Healthcare labour market dynamics

Flexibility is key to the general labour market these days, with people looking to work when and where they want rather than under more traditional, permanent employment contracts. Like every sector, the NHS workforce system needs to adapt to this trend and modify its workforce strategy, reporting and key performance indicators accordingly.

Key opportunities: 

·      Innovative use of collaborative banks and pooling of workforce resources

·      More strategic use of agency partnerships

·      New reporting on ‘workforce cost’ rather than reduction in agency usage, acknowledging that agency supply governed by fee caps is not necessarily more expensive than bank

To evolve, we see the next phase in NHS workforce planning adopting an approach with a greater emphasis on Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and/or master vendors that can deliver economies of scale, improved fulfilment and retention, a greater level of supplier accountability and much more.

We explore this in more detail here.