Six months ago the perceived need to have NHS experience was constraining the recruitment of commissioning professionals. This situation is repeated within the HR function where for instance knowledge of IT systems such as ESR is much sought after.
As Nigel Taylor, Director of Personnel and Organisational Development at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundations Trust, told Badenoch & Clark’s Connections magazine: “We operate in a highly regulated and high risk environment under intense public scrutiny, so no part of the NHS can afford to drop its standards. Where we use temporary staff, we’re looking for healthcare backgrounds and an understanding of the ethos by which we operate.”
The NHS is struggling more than most to attract and keep a hold of the best interim talent
But the public sector has long been a perceived poor relation in the pay stakes. And with pay bands for fixed term contractors in the NHS not quite matching up to private sector or even central government scaling, the NHS is struggling more than most to attract and keep a hold of the best interim talent.
Despite today’s strong desire for job security and the NHS’s vocational culture, HR professionals are being lured to other sectors by higher rates and remain reluctant to return to the fold.
A strict recruitment framework means that the NHS has a limited pool of suitably experienced candidates to consider. As HR interims have chosen to defect, often mid-project as has been the case across NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework implementation for instance, this community of interested professionals has dwindled further.
Being more flexible about the skills, knowledge and experience needed for an HR role will undoubtedly help NHS recruiters to secure replacement hires more easily. Measures such as providing systems training within the induction process would help satisfy the practical need for NHS-specific knowledge, while being able to recruit the best possible interim for the job based on deliverables. But longer-term questions about retention and attractiveness will persist.
