Employee Benefits Live 2016: NHS Employers implement a cohesive reward communication strategy to act as an attraction and retention tool when operating within a public framework.
Speaking on day one of Employee Benefits Live 2016 as part of the communications conference stream, Andrea Hester, director of people and assistant director of pensions and reward at NHS Employers, presented with Simon Arden-Davis, head of NHS pensions and employment services policy at the Department of Health, to offer a contextualised viewpoint of how the NHS seeks to attract and retain staff in a competitive healthcare sector when restricted by national pay bargaining.
With the NHS having an impressive workforce of 1.3 billion, clocking up a wage bill of £48 billion, individual trusts within the NHS and also non-NHS organisations are competing for the same healthcare professionals, with retention, recruitment and staff turn-over key challenges for the NHS. Using Kings College in London as a case study, Arden-Davis said: “They say we need to compete with our other trusts for staff, so if our reward strategy doesn’t work, we’re not going to get them.”
With the proposed junior doctor contracts prominent across the media in recent months, Arden-Davis notes that pay and conditions within the NHS has become a hot topic. However, he details that pay rises within the NHS are around 1% per annum for the next four years and therefore are not as forthcoming as in previous years. In conjunction with the national pay framework that governs the NHS, he observes that some hospitals question how they can implement reward.
Hester agreed: “National pay bargaining in the NHS has been around since 1948. So if you work in a hospital, why would you feel the energy, the enthusiasm, the ability, the freedom to actually act outside a set of rules that basically we’ve operated within for many generations? So where the challenge is in a sense is creating that environment in which you feel able to operate in that way.”
A further challenge Hester and Arden-Davis have witnessed is in being able to communicate with all staff effectively. Their analysis of the NHS workforce has shown that there are four generations, meaning that effective communication methods can vary between face-to-face sessions or instant messaging and apps. There is also a wide pay range, which means that different rewards are available and have to be communicated to reflect this.
Showing case study examples of reward communication, Hester notes that visual communications is vital, although they have seen that more functional and stripped back designs work well with ambulance staff, while other healthcare professionals prefer a people-led strategy with an emphasis on community.
Hester added: “Reward can be a tool in which we can engage more effectively with our staff. And when you do, you see real benefits because you are talking to them about what makes a difference to them, what’s really important to them. That’s where you start to maintain a dialogue about how you can retain people, how you can continue to offer those important things to them. Linking rewards to communication is a really key issue. That staff understand what those benefits are, staff then give you that extra commitment because they value working for you.”
