Only the best will do: How Nottinghamshire Healthcare involves service users and carers in recruiting staff

Recruitment is our first opportunity to affect the culture of our organisation. We feel strongly that recruiting staff who are naturally compassionate and driven by a strong value base will maintain our positive culture. Our service users, carers and volunteers are best placed to make this judgement. What we set out to do “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

In partnership with our service users, carers, volunteers and staff, we developed the IIT (Involvement Interview Team). The IIT conducts interviews, and reviews how we represent and involve service users, carers and volunteers in our interview processes. The team has also been instrumental in planning for how we resource interviews in such a large scale organisation. What we set out to do “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

Service users/carers should be enabled and empowered to contribute to the recruitment process with all the same information as the professional panel. Their opinions should have equal weighting in making the decision about who to appoint. All the work we have done over the last year has been to ensure that service user and volunteer involvement in recruitment is meaningful and valuable. How we did it “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

There are a number of guiding principles to our work: Training is provided to all those who regularly contribute to interviews, which is equivalent to that provided to staff. Service users should have all relevant information about the post in good time, so that they understand the nature of the role and the personal and professional qualities required to undertake the work How we did it “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

How we did it Service users are entitled to contribute to the development of the questions they ask, if not devise them entirely The judgement of service users is given equal weighting in the selection process In the circumstance that the service user panel deem the interviewee unappointable, the professional panel can not over-ride this decision “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

As a minimum standard, ALL interviews for staff in a Senior Management, Head of Department and Director role include a service user panel. In practice we have achieved greater success already. Service user panels are now taking place across the organisation, in each of our clinical divisions, and the demand is increasing. The impact “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

An IIT training package is in devlopment - ‘IIT in a box’ - which trains service users currently in services so that they are able to contribute to service user panels. This is a kite mark, a standard to which our appointing officers must work to ensure that service users are well informed, invited, involved and valued as part of the recruitment process. All IIT volunteers are now also able to access our internal Appointing Officer training, which before this project was only available to staff. We are recruiting and training more volunteers each week! The impact “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

We also: educate all Appointing Officers across the Trust about the value of service user panels through the Appointing Officer mandatory training. present information about IIT interviews at our mandatory staff induction programme, which reaches every single new member of staff. Importantly, our Executive Team models our ideal recruitment processes by consistently inviting a service user panel to interview candidates for all Senior Management posts The impact “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

“I believe wholeheartedly that IIT members add value to the interview by making a very clear statement to the panel members and interviewee that service users and carers are at the centre of all we do.” “I believe there is no better way of starting a vocational journey than to be of the belief that you have been employed because of your skills and values by the people that you will be supporting. ” Simon Barnitt, Professional Nurse Advisor, Nottinghamshire Healthcare The impact “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer

We are aware that many organisations involve service users or customers in their recruitment processes in some way, but it is not always as meaningful as it could be. We believe the Involvement Interview Team (IIT) models a process conducive to real involvement from well informed and trained service users/carers/volunteers. The impact For more information on our Involvement Interview Team, please contact: Nigel Groves, Rosewood Involvement Centre Manager “We need professional, qualified individuals that have a real passion for people and the job they will do. It’s not all about academics and you can’t teach empathy.” Eileen Burnside, IIT interviewer