Getting better at Business Intelligence in the NHS is important - regulatory reporting is already extensive and Trusts needs to be intimate with their workforce data to better control Bank and Agency spend. So where might this demand for insight come from? Well, a short list is: the NQB, NHSi, FOI requests, custom Board Reports and KPI alerts, Data Quality, Safe Staffing metrics and Rota Plan Quality too. This insight is often painful to deliver - sometimes the right metrics

The human challenges in workforce transformation projects

In a recent survey of (ah-hem, not quite) 100 Ward Managers, we compiled the reasons behind variable/over staffing in roster plans. We're considering locations where patient acuity and counts are as yet unknown - here we're looking for a smooth plan conforming to Trust KPIs and policy. What we learned was hardly shocking, but nevertheless presents some nice opportunities to disrupt existing behaviour, via "policy compliance monitoring", (which is the bit we can help with!) ed

Look forwards into a planned roster and we'd hope to see staffing levels balanced over the days with minimum staffing counts achieved at the prescribed band mix. At this stage, we don't know what our patient acuity/count is going to be. As we get closer to the working day, we'll be able to predict with greater accuracy whether we need extra staff, for specialing (the "demand side") or to cover staff sickness (the "supply side"). We're counting on Professional Judgement to get

We’re often asked to work with a Trust to refine or check their rostering policy. We quite enjoy doing this, in fact, we’ve been collecting Trust policy documents for 15 years. These documents are often intimidating and heavyweight, full of dos and do nots. A policy may well exist (and be locatable by staff on the Trust’s Sharepoint site) and be awesome, but will it be effective? This begs the question, “How can one tell?” In most cases we see, there’s a significant disconnec

A lovely sunny day last Sunday, and a chance to meet the families of the nurses and managers we work with day to day, supporting Matrons and Ward Managers to produce stronger rosters. #safestaffing #erostering #nhs

Already I'm off to a bad start - this post isn't about robots, I have more than 3, and they're not really laws. Still, if you can forgive the extremely tenuous link, I'd be very pleased to hear from you. What did I miss? What don't you agree with? e-rostering benefits will be generally less tangible unless a compliance protocol is active. Staff should work as you wish them to work. What’s the purpose of a roster policy component that isn’t measured effectively? Elective actio