Strengthening Temporary Workforce Control For One of the NHS's Largest Community Healthcare Providers

From day one, the team have been incredibly responsive, frequently going above and beyond. ​We trust and value their recommendations.

Contract Manager

Background

Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH) is one of the largest community healthcare providers in the UK, employing more than 4,500 and delivering community health services to over two million people across eleven London boroughs and Hertfordshire. 

During the pandemic, like many trusts, CLCH found it increasingly challenging to service the surging demand for community-based services. Average fill rates across all staffing groups were low and the incumbent team were struggling to maintain required service levels in the face of exponentially rising demand. 

The Challenge

CLCH covers a very large geographical area, with over 200 individual sites and directorates. Trust executives knew that managing change across so many different business units would be challenging and were keen to minimise disruption, keeping the existing vendor management system (Allocate) and avoiding major process changes in the first few months.

Many service unit managers were also disillusioned with the responsiveness of the incumbent staff bank provider and had begun to manage their own temporary staff directly. As a result, the Trust had unsustainable levels of retrospective bookings and direct agreements with escalated rates. 

The Approach

As the successful bidder for a tender issued under the NHS Workforce Alliance framework, our Managed Services teams took over the contract in February 2021 and brought in a larger team of 12. In the first year of the contract, social distancing was still necessary so regular virtual engagement sessions were held with service managers across the directorate.  Our onsite teams rapidly gained positive feedback for providing a much more responsive and proactive service, and smoothly managed the absorption of services across a new area (Brent and Harrow), onboarding hundreds of new workers. Compelling bank recruitment campaigns were also launched, generating over 400 new bank applicants.  Senior members of the team also worked closely with the Trust’s Vacancy Reduction Steering Group, successfully introducing initiatives to address the use of off-framework agency spend and encourage more agency to bank migration. 

The Outcomes

The Trust’s temporary staffing operation is now transformed, with recruitment and quality assurance processes significantly strengthened and high-cost agency use replaced with bank. The team’s participation in regular Clinical Workforce and Vacancy Reduction Group meetings was also integral to success, with  detailed MI reports providing the crucial data insights needed to guide decision-making, risk management assessments and demand and cost forecasting. Key achievements include:

• Increasing fill rates to 99%, with an improved 90:10 bank-agency ratio
• Reducing agency spend to 1.5% of the overall pay bill, with medical agency spend reduced by 67%
• Eliminating all high cost off-framework and off-contract agency use, and unwarranted agency bookings
• Introducing Direct Engagement for doctors and AHP, achieving 100% throughput
• Successfully migrating hundreds of long-term agency workers over to the bank
• Recruiting and onboarding new bank workers to cover over 200 outstanding hard-to-fill vacancies
• Optimising the supply chain, engaging with 30% more framework-compliant suppliers
• Delivering a highly responsive 24-hour booking service, with 97% of calls answered within 5 seconds