NHS Leadership Academy support and develop the NHS leadership talent across each NHS organisation in England, acting as a central hub for leadership courses for the entirety of NHS England. After the publication of the Francis Inquiry Report (2013), which examined the causes of the failings in care at Mid Staffordshire Hospitals NHS Trust between 2005 and 2009, leadership, chief executive tenure and talent management were identified as critical elements to in turn, improving care for patients. NHS Leadership Academy’s stated goal is to improve and develop the best possible leadership and as a result improve patient care.

NHS Leadership Academy needed a way to have improved visibility of the talent landscape across each organisation, associated skills gaps and the retirement data and how this varied across localities. This incorporated a need for improved visibility and improved tracking for HR Directors, Chief Executives and other decision makers. Also, cultural imbalance of the talent management process across departments was having significant impacts on staff appraisals with organisations operating in silos when it came to hiring and succession planning. As a result, NHS England wanted to create a series of compelling messages to sell a concept, a clear idea of the future state, accurate diagnostics, tool creation, case studies and to be able to advise NHS teams on how to get better at attraction/retention and development of talent.

For this outcome-based specialist placement, we* provided talent management expertise and a robust discovery phase for a talent management system that will be utilised across the NHS. For this role, there was an extremely specific brief reflecting the unique nature of the requirement and the ground-breaking nature of the position for the NHS. We conducted a variety of resourcing and consultant searches via our established network of experienced consultant candidates with a proven track record in this field and compared their suitably to the NHS brief. We worked in close partnership with NHS stakeholders during this time to ensure we had a full understanding of their particular requirements and to provide a fully transparent process.

Once resourced, our consultant began a broad range of change management and process control methodologies to help guide the NHS stakeholders towards their ideal future state and generate buy-in and a shared understanding of the requirements, risks and controls that would be needed to deliver on their goal. This included stakeholder workshops/ and user groups, facilitating regional talent board meetings to identify stakeholders, establishing inter-departmental steering groups, creation of a detailed programme plan, and creating an initial stakeholder map of the talent management system.

The specialist consultant managed to integrate effectively with regional talent boards, steering committees and user groups, establishing a commonly shared vision and clear understanding of the final system design. In addition, as part of the robust Root Cause Analysis conducted across various sites, existing systems are being thoroughly explored having identified potential for existing systems to be adapted into a fit for purpose solution – generating additional efficiencies for NHS Leadership Academy. All milestones have been delivered on time, and we have received consistently positive feedback on progress from key client stakeholders.

*Modis, with Badenoch + Clark form part of The Adecco Group