With a significant expansion of the NHS workforce under way, healthcare employers face ever-increasing recruitment and retention pressures. What is the best way for the worldís third largest employer to find and keep good staff?
If NHS HR professionals are to meet their targets, higher pay, flexible working, career development and training opportunities must be their top priorities, according to research issued today (Monday 01 November) by IRS Employment Review, published by LexisNexis.
A wide range of national and local schemes are boosting NHS recruitment and retention, including the Improving Working Lives programme - designed to help make the NHS a model employer - and initiatives aiming to provide model careers for health service employees.
The full study, which explores the NHS HR strategy in depth, is available in the new issue (810) of IRS Employment Review (www.irsemploymentreview.com). The findings are based on extensive feedback from a panel of 37 NHS employers, covering a range of different organisation types, conducted in August and September 2004.
Key findings include:
Only half of the organisations surveyed were able to provide an estimate of recruitment costs.
Based on feedback, the average cost of filling each vacancy usually falls in the range of 500 to 2,000.
More than half of the NHS organisations surveyed have recruited staff from abroad.
More than eight in 10 employers (83%) have experienced an increase in workforce numbers during the past two years.
The annual turnover rate for NHS employers surveyed, ranged from 0.01% to 18%, although a more typical range is 2% to 10%.
Problems of recruiting staff are more prevalent than those of staff retention and the differences in most successful techniques are ranked below:
IRS Employment Review managing editor, Mark Crail said:
ìNHS employers wanting to boost their ability to recruit and retain staff need to focus their efforts on two key areas - providing opportunities for flexible working and providing opportunities for career development and advancement. If they do this, and manage to keep recruitment costs down, the UKís biggest employer may well avoid a staffing crisis.î
Boosting staffing and skills in the NHS
If NHS HR professionals are to meet their targets, higher pay, flexible working, career development and training opportunities must be their top priorities
