The plan needs to help make the NHS a great place to work. Demands on staff should be reasonable, with NHS staff given an achievable service delivery and performance task in their day-to-day jobs. We need to ensure that we have the right staff, in number and skill mix, in the right place at the right time, with staff appropriately rewarded, valued and supported.
Measures:
- The plan is aligned with a credible NHS workforce strategy that, taken together, set out a credible vision of the future skills mix, staff numbers and funding needed to take new models of care forward and ensure safe staffing levels. The future workforce supply should be maximised, with plans based on realistic projections of supply in the coming years.
- Delivery plans explicitly take full account of the workforce shortages the service will experience for the next few years, with the scale of the delivery task set accordingly.
- Pay uplifts are fully and transparently funded nationally, in line with recommendations from the independent review bodies.
- There is a commitment to support and develop NHS leaders, recognising the scale of the challenge they face, and ensuring there is capacity and capability across the NHS to undertake any change or transformation.
- There is recognition of the importance of a learning culture and the adverse impact staff burnout and low morale can have on patient safety, quality of care and productivity. Steps to promote staff engagement and safe, consistently manageable workloads are clearly set out. Substantive steps are taken – through organisational development, staff engagement and cultural change programmes – to create and maintain successful organisations.
- The plan recognises the need to recruit and retain staff from Europe and internationally to support workforce supply and diversity.