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Workforce planning is not so much a process but a state of mind and everyone has a role to play. The tools and resources on this site are, in one way or another, geared towards applying the following principles to workforce planning so you can achieve fundamental change in health and social care.
The current workforce, those relying on services and the one in eight people in Scotland who describe themselves as a carer, have the sharpest focus on what needs to happen and how. If listened to, their skills, values, attitudes, experiences and expectations will provide customer-centred, cost-effective intelligence and will build a flexible and effective workforce for tomorrow. So these people should have a strong voice and an active role in planning for the future.
A whole system approach to workforce planning requires blurring the edges between operational planning and strategic workforce planning. Strategic workforce planning is concerned with supply and demand, mapping, scenarios, long-term resourcing, requirements and constraints. Operational workforce planning is based more around short-term mapping of locality data and financial cycles and includes ‘bottom up’ community insights to provide detailed information to support recruitment and business planning.
Workforce-centred planning will lead in the medium and longer-term to outcomes including:
It is crucial that leaders across the system, particularly those in the new health and social care partnerships, provide clear and consistent messages about the long-term vision for integration. This will help to make sure the workforce understands the direction of travel and develops shared aspirations and values.
The workforce needs clear messages from leaders to enable staff to try new things, be innovative, take some risks and engage with people in new ways. This all contributes to creating a culture of trust. For example, one Health and Social Care Partnership’s simple and powerful message to staff is ‘Learn, Innovate and Grow’ (Perth and Kinross).
Leaders also need to give clear messages to staff about the importance of their skills and competence in supporting workforce planning. Workers should be encouraged to think about how workforce planning impacts on them, their role and the impact on the lives of those they work with.
Workforce planning is not simply a strategic endeavour but is also a pressing operational consideration for new health and social care partnerships. Decisions and plans for the short-term have to be made. Health boards in Scotland use the NHS Six Steps Methodology but there is no single national method for operational workforce planning in social services. Our theory of change suggests eight different touchpoints in the new integrated system where progress can be made in aligning operational and strategic workforce planning across health and social services. It will take a lot longer to see actual integration in terms of, for example, organisational development, finance and workforce planning. However, the following key areas may be a good place to start:
As we concentrate on these key areas, changes will start to become evident in a number of ways:
Finally, our theory of change is complete when changes in these four key areas start to impact on the long-term outcomes for integration and workforce planning. We will start to see:
Planning for the future by the Scottish Social Services Council is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://learn.sssc.uk.com.