NHSScotland 2020 Local Delivery Plan Guidance

6. Workforce Planning

Strengthening workforce planning

Everyone Matters: 2020 Workforce Vision has been developed in response to the challenges faced by our health service. It sets out what the workforce needs to do to deliver the 2020 Vision and how it will do that. There are 5 priorities for action which will take the workforce forward including one on sustainability. The focus on this priority in the first year of the implementation plan is on strengthening workforce planning to ensure the right people, in the right numbers, are in the right place, at the right time. This priority along with the other 4 is covered in the Improvement and Co production plan. Key themes and activities which will strengthen workforce planning are improved data quality, better workforce information and intelligence and increased identification, assessment and mitigation of workforce risks.

CEL 32(2011) Revised Workforce Planning Guidance 2011 reflects the 6 Step Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning and is applied across the whole NHSScotland Workforce. The guidance and six steps methodology makes reference to workforce projections as part of the wider workforce planning process, NHS Boards are required to submit projections annually. The Scottish Government template for these projections, includes specific guidance on coverage and completion, and requires detailed projections for most staff groups for a 3 year period. This timeframe aligns the projections exercise with the normal Spending Review period, but consideration of longer term future workforce planning continues to be important to support decisions on undergraduate training numbers for the "controlled" staff groups of medical, dental and nursing and midwifery, and the wider education agenda across all staff groups to allow for preparation time and effective succession planning.

NHS Boards will be required to publish their wider workforce plan during 2013. Further guidance on the timings and process for submitting these, and workforce projections to the Scottish Government will follow in due course. The Scottish Government has developed a series of Nursing & Midwifery Workload & Workforce Planning Tools. The application of these tools is mandatory to support evidence based decisions in relation to Nursing & Midwifery establishments. The tools use rigorous statistical analysis to calculate the whole time equivalent for current workload. These tools should form part of a triangulated approach to incorporate professional judgement and quality measures which will enable flexibility in decision making on staffing needs at local level. The Workload Tools are available on the IT Platform via SSTS. The Scottish Government is working closely with Boards to refresh and continue to develop these workload tools to ensure they capture and reflect the changing case mix and modes of health care delivery and to support application locally.

Local Delivery Plans should set out the approach that the board is taking to ensure the mandatory application of the nursing and midwifery workload and workforce planning tools, how this process is informing workforce planning and how the board is communicating information to key stakeholders.

NHS Boards are required to include in their LDPs, existing and planned new service areas that have particular workforce pressures and risks, which could affect the delivery of quality services. This should include a description of how these risks will be managed.