1. Health Education England Workforce Strategy - Key Points
Facing facts, shaping the future – a draft health and care workforce strategy to (Health Education England, 2017)

2. Key points
First national health and care workforce strategy for 25 years
Sets out the challenge the service will face in meeting demand pressures over the next decade
Builds on the NHS Five Year Forward View
Sets out six key principles for all future workforce interventions
The strategy is a draft for consultation, led by HEE.
Local and national organisations expected to carry out workforce impact assessment to help ensure “workforce competencies, skills and training as well as numbers are considered early in the planning phase”

3. Current national workforce activity
HEE has developed workforce plans to meet the Five Year Forward View vision
National plans for priority groups e.g. cancer
STP have developed LWABs to translate into action
Action on new roles, eg nurse associates
Routes into the NHS, eg apprenticeships
Focus on being more flexible, eg ‘credentialling’ for all regulated healthcare professions
Return to practice
Increasing workforce supply (medical and nursing)

4. Why the need for a strategy?
If no action is taken to reduce demand, the NHS will need to grow by 190,000 clinical posts by 2027 to meet demand
Workforce has been growing, but more slowly than we need
NHS needs a shared vision for workforce and a coherent framework for action
Move from fixing problems to sustainable solutions

5. Aims Strategy describes actions to:
grow capacity and capability to move towards self-sustainability in workforce
build the NHS’s global reputation as a centre of excellence in healthcare education and training
meet service requirements in the future through prevention, new technology and flexibility

6. Making the NHS an employer of choice
The NHS must put people first and focus on the things that are important to staff.
Reducing staff turnover should be a key focus, with organisations working to better understand the reasons for staff turnover
Good people management is essential, alongside organisational culture, health and wellbeing, staff engagement and flexibility
Leaders must be committed to doing the right thing for patients and staff within a culture of equality and diversity.
Retention is easier when people are respected and valued.

7. Workforce growth Focus on three key areas:
Education - will deliver more medical school places, increased nursing undergraduate places and other priorities.
Retention – keeping existing staff has the most immediate impact
Recruitment from outside the NHS.
Range of steps already been taken:
Promote careers in the NHS
Widen participation and opportunity
Expand medical and nursing supply
New professional roles within multi-disciplinary teams, for example physician associate
Creation of new roles, such as the nursing associate role
Increase number of apprenticeships
Developing the multi-disciplinary team

8. Global healthcare workforce
Agreement now reached on the rights of EU nationals in the UK.
Future arrangements being considered by MAC, including the role that EU migration plays in the health and care workforce with a report due by September 2018
Aim to develop the NHS as a global centre of excellence for training of non UK healthcare staff.

9. Impact of technological innovation
Provide staff with the skills to adapt new research, technology and innovation
Technology review to be completed by the end of 2018 examining the impact of technological developments on:
How technology will change the role of clinical staff over next 20 years
Impact on the skills required by healthcare professionals
Consequences for the selection, education and training of current and future NHS staff
HEE developing comprehensive agenda for advanced clinical practice, including upskilling of wider workforce
Consider NHS ring-fenced workforce development funding

10. Six principles
A set of principles are proposed for future NHS workforce decisions, which aim to mitigate the risks associated with workforce planning:
Securing the supply of staff that are needed to deliver high quality care
Training, educating and investing in the workforce
Providing career pathways for all staff rather than just ‘jobs’
Ensuring that people from all backgrounds have the opportunity to contribute to, and benefit from, healthcare
Ensuring that the entire NHS is a modern model employer with flexible working patterns, career structures, and reward mechanisms
Ensuring that in the future service, financial and workforce planning are intertwined.

11. Consultation
Consultation taking place on a series of questions based on the six principles
Consultation is open until 23 March 2018
NHS Employers will be gathering views to submit a collective response on behalf of employers in the NHS
Final agreed strategy will be published in July 2018 and updated annually