An innovative approach to a complex reorganisation places HR professionals at the heart of Manchester’s NHS
When Andrea Anderson explains how her team works in partnership with 12 different clinical commissioning groups across Greater Manchester, you start to wonder how she manages it. She characterises it as being ‘chameleon-like’; others might call it having to be all things to all people.
“Some of our clients like us to be on site all the time; others prefer us to be a remote presence on the end of the phone or an email. All have their own aspirations and goals as an organisation, and different senior teams,” says Anderson.
Such adaptability is necessary because, despite on some levels being a straightforward shared services department, her team supports multiple clients with hugely varying needs. Anderson is director of people services at Greater Manchester Commissioning Support Unit (GMCSU), a support service for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across the region. CCGs were set up across England and Wales in April 2013 as part of wide-ranging NHS reforms – the goal being that clinicians have greater involvement in how health services are commissioned on a local basis.
GMCSU is a £50m organisation with more than 400 employees and 14 service lines. People services offers anything from training on clinical records systems to strategic OD advice. It means Anderson is at the forefront of a profound change in the way HR is delivered in the NHS, with HR professionals required to help newly autonomous groups in their journey to organisational maturity while navigating multiple client relationships.
The key is to ensure each client feels they’re getting a bespoke service, she says: “The challenge has been to have one kind of staffing group that is flexible in its delivery style, but behind that we’ve got the same cost base and structures.”
Anderson is developing a network of HR experts to work on an associate basis, so the team can provide additional support where it’s needed. “I say to my team, ‘What do you need to achieve this year? Focus on the agreed outcomes and priorities for each customer, so we’re sure we’re delivering what our customers want.’”
As with so many organisations that move to a centralised delivery model, managing that change both within HR and with the managers who represent the end users has been a priority. Working towards service level agreements and being ‘contract-managed’ is a new experience for the people services team, while managers would have been used to dealing with HR on a local level.
“We’ve been on a learning journey together, and it is still in its infancy,” says Anderson. “[CCGs] have learned more about how to contract-manage us, and we’ve learned more about how we can deliver an efficient service led by the customer.” The team is held to account on a quarterly basis, and is tasked with working towards seven key performance indicators: five that have a financial impact if not achieved, and two linked to training.
Longer term, the people services team will have a greater steer over strategic issues such as succession planning and talent management. To add a further layer of complexity, CSUs are expected to become self-sufficient, profit-making businesses by 2016. This creates an extra incentive for GMCSU to ensure the services it offers add real value.
“We’ve changed quite a lot in terms of being a service provider. We made a point of showing our difference in the first year, remarketing ourselves, but the second year will be about getting closer to the client,” says Anderson. The team is supporting several CCGs to refresh their OD plans, which requires them to work in close partnership with clinical commissioning boards. From the very start, managers have been trained in handling first-line issues such as return-to-work interviews, so there is less casework to deal with centrally.
A further priority is to build leadership and management expertise among a vast group of clinical professionals who know a lot about healthcare, but are less used to leading and engaging teams. Anderson and her colleagues have come up with a comprehensive leadership development programme that fits in with the national NHS Leadership Academy’s framework. It is deliberately modular, so individual CCGs can pick and mix parts according to their needs.
One of the components of the leadership programme is a Dragons’ Den-style challenge, where contestants have to come up with a solution to an issue in their CCG. One group designed a way to introduce clinical coaching for diabetic children to improve their long term health. “Some of these ideas have been quite radical in terms of managing healthcare in the local economy,” says Anderson. “They’re also tangible: we focus on criteria like ‘does this save and bring in money? Does it improve health outcomes?’”
In preparing her own team to support CCGs under the new regime, Anderson has also ensured they receive the development they need. A number of people services staff have been trained to deliver psychometric tests, and there is a career development framework for those who want to progress within HR. The team boasts a number of systems experts who can help develop its new web portal and improve workflow. “We’re very fortunate to have IT within HR,” says Anderson.
Anderson has developed a memorandum of understanding for CCGs, where they’ll agree to share talent across different groups where a succession need has been identified, or to mentor someone in another CCG to encourage a cross-fertilisation of expertise. “Some of our CCGs are made up of 30 people, and career development can stop in a smaller organisation. It makes sense to share talent on a wider scale,” she adds.
It’s in offering strategic support like this that the team can really show its mettle. “This is where we really add value as an expert and trusted partner,” Anderson says. When you consider it’s been little more than a year since GMCSU had to adapt to a new working structure and bring hundreds of clinical professionals across the region with it, that’s no mean feat.