Workforce Strategies

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.