Recruitment Team shortlisted for National Excellence Award
A highly-successful campaign to recruit Healthcare Assistants to Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust has been shortlisted for a national award.
The Recruitment and Resourcing Team, who are based in the Norwich Union (NU) building at Derriford, have been shortlisted down to the final three in the Category 9 The HSJ award for strategic approach to recruitment of the national HPMA Excellence in HRM Awards 2014.
The HPMA Excellence Awards have been recognising and rewarding outstanding work in healthcare human resource management for over 20 years. Winning projects, large and small, have made a real difference to patient care and influenced HR practice in healthcare and beyond.
The shortlisting reflects the hard work of the Recruitment and Resourcing Team to redesign their approach to recruiting Healthcare Assistants, which resulted in the appointment of more than 120 new members of staff; many of these staff have achieved a qualification and full clinical competence sign-off, a reduction in the recruitment time and also a reduction in the amount spent on agency staffing.
Karen Launder, Recruitment and Resourcing Manager at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We recognised we needed to develop a new recruitment strategy to address a gap we had in our establishment of Healthcare Assistants within the Trust.
“The new strategy enabled the Trust to identify suitable applicants based on their attitude and behaviours in line with the Trust’s values and their ability to demonstrate a positive and caring attitude with evident passion for delivering healthcare in the local community.
“We set ourselves a target of recruiting 100wte Healthcare Assistants with a three month target date from advert to appointment. Those Healthcare Assistants who were able to demonstrate, through interview, that they possessed the Trust’s values and behaviours, but were unable to demonstrate the clinical skills were put through a comprehensive in-house training package to ensure compliance with national educational and training standards.”
The team arranged for an external advert to be promoted via NHS Jobs, supported by a news release to all local media, promoting two Open Days, which all potential applicants were invited to attend.
The Open Days consisted of a series of presentations about the role and the Trust, including ‘A Day in the Life of a Healthcare Assistant’ and a welcome from the Director of Nursing. Following these presentations, the candidates had the opportunity to ask questions.
Those that remained were then interviewed by senior nursing staff, with all questions designed to ascertain the candidates’ values. These interviews were supported by the Skills for Health numeracy and literacy tests, in order to recognise areas of support, if required.
Karen continued: “We are absolutely delighted to have been shortlisted for this award. The recruitment campaign resulted in the appointment of 124 unregistered nurses into both ward and non-ward areas. In year, 165 Healthcare Assistants received the Trust’s internal HCA Level 1 training, resulting in the achievement of a qualification and full clinical competence sign-off.
“Our new approach to the recruitment of Healthcare Assistants was successfully implemented without budget or advertising costs. The semi-annual campaigns reduce the recruitment time spent by Clinical Nurse Managers by two thirds and the vacancy to appointment time has been reduced by six weeks, thus reducing agency spend.
Karen travelled to London at the end of April, along with Sam Rafferty, Head of Nursing, to present their case and explain why they should win. They now have to wait until next month to find out whether they have won. The winners will be announced on Thursday 26 June 2014 at a ceremony at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London.
