Staff & Recruitment

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde continues to prioritise the health and wellbeing of our workforce. Our current and future staff are our greatest strength and this Strategy underpins the Board’s Workforce Strategy and reflects our aspirations to be a Better Workplace.

The focus of the Staff Health Strategy 2023-2025 has moved towards recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and support to staff to improve their wellbeing as new challenges arise. We have a strong foundation to build upon as evidenced by the many initiatives that have been introduced and embedded, including the Active Staff Programme, provision of Mental Health Support and the ongoing rollout of Peer Support. None of this is possible without the help and support of local teams across the organisation and Staff Partnership colleagues. Our staff equalities forums and the Staff Health Working Groups in Acute Services and our six Health and Social Care Partnerships also have a key role to play in delivering the actions which will flow from our strategic intent.

Engaging internal communications and high levels of employee engagement are crucial to continually developing our aim of being a better workplace. This underpins all our NHSGGC’s Workforce Strategy actions.

The Internal Communications and Employee Engagement Strategy sets out how we will do this, by supporting all our 40,000 employees to have a strong sense of purpose, connection, contribution and commitment to our organisation.

The Safety Health and Wellbeing Culture Framework roadmap outlines how we will improve the culture within NHSGGC, using an agreed set of Safety Health and Wellbeing (SHaW) standards.

The NHSGGC Chief Executive and Employee Director have reinforced their joint commitment to improving the safety, health and wellbeing culture within NHSGGC, through the development of the SHaW Framework.

All staff have a responsibility for safety, health and wellbeing within NHSGGC. A set of guidance documents outlined the roles and responsibilities for employees, managers and directors.

Each year NHSGGC is required by the Scottish Government to develop and publish a workforce plan which sets out the strategic direction for workforce development and the resulting changes to our workforce over the next year and beyond.

The NHSGGC Workforce Plan is developed using the NHS Scotland six steps methodology and the NHS Careers Framework. Both of these workforce models enable us to take a coherent view of the workforce across all job families and sub-groups. The Career Framework in particular is a useful tool for modelling and implementing workforce change and we are promoting and encouraging the use of this tool in NHSGGC.

Local workforce planning activity is managed within the Acute Services Division and within the Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs). In addition, there are workforce plans which focus on cross sector issues and plans based on service delivery models.

The workforce implications of service change and redesign are also set out in NHSGGC’s financial and service plans at Board and Divisional/HSCP level. These workforce implications highlight any planned recruitment activity and are further analysed in the project implementation documents (PIDs) which are prepared to support any significant service change and which set out the financial, workforce and equality impacts of any proposed changes.

All of the above workforce information is analysed and summarised by the workforce planners in order to develop the annual NHSGGC Workforce Plan.

The vision for the Recruitment and Attraction Plan 2022-2025 is to establish ourselves as a great employer and seen as an Employer of Choice. 

To help us achieve this vision, we have three ambitions: 

1. Attract, retain and value the most skilled, diverse and talented people from our local communities and around the world, proving we are a world-class public sector organisation.  

2. Empower our Human Resources and Organisational Development workforce to deliver a digitally-enabled world-class recruitment and onboarding service for our future talent that is inclusive and person-centred. 

3. Ensure use of high-quality data to drive forward workforce planning and recruitment initiatives as we strive to be a world-class public service. 

Our Recruitment and Attraction Plan sets out how we will achieve these ambitions, ensures recruitment and selection is inclusive and attracts candidates from diverse backgrounds, and develops NHSGGC under our corporate objective of ‘Better Workplace’. 

The Board Workforce Equality Group (WEG) aims to further develop NHSGGC as an inclusive organisation that engages with staff across all aspects of employment, in a way that reaches to the core of our organisational values and meets and exceeds our legal requirements as an equal opportunities employer. The WEG is responsible for the NHSGGC Workforce Equality Plan. The group includes representatives from the Staff Disability Forum, the Black and Minority Ethnic Staff Network, the LGBT+ Forum, staff-side, Human Resources and the Equality and Human Rights Team.

The key ambitions and outcomes for the Workforce Equality Action Plan 2020-2024 are:

• Our staff are treated fairly and consistently, with dignity and respect, in an environment where diversity is valued.
• Our data collection is legally compliant and is used to improve equality and diversity of our workforce.
• We can demonstrate that we are an exemplar employer by participating in recognised equality frameworks and charters.
• We have taken all the actions in our control to reduce equal pay gaps by sex, disability and ethnicity.
• Staff from equality groups are fully engaged in contributing to the Workforce Equality Group.

The Health and social care: national workforce strategy (published by the Scottish Government) sets out the Scottish Government’s vision for the health and social care workforce.

It supports their tripartite ambition of recovery, growth and transformation of their workforce and the actions they will take to achieve their vision and ambition.

The Health and social care delivery plan sets out the Scottish Government’s programme to further enhance health and social care services. Working so the people of Scotland can live longer, healthier lives at home or in a homely setting and they have a health and social care system that:

• is integrated;
• focuses on prevention, anticipation and supported self-management;
• will make day-case treatment the norm, where hospital treatment is required and cannot be provided in a community setting;
• focuses on care being provided to the highest standards of quality and safety, whatever the setting, with the person at the centre of all decisions; and
• ensures people get back into their home or community environment as soon as appropriate, with minimal risk of re-admission.

Please download a copy of the appropriate induction checklist for your role and work through this with your Line Manager.

To deliver effective and high quality health services, to act to improve the health of our population and to do everything we can to address the wider social detriments of health which cause health inequalities.  
 
Below are some of the frequently asked “big facts” about NHSGGC 

• We are the largest Health Board in the UK covering a geographical area stretching from East Dunbartonshire to Inverclyde 
• We deliver services in 25 hospitals, 10 specialist units, 60 health centres and clinics  
• We cover a core population of approx 1.2million and provide specialist services to more than half the country’s population 

• We have a total annual budget of £2.6 billion 
• We employ 44,000 staff 
• We are investing more than £1billion to build four new hospitals. 

This induction portal is an essential part of your journey as a new colleague, ensuring that you are well informed and provided with the necessary information you need to carry out your role within NHSGGC. 

As you progress through the portal, you will be guided through your induction journey by your line manager. 

Developed nationally in partnership with NHS Scotland employers, trade unions and the Scottish Government, these policies and associated supporting documents set the standard for employment practice for all NHS Scotland Boards to follow.  

The Once for Scotland Workforce policies are person-centred and will be applied using the NHS Scotland values:  

• care and compassion 
• dignity and respect 
• openness, honesty and responsibility 
• quality and teamwork.  

The first phase of implementation includes the following policies:  

• Attendance 
• Bullying and Harassment 
• Capability 
• Conduct 
• Grievance 

• Workforce Policies Investigation Process

The policies promote the use of early resolution, all parties establishing and encouraging open and honest communication and adopting a supportive approach by proactively communicating with and offering support to employees who are involved in any process as part of a workforce policy. 

Staff are paid on a monthly basis. Your salary will be paid into your bank account on the last Thursday of every month. Your pay slip can be accessed on SSTS. You choose option for “ePayroll” and can view your pay history and previous documents.  Should you have any queries regarding your pay, you must in the first instance, seek advice from your Line Manager, before contacting the Payroll Department.  

Any overtime worked should be submitted to your Line Manager on a weekly basis. Overtime is paid one month behind e.g. if you work overtime in April, this will be paid in your salary at the end of May. Any queries regarding overtime must be highlighted to your Line Manager as soon as possible. 

Holidays run from 01 April until 31 March the following year. Full-time staff will receive holidays as follows:  

• 0-5 years service 27 days annual leave per year  
• 5-10 years service 29 days annual leave per year  
• 10 or more years service 33 days annual leave per year  

Any requests for annual leave must be filled out on your annual leave card and authorised by your Line Manager with adequate notice given to allow cover to be organised. Part-time staff will have their annual leave and Public Holiday entitlement calculated pro-rata and provided in hours due. 

As an employee you can view and maintain core information held by your organisation, update your personal details (such as address, marital status, registration), view job related information, and add professional memberships and qualifications. You should do this on eESS.

All staff are entitled to join a Trade Union and there are a number of these across the organisation. Should you wish to join a Trade Union, please ask your Line Manager for contact details of Trade Union representatives.  

Trade Union Meetings – Whilst every effort is made to allow staff to attend Trade Union meetings held during working hours, it should be noted that essential cover must be provided. Permission to attend Trade Union meetings during working hours must be granted by your Line Manager. 

Staff have access to a wide range of benefits including travel; cycle to work scheme, annual bus ticket loans, and shuttle buses between sites.  

Staff also have access to credit union and discounted gym membership.   

Other deals can be accessed here Exclusive deals for NHS staff at NHS Staff Benefits – NHS Staff Benefits  

The Employee:  

• has a contractual obligation under their contract of employment to attend work;  
• must comply at all times with the documented sickness absence reporting procedures;  

• on returning to work after an absence, is required to attend a Return to Work Discussion with their Line Manager;  
• will be requested to attend a management meeting to discuss sickness absence and must, if unable to attend for an acceptable reason, inform their Line Manager prior to the date/time of that meeting and if acceptable a further meeting may be convened at an alternative location/date;  
• When on sick leave is required to maintain a level of contact/communication with their manager, appropriate to their medical condition. All employees are responsible for making every effort to communicate with their Line Manager whilst on sick leave. If you are going to be absent from work for any reason, you must ensure that you follow the correct reporting procedures as follows: employees who are unable to attend work, must tell their Line Manager at the earliest opportunity before their starting time and no later than within one hour after their scheduled starting time. Where the Line Manager is out of the office, notification to a suitable alternative manager is required in accordance with local procedures;  
• It is the employee’s responsibility to make contact personally with their Line Manager. Only in exceptional circumstances, where the employee is unable to phone personally, a relative or friend may phone on their behalf, but the responsibility remains with the employee;  
• Where the Line Manager is not available, it is essential that contact is made with an alternative senior staff member who will be responsible for taking the information and passing it to the Line Manager. Messages should not be left on voice mail, with the hospital switchboard or with other wards or departments. Mobile phone text messages are also not acceptable and will result in the employee having an unauthorised absence.  

Failure to make contact in time may lead to:  

• the absence being treated as unauthorised;  
•  an appropriate deduction being made from the employee’s pay;  
• Action under the Disciplinary Policy.  

It is important that the employee communicates all relevant details when making contact, including: 

• the reason for absence;  
• an indication of when the employee expects to be fit to return to work;  
• Details of any appointments with the employee’s GP.  

Sickness Certification  

• If you are absent from work you must submit the appropriate medical certificates for your absence.  

• 1-3 days No certification required  
• 4-7 days Self certificate required  
• Over 7 days Medical certificate from GP required  
• It is the employee’s responsibility to keep their Line Manager informed of progress and, in particular, should the employee be unable to return when anticipated. If the employee is absent immediately before leave days or days off, they must tell their Line Manager when they will be fit to come back to work. If the employee is going to be absent for an extended period of time, any subsequent certificates should be submitted as quickly as possible, ensuring all days in the absence period are covered. Failure to submit a certificate may result in pay being withheld.  

Return to Work  

After any period of absence an employee’s return to work will be acknowledged through a documented Return to Work Discussion. In many cases, this may involve little more than a courteous enquiry as to whether the employee is now well. In other cases, e.g. where a pattern of short term absence is developing, or following a period of longer term absence the meeting will explore this more fully:  

• the reasons for absence;  
• the employee’s fitness for work;  
• If the cause of the absence may recur and whether a referral to Occupational Health/GP report is necessary.  

At this meeting the employee will be given the opportunity to raise any issues they have about their absence and to get help from the organisation. More than 4 episodes of sickness in a rolling year or more than 8 days of short term absence in a rolling year can lead to disciplinary action. 

The NHSGGC Complaints procedure seeks to ensure, in accordance with NHS guidelines, that complaints are handled thoroughly without delay, with the aim of satisfying the complainant whilst being fair and open with all those involved. 

• Current NHSGGC Complaints Policy and Procedure

Training is available to staff who may be involved via Learnpro module NES: Complaints and Feedback 2017. 

Login to Learnpro the module can be found under CPD section (You will require your Learnpro username and password) 

This programme has 5 modules:

• The value of feedback  
• Encouraging Effective feedback and using it  
• NHS Complaints & Feedback Process  
• The value of an apology  
• Difficult behaviour 

Please complete the Datix reporter training on Learnpro to ensure correct completion of Datix form.

If you need to contact the Datix administrator, send email to datix.administrator@ggc.scot.nhs.uk 

iMatter is the NHS Scotland Staff Experience continuous improvement tool which is designed to help individuals, teams and Health Boards understand and improve staff experience. This is a term used to describe the extent to which employees feel motivated, supported and cared for at work.   

Understanding staff experience at work is the first step to putting in place measures that will help to maintain and improve it. This will benefit you as an employee, and the patients/service users that you support and their families.  

The process is based on a staff engagement questionnaire which all staff are asked to respond to, which then generates a Team Report containing the results. The Line Manager discusses the report with the team and agree what the teams’ main strength is, along with up to 3 improvement actions, which are specific for the team in the months ahead. This improvement plan is captured on a team ‘Storyboard’ which the team then uses to monitor progress prior to the next iMatter run. The process is then completed annually.  

iMatter Stories Page iMatter Manager Manual 

iMatter Manager Manual 

National Staff Governance   

• National iMatter Page
• National SG Page
• iMatter Stories Page

All employees will have access to Employee Self Service and will be responsible for keeping their own personal details up to date.   Below is a list of actions employees can view/action: 

Employee Self Service 

• View personal details – Name, address, date of birth etc 

• Change address – Always use “Type” Primary Home Country address 

• Change contact information – Emergency Contact details/Next of Kin details 

• Update Professional Qualification/Registration/Membership details – Certificates, Highers, Degrees etc 

• Line Manager will approve once evidence is presented – Other Non NHS Employment (Secondary Employment, including Self Employed) 

• Includes self employed, ad hoc work and contracted work 

Applying for Adoption, Maternity or Paternity Leave

• Applying for Adoption Leave  – Matching certificate must be retained by line manager  

• Applying for Maternity Leave – MATB1 certificate must be retained by line manager 

• Applying for Paternity Leave  – Copy of MATB1 must be retained by line manager 

 Full access to all Employee Self Service Standard Operating Procedures and eLearning video’s is available via eESS. 

The CHI number is the main patient identifier used to process or access patient information from PMS (Trakcare). 

The CHI (Community Health Index) is a database linking all of the Health Boards across Scotland electronically via the CHI 24 system.  

Patients registered on this system are allocated a CHI number which acts as their UPI (Unique Patient Identifier) for their journey through the NHS, from ‘the cradle to the grave’. 

 CHI numbers consist of 10 digits; the first 6 being the patient’s date of birth in DDMMYY format – i.e. 160181. The last 4 digits are allocated randomly by the CHI system that generates the CHI Number; however the 9th digit is indicative of gender – even numbers for female, odd numbers for male. 

The purpose of the CHI number is to provide a universal, multi-system and cross-discipline ID number for patients, so that regardless of where they are being treated within Scotland, and for whatever complaint, the patient’s CHI number will be a constant. This, in turn, will enable a complete clinical picture of the patient to be compiled. 

Some of the benefits of CHI are:  

• reduce risk of errors in identifying patients;   

• reduce risk of errors in delivering care to patients, due to inaccurate or missing clinical information;  
• help protect the patient’s privacy and confidentiality;    
• reduce risk of patient information being shared inappropriately;  
• construct a single, complete, accurate and up-to-date clinical picture of a patient’s health care;   
• Reduce the need to ask patients the same questions many times during their journey through the NHS. 

OneSign (also known as Single Sign-On/SSO) is the user-switching and password management tool available at all acute hospital sites across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. 

OneSign eliminates the need to repeatedly type usernames and passwords and streamlines clinical workflows and enables NHSGGC staff to quickly and securely access IT applications. 

OneSign brings a range of services to users including:  

• Application Password Management  
• Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) 
• Fast user-switching and fast logon  

Digital technology is now at the centre of our professional lives through TrakCare, Clinical Portal, Emisweb, PACS, Winscribe and Microsoft applications (e.g. office 365 and teams) and in our personal lives through social media, online shopping and digital banking. Each day sees continuous or intermittent use of end-point technology – i.e. workstations, laptops, tablets and mobile phones. From the end-point you access applications which may be directly managed by NHSGGC, hosted for NHSGGC on the internet, or your personal applications.  

eHealth works with many technology partners who provide updates that counter the threats that occur every minute of every day. Resisting such attacks requires a combination of technology and good human cyber-behaviour.  

eHealth uses the Fairwarning monitoring system to detect & highlight potentially unauthorised or suspicious activity on systems that hold patient information (more information on this here).  

eHealth promotes good cyber-behaviour and Cybersafe (search on StaffNet for Be Cyber Safe) will provide:  

A list of all Information Governance policies (View the Acceptable Use Policy to which every user should be aware of and comply with) 

• Cybersecurity best practice for the individual; provided by public sector bodies like the Scottish government, police Scotland, technology vendors and by our own staff  
• Newsletters which will highlight major themes and outline what you can do to help stay safe 

The majority of what you need to do in your professional life applies also to your personal life. How you need to do it may be different. 

Microsoft Teams 

• Teams guided learning modules

Microsoft 365 Outlook  

• Outlook

Microsoft Planner

• Planner

Microsoft OneNote

• OneNote

Microsoft OneDrive

• OneDrive

Microsoft To Do

• To Do

 Course overview 

Supporting staff is a key part of the manager’s job and this module offers guidance and support on issues relating to promoting employee health and attendance. 

This module has a particular focus on supporting staff with mental health and/ or stress issues including use of the Stress Risk Assessment tool. 

Learning Outcomes 

By the end of the session you will: 

• Understand the purpose of the NHSGGC Staff Health Strategy and of legislation relating to mental health in the workplace 

• Be ready to assess the risks caused by personal stress or work related stress (Stress Risk Assessment Tool) 
• Understand the importance of monitoring and review after the risk assessment is completed 
• Be aware of the range of resources available to support you and your staff 

Book using eESS login.

You should now work through the Learning Passport associated with your role. This should be completed within 3 months (full time staff) or 6 months (part time staff).