NHS users to generate their own reports based on an authorative, common set of data and it will enable trusts to compare their own performance with their peers. It will be an important means by which the NHS Information Centre makes aggregated data available to the NHS.

iView Workforce
iView Workforce is an important method by which ESR Data Warehouse data will be made available to the NHS for workforce planning. NHS customers will be able to make selections, view comparisons, create tables, generate graphs and extract data from the workforce data. It currently includes: Workforce Numbers, Workforce Earnings and Agency Spend.

Workforce census data from 2006 and 2007 is also available. Absence and Labour Productivity data is planned for the near future.

Nursing Workforce planning tool >>>

The Tools supports step 2, section 2.5, which enables users to look at different ways of achieving their goals.

What does it do?
This tool aims to assist nursing workforce planning and help make better decisions about cost effective numbers and mixes of nurses.

Endoscopy Workload/Workforce Capacity Planning Tool >>>

What does it do?
The Workload/Workforce Capacity Planning Tool is a model that has been developed to measure the current national (England) workload and workforce capacity, based on clinical and workforce supply and demand data. Led by the national education commissioning lead for endoscopy and developed in partnership with NHS staff from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, this innovative tool clearly pinpoints the shortfalls in the existing workforce and looks at alternative skill mix means.

Workforce planning in pathology toolkit >>>

What does it do?
Through the chief scientific officer's office, the Department of Health has commissioned a free tool to support workforce planning in pathology.

Workforce reconfiguration tool >>>

What is this resource?
This resource is a workforce reconfiguration diagram tool, designed by NHS Plymouth, to show the current and proposed skill mix of staff in post for any given service, and the associated pay costs. The tool also displays a current and future skill mix index, and percentages of senior staff (band 5 and above) and very senior staff (band 8 and above).

Allied Health Professional: Capacity Calculator >>>

What is this resource?
The capacity calculator is an AHP modeling tool that quantifies current and future workforce/service delivery models, taking into account variations in the service delivery models (eg treatment times, number of treatments, direct/indirect care) and elements of predictable absence (eg annual leave, study leave, sickness absence, etc).

Feedback >>>

Now you’ve experienced the Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning, we’d love to hear your opinions about the resource, and how it can continue to be developed in the future. We’d also love to hear from you if you have any suggestions of further electronic tools that could be used to help put together a workforce plan.

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