Maximising employment opportunities for newly qualified healthcare professionals in a changing NHS - The Social Partnership Forum Action Plan for

Interim report – October 2007

The Social Partnership Forum Action Plan for
Maximising employment opportunities
for newly qualified healthcare
professionals in a changing NHS

                NHS TRADE UNIONS

October 2007

Interim report: the Social Partnership Forum Action
Plan for maximising employment opportunities for newly
qualified healthcare professionals in a changing NHS

Introduction

The Social Partnership Forum (SPF) action plan to maximise employment
opportunities for newly qualified healthcare professionals in the NHS, outlines
29 recommendations to support new qualifiers in finding their first post. Since its
launch, stakeholder organisations have been working together to promote and
support the delivery of this activity. There has been demonstrable commitment and
effort by partners at national and strategic health authority (SHA) level to try to keep
students fully aware of the current labour market conditions and the range of options
available to make informed choices about their first employment destination following
qualification. Perhaps inevitably, levels of commitment and effort have not been
uniform across the country and the shortage of jobs for new graduates, particularly
in some professional groups such as physiotherapy, remains acute. Where there is
a shared commitment from all stakeholders, including individual health employers
on the ground, this is facilitating effective partnership working at SHA level and the
success of strategies to maximise employment opportunities for newly qualified
healthcare professionals.

Progress to date

Most SHAs are developing strategies to understand the current extent of
unemployment amongst new qualifiers as well as the number of healthcare
professionals expected to leave higher education over the next year. There is
however more work to be done to fully understand the number of new qualifiers that
will gain employment in the coming months. SHAs will need to do more to clarify with
individual employers the employing intentions for the immediate and medium term
future. In so doing, it will be possible to assess the extent to which NHS trusts and
other health and social care employers are willing to fairly share out the responsibility
for ensuring that the talents of newly qualified professionals are not wasted.

A variety of mechanisms to maintain contact with these healthcare professionals
and to provide a matching service to such employment opportunities that may exist,
alongside ongoing work with employers to maximise employment opportunities,
are being deployed within SHAs. These include in some areas an integration of
systems between the NHS, social care, independent and third sector employers to
support graduate employment into these employers. Some SHAs are also allocating
ring fenced monies to help new qualifiers maintain their skills whilst seeking first
employment, although it is not possible to assess from the limited information
available whether these monies are being directed to where the problems are

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Interim report: The social partnership forum action plan for maximising employment opportunities for newly qualified
healthcare professionals in a changing NHS

greatest. Some health and social care employers have taken ownership of the
process and have committed to securing the workforce of the future, including
eliminating obstacles to the employment of new qualifiers and maintaining awareness
of the potential impact on new qualifiers and future workforce supply when
implementing or reviewing vacancy control strategies. Employers are developing
innovative programmes of clinical exposure to act as effective retention tools for the
new qualifier unable to secure immediate employment as a healthcare professional.
The implementation of these initiatives is variable across employers, but is key to
maintaining the confidence of new qualifiers as they make the transition from student
to healthcare employee.

NHS Employers work programme is focused on practical steps to support employers
locally such as developing the NHS Jobs facility to support graduates, as well as
developing strategic alliances across the education and employment sectors to
ensure a more strategic approach to workforce planning and deployment. This
includes:

• NHS Jobs www.jobs.nhs.uk has been developed to provide SHAs with electronic
  talent pools – called newly qualified profile pools – to attract and support newly
  qualified healthcare professionals as they seek their first employment. This facility
  has been available since April 2007 and is designed to help SHAs and employers
  support newly qualified health professionals in their area. It provides a mechanism
  to identify the number of newly qualified healthcare professionals seeking their
  first employment in health and social care, and to communicate with the registered
  candidate on career support opportunities and access to relevant vacancy
  information that may not necessarily be available through NHS Jobs alone. It must
  be acknowledged however, that for certain groups, the number of job opportunities
  advertised via NHS Jobs are extremely limited.
• NHS Careers www.nhscareers.uk is continuing to build on materials to support new
  qualifiers as they seek their first employment as a healthcare professional.
• Health Learning and Skills adviceline www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/campaigns/
  nhs has developed a systematic intelligence gathering process from employers in
  health and social care, and an in-depth understanding of mechanisms in place to
  support graduate employment.
• NHS Employers, in partnership with the Allied Health Professions Federations
  (AHPF), is developing an evidence base for how AHP services can work to
  support the delivery of the 18 week target and improve access to health services,
  to raise the profile of the allied health professions (AHP) workforce to service
  commissioners. This will be published in November 2007
• NHS Employers is working in partnership with the Chartered Society of
  Physiotherapists (CSP) to develop a business case on how the role of
  physiotherapists can help in the delivery of occupational services. This will be
  published in November 2007.
• NHS Employers, in partnership with the AHPF, will develop the business case
  to demonstrate how the role of the different allied health professionals can help
  achieve better health and well-being across the population and tackle health

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Interim report: The social partnership forum action plan for maximising employment opportunities for newly qualified
healthcare professionals in a changing NHS

    inequalities. This will be published in December 2007.
• NHS Employers continues to ensure that Jobcentre plus is fully briefed on the
    mechanisms in place to support employment of newly qualified healthcare
    professionals as part of the ongoing partnership agreement between the two
    organisations.
• NHS Employers has developed strategic alliances with the independent, social
    care, voluntary sector and local government employers, the defence medical
    services, higher education institutions and the council of deans to facilitate the
    implementation of the action plan.
• NHS Employers website www.nhsemployers.org is regularly updated to share good
    practice examples for maximising employment opportunities for new qualifiers.
• As chair of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)’s Health, Work and
    Wellbeing National Stakeholder Council (Securing Timely Access to Support and
    Treatment), NHS Employers is raising the profile of the healthcare professions.
• Alongside NHS Employers, trades unions and professional bodies at national level
    are continuing to support the action plan by contributing to partnership discussions
    at national and SHA level, by collecting information on levels of graduate
    unemployment amongst their members, and by raising awareness among these
    new qualifiers of the need to register with the appropriate SHA newly qualified
    profile pools.

Discussion

Current available evidence indicates that physiotherapy is the worst affected
profession but new qualifiers in other professions, including speech and language
therapy, occupational therapy and nursing, are experiencing some difficulty in
securing their first employment.

The activities described above demonstrate the effort of partners to support new
qualifiers into employment. There are however, significant regional variations in
implementation, reflecting the relative priority being attached to the action plan within
SHAs and individual trusts. In some cases there is limited empirical data available
to provide an accurate picture of the extent of the problem and the impact local
solutions are having. Furthermore, the employing intentions of many employers
remain unknown. These are key recommendations in of the action plan to facilitate
effective planning and development of local solutions. It is also clearly important
that monies targeted at helping unemployed new qualifiers maintain their skills are
deployed in the most effective way.

The success of the NHS Jobs newly qualified profile pools is dependent on the
support mechanisms offered by SHAs to registrants. Good quality and useful
communication with new qualifiers registered in the pools by SHAs is therefore
paramount. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that there is considerable
variation in the keep-in-touch programmes adopted by SHAs. Where communication
is limited there is a risk of disengagement by the new qualifier who does not see

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Interim report: The social partnership forum action plan for maximising employment opportunities for newly qualified
healthcare professionals in a changing NHS

real value in registering and is therefore, not encouraged to remain registered in the
pool. In addition, despite the efforts of many of the stakeholders, it is clear that many
students remain unaware or are misinformed about the NHS Jobs newly qualified
profile pools and are not registering on qualification. These issues may account for
the less than expected numbers of new qualifiers registered as still seeking work.

Recommended actions

• Renewed ministerial support for raising awareness among SHA and trust chief
  executives of the priority attached by government to demonstrating the required
  outcomes from the implementation of the action plan.
• Leads to be identified within all partners of the social partnership forum at national
  level – Department of Health (DH), NHS Employers, SHAs and the unions - for
  steering the future work on the action plan, with regular reports back to the full
  Social Partnership Forum.
• SHAs to lead the process of robust data collection and validation from key
  partners, including higher education providers and employers, to inform local action
  planning and evaluation.
• All SHAs and employers to be encouraged to assess progress to date in
  implementing the action plan, in partnership with trade unions, identifying
  substantive work opportunities created across the relevant professions.
• Trade unions with employers to share and promote creative approaches to
  securing employment opportunities for new qualifiers, including the allocation of
  any ring fenced monies to help with the maintenance of skills.
• DH to instigate urgent discussions with the DWP to scope the opportunities for joint
  investment in occupational health services to deliver the aspirations of the welfare
  reform by reducing the number of people on incapacity benefit as well as creating
  opportunities for employment of new qualifiers. DH to take advantage of other
  cross-government initiatives as and when they occur.
• NHS Employers to invite the CSP to join the DWP’s Health, Work and Wellbeing
  National Stakeholder Council (Securing Timely Access to Support and Treatment)
  Sub-Group meeting.
• DH with the trade unions and NHS Employers to develop myth busting information
  which can be used by all stakeholders to mitigate the effects of the circulation of
  incorrect or ill-informed information, thus optimising the numbers of candidates
  signing up to the newly qualified profile pools.

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