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Attractor has been working with an NHS client to support its work deploying  Supervisor Self-Service – part of the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), the national HR and Payroll solution used by almost all NHS organisations in England and Wales.

Following effective change management and process review action, the Trust has now completed the pilot phase, proving business processes work and assessing the extent to which new working practices are both fit for purpose and beneficial.

At the end of the pilot phase, managers using the system have reported real benefits for them in terms of time saving, more effective working practices, access to vital staffing information and greater empowerment with the ability to act quickly on timely information.

Subject to Project Board sign-off, Self-Service will be made available to managers across the organisation in a accelerated launch phase, alongside which the functionality in Manager Self Service will be piloted.

In the current climate, perhaps it is unsurprising NHS organisations are looking for clear financial justifications for making any investments in projects which will take some time to complete and deliver benefits. When resources are tight and a number of core corporate functions are being subject to scrutiny and pressure, people are not sure there is a financial justification for starting any new work.

Having had the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) in place since 2008 (at the latest), many NHS organisations have deployed self service tools in some shape though few appear to be making full use of all it’s key features.

Too many NHS Trusts have been “piloting” ESR Self Service for a long time, with only a small number of people across the organisation using some of the tools available. This pattern suggests NHS organisations have commenced deployment without a clear strategy or vision about how they want to change the way they work.

Like many large projects, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of focusing on the technology rather than the desired business change.

Undoubtedly, self service tools face special barriers in a healthcare environment. Not everyone has routine access to a computer and the NHS workforce has been relatively late in adapting to new computing technologies generally. With effective planning however, these challenges can be appropriately addressed and overcome.

In part though, the lack of progress on ESR Self Service reflects an innately conservative approach of corporate teams to the introduction of new technology – possibly not an issue special to the NHS. To the extent that self service encourages devolution of control and decision-making away from corporate centres, it is quite natural for those teams to express concern about risks and potential loss of control.

The combination of hesitant corporate teams, competing priorities, financial pressures and institutional constraints has the potential to make many NHS organisations seem increasingly archaic to “modern” managers from forward-looking healthcare and private industry and a new generation of employees now joining clinical teams from universities – who are familiar with the features of modern self-service technologies including sites like Amazon, Lastminute.com, iTunes and Facebook.

Like many organisations then, the NHS has been relatively slow to implement self service tools in the workplace. It is all to common to hear the business benefits of ESR Self Service have yet to be fully understood or, more importantly, realised in practice. How can this be successfully approached? Read the rest of this entry →

Human Resources practitioners are a self-critical bunch, exhibiting regular doubts and self-criticism. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)  campaign to make HR a more attractive career opportunity sparked a bout of critical comment from practitioners. In the HRZone there has been a popular discussion thread where HR practitioners discuss what they would change about the profession.

Front-line managers and business commentators often express doubts about the specialism, suggesting good people management is just common sense.

There is also regular criticism, especially in the public sector, that HR policy and procedures are over-complex, presenting too many barriers to managers who want to run effective businesses. Facing this critique, perhaps it’s natural the profession appears somewhat defensive and this might also explain why the profession has been striving to demonstrate it’s value and contribution to business.

But just how valuable is the HR function to business? Is it a vital function or does it just make business harder to do? Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: DeclanTM, Flickr

Attractor was recently asked to support an NHS Foundation Trust with ambitions to deploy both manager and supervisor self-service across the organisation.

Using the self-service toolkit available within Electronic Staff Record (ESR), the NHS integrated human resources and payroll solution, the plan forms part of the organisation’s corporate improvement programme.

Attractor will be providing project consultancy support for the Trust’s management team throughout the life of the project. With support arrangements agreed in principle and the project team beginning to form, work started quickly to develop a robust and detailed project plan.

Activities in the plan will ensure all systems and technical issues, business process review and the stakeholder, communication and other change issues arising are appropriately addressed. This will help the organisation to acheives it’s objectives and secures the maximum possible benefits from implementing new tools.

With preparations for implementation now getting underway, the next key stages of work will involve planning for both anticipated business process review and effective actions to secure benefits realisation.

With increasing transparency of expenditure across the UK public sector, we have seen more stories expressing “outrage” at levels of expenses claims.

The cost of expenses probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, though in more frugal times, the message of “restraint” needs to be heeded …. and not just by those with purchasing cards or in high-profile public sector roles.

Just because an expense claim is “within the rules” doesn’t mean it looks fair or reasonable to external review. The MPs expenses saga is a prime example of this and other examples are being widely quoted.

Nevertheless, your organisation’s expense rules should operate as an important guarantee of propriety in practice as well as supporting effective financial control.

Given it’s importance then, it must seem surprising, using data from GlobalExpense in their 2010 report that -

• 11% of all claims approved by managers are out-of-policy
• one-fifth of hotel claims are out-of-policy out-of-policy
• 29% of entertainment and hospitality claims are out-of-policy
• 40% of mileage claims are submitted without VAT receipts – hindering VAT reclaiming

Contrary to some reports, however, just because a claim is “out-of-policy” does not mean it is “fiddled”. There are occassions when the standards and limits written into policy have become outdated or where the particular circumstances related to an expense item would justify the exception. Read the rest of this entry →

With the Electronic Staff Record deployed across the NHS, many organisations have explored the use of HR Self Service functionality. If you work in the NHS how ready do you think front-line teams are for managing employee records using self service? Read the rest of this entry →

Public sector organisations want to use self service technologies to streamline activities and deliver efficiencies.

Moving away from paper can provide benefits for speed of service response, process cycle times, accuracy of information, eliminating waste, delays and service failures.

The challenge today is to encourage adoption by the “Generation X” and “Boomers”, the population of older managers and staff used to working in more traditional ways, helping them to adapt to new ways of working.

Your younger “Generation Y” employees – the net generation – have grown up with Facebook, Twitter and a virtual world. They expect to interact with your organisation using online tools … considering it’s bizarre to work with paper in the 21st Century.

But obtaining the benefits promised by self service tools shouldn’t be considered “low-hanging fruit”. It depends on good design, smart implementation and effective change management. Read the rest of this entry →

Attractor has just completed work with an NHS organisation implementing its first “self service solution”.

The new toolkit provides online expenses claims and authorisation workflow for front-line teams.

Like all NHS organisations, it was important to integrate systems and process management with the ESR solution.

The client needed to tighten expense controls, streamline business processes, improve policy and legal compliance, reduce opportunities for fraud and improve the speed of reimbursement. Read the rest of this entry →

Attractor has worked with an NHS payroll team during the Autmun of 2009 identifying actions to deliver more effective and efficient services.

Reviewing options with local managers, Attractor has identified and evaluated a number of concepts and ideas.

Taken together, the changes identified would generate savings of around 20% of the existing service costs, taking into account the need for some additional investments.

If all proposals were implemented, client organisations would benefit from reduced costs phased in over a period of around 2 years with no detriment to service quality . Read the rest of this entry →

When deploying new tools, organisations commonly look for cash-releasing benefits, especially headcount reductions which deliver ongoing financial savings.

Where this is the primary objective for a self-service project, teams can often struggle to demonstrate these types of benefits and savings.

The less tangible benefits of self-service are often easier for managers to understand – though harder to measure using traditional cost-benefit analysis. Read the rest of this entry →