Workforce Information

Newsletter

July 2010

Introducing Workforce Information

The Workforce Information team provides data, interpretation and information services to improve workforce information in Scotland. The team continues to work collaboratively with our stakeholders to publish data to support local, regional and national workforce planning. For more details contact David Baird: dbaird@nhs.net

ISD Workforce publications

Workforce related information about all staff working in NHS Scotland is available on the ISD website.

The 2010/11 publication timetable includes information on;

29th June 2010 publication

  • NHS Scotland Workforce - Agency and bank nurse usage
  • NHS Scotland Workforce - Equality and diversity summary
  • NHS Scotland Workforce - Sickness absence
  • NHS Scotland Workforce - Staff turnover

December 2010 (publication date still to be confirmed)

  • NHS Scotland Workforce Statistics – staff in post
  • NHS Scotland Workforce Statistics – vacancies
  • NHS Scotland Workforce - Doctors in training compliance with the European Working Times Directives
  • NHS Scotland Workforce Statistics - student nurse training - intakes and attrition rates.

Key points of the June 2010 release include;

  • The overall time lost due to sickness absence in NHSScotland for the year end 31st March 2010 is 4.75% which is a decrease of 0.2% from the previous year.
  • Comparing 2008/09 to 2009/10, the cost of employing agency nursing and midwifery staff has decreased by 21.2% and the cost of employing bank nursing and midwifery staff has decreased by 1.3%.
  • Comparing 2008/09 to 2009/10, the usage of agency nursing and midwifery staff has decreased by 31.8% and the usage of bank nursing and midwifery has also decreased by 1.1%.
  • Staff Turnover rate has decreased from 10.9% in 2008 to 8.8% in 2009; in the same period. ‘Joiners in post’ decreased by 13.1% and ‘All leavers’ decreased by 17.9%.

Chart 1: Scotland - Turnover - All Leavers - Age group: All ages

Chart showing a decrease in turnover from 2007 to 2009

Workforce Programme: Key Priorities for 2010/11

The ISD Workforce Information Programme is responsible for all aspects of workforce statistics within ISD. The work of the Programme is overseen by the "Workforce Statistics Steering Group" (chaired by Anne Gent, HR Director, NHS Highland) to ensure it remains aligned to government policy, in particular A Force For Improvement: The Workforce Response to Better Health, Better Care , and the information requirements of NHS Scotland.

The priority areas for the 2010/11 period have been agreed in conjunction with the Workforce Statistics Steering Group, and can be found within the ISD Workforce web pages.

Workforce Statistics UK Assessment Report

The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body, set up in 2008 to oversee ‘official statistics’. One of their functions is to assess publications against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Most of ISD’s publications will be assessed with one of the first being NHS Scotland Workforce Statistics. The assessment took place during January 2010 and concluded in February.

Findings and recommendations have subsequently been published (assessment report 39) in May 2010.

Data Workforce Statistics - Staff in post Information; ‘Data Quality – six steps’

Addressing staff in post data quality is one of the top priorities for the ISD Workforce Programme in 2010. The team have continued to work with NHS Boards to progress the ‘Data Quality Six Steps’ national plan. They have now visited 9 of the 14 NHS Boards where relevant action plans have been established and issues discussed.

To further support the six steps plan, ISD have been taking monthly snap shots from SWISS and established NHS Board specific data quality reports. These data quality reports were issued to each NHS Board in May, and will continue to be issued on a regular basis in a bid to address any identified data quality issues.

The data quality reports focus specifically on Medical and Non medical staff with a trend provided where appropriate. The reports will be used by ISD and NHS Boards to monitor progress made on the specific areas highlighted.

As part of this process, NHS Boards are requested to ensure that responses to these data quality reports are signed off by Finance and Human Resource Directors. NHS Boards have also been requested to identify who within the board will have overall responsibility for addressing and monitoring staff in post data quality.

The team will continue to provide update around the Data Quality Six Steps plan in future issues of the Newsletter.

Workforce Planning Community Benchmarking Profile

Enhancements have now been made to the Workforce Planning Community Benchmarking Profile. It is now an interactive Excel spreadsheet that presents information at a Community Health Partnership (CHP) level. The purpose of this tool is to allow the user to build up a comprehensive picture of their individual area, as well as providing comparisons to other similar areas, to help inform workforce planning.

The profile provides staff in post information on all Nursing and Midwifery and Allied Health Professional staff groups. As well as being able to select the staff group of interest, the user can also select the location of service delivery, for example, hospital, community, or combined hospital and community. Alongside the staff in post information are various indicators which have been divided up into the following sections.

  • Demographic
  • Child and Maternity
  • General Health
  • Mental Health

An important enhancement made to the profile is an updated and revised version of the Community Health Partnership cluster analysis. Initial methodologies only considered three key variables to allow for benchmarking, namely population, deprivation and urban/rural ranking. However it has been acknowledged that whilst this initial method provided the much needed benchmarking ability, the methodology would need to be refined over time. To support this, an updated cluster analysis of Community Health Partnerships (CHPs) in Scotland has been carried out to try to identify CHPs which face similar health challenges.

The new Profile, a revised website and details of the cluster analysis can be found within the recently published website.

CAMHS/Psychology

Since the last newsletter was published, there have been a couple of changes to our small team. Liz Jamieson is now on maternity leave and her post is being covered by Eddie Adie. Stephen Simmons has moved on and is replaced by Laura Kate Campbell who joins Lorraine Smyth and Catriona Young in providing analytical support.

Over the past few months we have been working closely with ISD’s Mental Health programme to assist with the development of a new HEAT target for Psychological Therapies. The team analysed the results of a baseline questionnaire and this analysis will form part of a paper which will inform the way in which this project moves forward.

As mentioned elsewhere in this newsletter, data quality is this year’s number one priority for the ISD Workforce Programme. To maintain and enhance the quality of data held in the Clinical Psychology System, a series of workshops have been arranged. The objective of these workshops is to provide users of the system with a better understanding of the information that is collected and what it is used for.

Finally, both of our annual publications “Workforce Planning for Psychology Services in NHSScotland: Characteristics of the workforce supply” and “CAMHS: Characteristics of the workforce” have been accepted as National Statistics publications. This is a real ‘feather in our cap’ and a testament to the continued hard work of the team. As usual these will be based on information at a census date of 30 September and the publications will be issued slightly earlier than usual at the end of November 2010.

SWISS Update

The last build of SWISS was completed at the end of March 2010, as part of this build was the automatic link to the GMC to update registration information and for NHS Boards to be notified by email of changes to ‘Registration Status’. For the majority of employees where GMC registration number is held in SWISS this has been successful. We will be working with NHS Boards and the GMC to identify and correct the discrepancies.

The new post descriptor list was implemented at the start of April 2010.

Workforce Data Mart

In the last newsletter, the Workforce Data Mart was in development and preparations were taking place for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Since then the Workforce Data Mart has successfully passed a rigorous User Acceptance Testing programme and has been moved in to a NSS production environment. This essentially means that the Workforce Data Mart is ‘LIVE’ and available for use by analysts within the Workforce Information Team in ISD.

The next steps in the implementation process are to hold awareness sessions within ISD and deliver a training programme to the Workforce Information Team analysts. The data mart will then provide the platform for analysis to use this to answer Information Requests and Parliamentary Questions.

Work will begin shortly to re-create all Staff in Post information as available within the ISD Workforce Statistics web pages. This in turn will allow the team to produce National Statistics requirements in a timelier manner.

Whilst further discussions around confidentiality and security are required, the aim would still be to roll-out access to NHS Boards during 2011.

Nurse Higher Education Institute Project

In December 2007, Better Health, Better Care: Planning for Tomorrow’s Workforce Today, was launched by the Scottish Government. This strategy set out to ensure that the NHS has the right staff in the right place, with the right skills at the right time in order to deliver high quality care and services to the people of Scotland. This strategy also set out the process for determining the appropriate target numbers for student nurse and midwife recruitment.

The SGHD Student Recruitment and Retention Report was published in 2007 to support the overall strategy. To take this agenda forward, and ensure good governance over the allocation of resources and impact of initiatives, a Delivery Group was established under a joint Service/HEI chair. To support this strategic work, five Short-life Working Groups were put together to take forward the key elements of the initiative, of which Data Enhancement is one.

From the Delivery Group’s annual report 2008/09, the main aims for the Data Enhancement group are:

  • Consistent national ‘Student Progression’ Data, ‘Risk identification’ and ‘Activity Effectiveness’ data
  • Student tracking into employment – early exit, first destination and beyond

The sub group is working towards creating a national student nurse and midwifery data set that is consistent across all HEI’S in Scotland. This national data set could allow analysis on the issues that affect student nurses and lead to a better understanding of attrition and retention.

Initial visits were carried out by ISD to all HEI’s, the aim of these visits was to establish existing protocols and gain an understanding of the current data collection systems within each HEI. Pilot sites were identified as the University of Stirling, Robert Gordon University, Glasgow Caledonian University and possibly, University of the West of Scotland. Further detailed engagement has been established with these universities.

As well as the data that the HEI’s supply to NES, the HEI’s also supply information to the Higher Education Statistics Agency with a separate subset of data. This includes much more detailed demographic information on students than the NES subset. HESA uses these data to report statistics on the Higher Education sector. The Scottish Government holds HESA data and ISD have been pursuing the possibility of gaining access to this. Legal issues in sharing the data have been agreed and signed and ISD are awaiting the transfer of data. Once this data is received ISD will analyse these data and assess the how they can be used as the project moves forward. An update of the progress of this project will be provided in future newsletters.

Next Issue

In the next issue of the newsletter we will provide you with an update of ISDs involvement in the Nursing and Midwifery Workload and Workforce Planning Programme.

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