4 ways your Trust can build a robust & future-proofed workforce

One of the significant considerations for any Estates & Facilities leader is how best to create a robust and future-proofed workforce that can ensure the smooth and controlled running of the NHS estate. Yet with 132,000 vacancies, equal to one in ten roles unfilled across the service, we understand how challenging building that team is. In this article, we identify 4 ways your Trust can overcome these challenges and build a strong workforce.

The recruitment challenge is not because people don’t enjoy working for the NHS. On the contrary, the service’s ageing workforce, with 34% of EFM workforce over the age of 55², is testament to the loyalty staff show to NHS Trusts.

However, as many reach retirement age, this will only add to your staffing resource challenges. 

The Estates and Facilities Management sector is particularly affected because of the struggle to attract new, younger recruits. 

A 2019 EFM staff survey highlighted the challenges you face. In that year, 2% of NHS apprenticeships³ were in EFM roles – just 400 – and only 200 were new starters. Which is much lower than the 8% of the NHS workforce EFM staff make up.² 

This difficulty in attracting new talent may mean EFM teams eventually struggle to provide:

• Enough staff for day-to-day operational activity 
• The ability to scale its workforce to foreseen challenges (i.e. winter pressure increasing hospital demand) 
• The ability to scale rapidly to unforeseen difficulties (i.e. COVID)

As the Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor recently warned, there’s a “huge and growing gulf between what the NHS is being asked to deliver and the funding and capacity it has available”.⁴ 

So, Estates & Facilities Leaders need to find new ways to create a robust workforce, but where should you turn?

The NHS England Workforce Plan suggests Trusts should create a robust and resilient workforce by discovering new ways of working and delivering care.² 

However, we recognise how difficult this can be for Trusts when they struggle with the capacity to meet even current expectations.

There are several possible solutions for building a robust and future-proofed workforce, of which The Government Sourcing Playbook suggests outsourcing could be one.⁵ 

Below are the top four things you may consider as your Trust seeks ways to build a robust workforce that can work in new ways to deliver care. 

 

1. Could you easily flex your staffing levels when needed?

The scale of the staffing challenge facing the NHS means there can be little robustness left in the workforce in times of extra urgencies – such as the COVID-19 pandemic – where quick staff scalability and mass mobilisation may be needed. 

Having suitably qualified and experienced reserves will ensure the NHS is capable of responding to any potential future emergencies.

In emergencies, massive recruitment drives might not be possible within the critical time frame for getting the situation under control. In such an instance, you’d have to look within your current resources and workforce to cope, meaning you should consider the following: 

• Can you mobilise staff from other parts of the ICS (integrated care system) to quickly form a new team with unique responsibilities? 
• Whether you have training programmes ready to launch should you need to train existing staff to deal with new responsibilities quickly? 
• Whether you have the management systems in place to create a controlled and safe environment for a fast-mobilised team to deliver compliant services? 

The Workforce Action Plan says, “our EFM workforce is critical for engaging and empowering our people and for delivering safe, well-maintained clinical environments for our patients”.² 

Therefore, you could ensure the right systems are in place to maintain this level, even in emergencies. 

 

Sodexo has the scale to support at short notice

Sodexo Health & Care employs 5,100 people⁶ within EFM alone, with a further 28,500 people⁶ across other sectors. This means we can mobilise a vast workforce to respond quickly to unexpected pressures. 

For example, in July 2021, we were tasked with taking on over 110 physical test centres and mobile units within ten weeks.⁷ 

In mobilising the workforce, Sodexo’s size meant we could pull teams from across our organisation together. We transferred over 3,000 employees to Sodexo’s Health & Care arm, outperforming market timescales and expectations.⁷ 

Elsewhere, for the Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust (MPFT), we opened three mothballed sites at short notice to support unprecedented bed capacity requirements.⁸ 

We also serviced a Vaccination Centre for the same Trust, again at a couple of days’ notice, to provide security, patient catering and domestics. 

Furthermore, the MPFT more recently had to decant all their outpatient activity due to a RAAC roof challenge. Again, we opened and serviced a remote location to transfer the outpatient service uninterrupted.⁸ 

Hence Sodexo’s breadth means we can quickly scale new staff to meet the unique challenges of your Trust, giving you a resilient and robust workforce that’s future-proofed against trying circumstances. 

 

2. Do your staff have the skills and capacity to provide quasi-clinical support for frontline ward teams?

If you had a fully resourced EFM team, could you expand their remit to deal with other tasks that relieve the clinical teams and support the flow of patients. 

One of the biggest challenges most Trusts face is giving clinical staff enough face-to-face time with patients, which can directly affect patient flow. 

With a record 7m people waiting for hospital treatment in England by the end of August 2022⁹, this challenge sorely needs solutions quickly. 

Yet how can you relieve the strain on clinical staff when recruiting more staff is difficult?

You could consider training your existing non-clinical staff to be multi-service. For example, let them support your clinical teams with quasi-clinical tasks, such as measuring patient hydration and nutrition and helping with the end-to-end patient dining experience.

During a recent initiative in Wythenshawe Hospital, 97% of clinical staff found measuring patient hydration and nutrition difficult at least some of the time (Sodexo survey Oct – Nov 2022).¹⁰ 

Of these, 51% said they always find these tasks difficult. So, by supporting more of these processes, you make your EFM team more value-adding and your Trust more robust.¹⁰

Taking these difficult, time-consuming tasks off your clinical team can make a huge difference to their workload, so to enact it, you’d need to consider the following:  

•  Whether it needs a clinician to perform the task? 
• Which department staff may be best placed with their current skills to help with the quasi-clinical workload? 
• How to find further efficiencies within existing staff resources so they can help in other areas? 
• Whether you have the management systems in place to create a robust and safe environment for a fast-mobilised team to deliver the right care? 

Doing so would align you with the EFM Workforce Action Plan, which suggests you should assess strategic estate planning and large-scale programme delivery to find new efficiencies.² 

 

Sodexo EFM teams free up to 72% of clinical staff from non-clinical tasks 

The NHS is designed to excel at supporting patient health and well-being through clinical care¹¹, so its priorities are not around the infrastructure of delivering food. 

Therefore, with third-party support from Sodexo, NHS Trusts can take these complex, time-consuming tasks away from their clinical team and give them to their EFM partners. 

 

We can help you with the quasi-clinical workload 

In a recent hydration and nutrition measurement initiative, which aimed to free up clinical time, clinical staff rated the initiative as 4.2/5, with 72% of clinical staff saying it freed up their time for other clinical tasks.¹⁰ 

This gave time back to focus on their core responsibilities, 90% of clinical staff would recommend other hospitals/wards to introduce measurements through non-clinical staff.¹⁰  

Furthermore, we can support the end-to-end patient dining experience. We produce and deliver dietician-designed menus to ensure patients get the nutrition they need for the best chance of a quick return to health.

 

Experiencia helps you join up your clinical and non-clinical teams

Elsewhere, Sodexo’s Experiencia is helping to better integrate different teams across the NHS estate.

Experiencia works with a Patient Ambassador to obtain patient feedback on the non-clinical experience, such as patient dining, cleanliness and the hospital environement.¹²

Implementing what’s learned through these insights allows teams to make subtle improvements that can save them time. 

For example, Experiencia has provided crucial insight to clinical and support teams that has helped shape a new process for Autistic Spectrum Disorder patients, tailoring communications and delivering consistency required for this patient cohort.¹²  

Support from Sodexo’s EFM staff, through Experiencia’s innovative approach and personal touch, provides deeper insight and better outcomes, enhancing the experience while reducing the need for supplementary interventions

 

3. Does your EFM offer appeal to the latest talent?

NHS EFM had only 200 new starters in 2019, according to that year’s NHS Staffing Survey.¹³ 

This stat shows the EFM department has a rapidly ageing workforce and currently stands to lose core skills as its staff reach retirement age unless we can find a way to attract younger people.

According to the NHS EFM Workforce Plan, creating depth and breadth of skills should be done through innovation in recruitment to forge a future-proofed EFM department.  

So what should innovative recruitment look like within your Trust? 

Nowadays, recruitment occurs overwhelmingly in digital spaces. According to research by G2, nearly half of all professionals (49%) follow prospective employers on social media to stay aware of their jobs.¹⁴ 

 

Aligning values

The COVID-19 pandemic not only forced a lot of recruitment online for almost two years, it also accelerated the number of people seeking organisations which align with their own values.  

New talent is ready, willing and able to seek opportunities through digital spaces, however we need to ensure their personal values match what you’re looking for in an employee.  

So, your Trust could consider the following: 

• Where the new talent you want to recruit is online, and how you can enter those spaces? 
• How you can best use online signposting to direct the right talent to your job openings? 
• 79% of job seekers will consider a mission statement before applying.¹⁴ How do we explore and test the alignment of values during the process? 
• Organisations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire.¹⁴ So how can you use data from historic recruitment to improve the wording and values messaging of current job listings to make them more appealing to your target talent? 

By considering online recruitment spaces, and an end-to-end values-based recruitment process, you can begin to attract the right, new talent to EFM. 

 

Sodexo can take the headache away through its values-based talent recruitment in EFM 

Sodexo utilises digital platforms and a values-based recruitment process to attract the newest talent to the EFM industry to future-proof its workforce. 

Through our apprenticeship networking & knowledge sessions, we host around four online meeting rooms a month where the newest talent considering entering the EFM industry can meet and ask questions of experts.  

We host the sessions across a wide range of EFM topics, including patient nutrition, early careers and frontline roles, where those looking for roles in the industry can get a feel for what working in EFM is like. 

We also host national campaigns where people can choose the sectors that suit them. By working at a countrywide level, we gain a national picture and economies of scale in our recruitment. 

Reviewing and realigning our Employee Value Proposition (EVP) has enabled us to focus on frontline digital recruitment with targeted value-based messaging, enhancing the recruitment experience and creating greater candidate engagement through the onboarding process.  

As a result, we saw a 4-fold increase in offers processed from a similar application volume post-EVP implementation.¹⁵ 

This new talent brings skills and expertise for the long-term to future-proof our clients with a more robust workforce. 

 

4. How easy do you find retaining the best talent? 

“In estates, it’s getting challenging to hold onto and replace staff”, said a Director of Estates and Facilities in a recent interview with Sodexo.¹⁶ 

The NHS EFM Workforce Action Plan recognises the troubles EFM has with retaining talent and suggests that developing its people is key to ensuring they and their skills remain within the health service.² 

The NHS has to focus on development in clinical areas to ensure it remains at the forefront of clinical practice. 

People development requires the right mindset within an organisation to ensure its staff have the right support, training and framework to excel in their jobs and understand what more they need to do to build their careers.

Therefore, your Trust could consider the following: 

• Recording data around which skills are most needed at the current moment. 
• Building training programmes with modules that can be switched out to best reflect the skills gaps at the time. 
• Using digital training platforms that provide staff with a structured course they can complete during the most efficient work hours.  
• Showcase the targets staff members need to hit to develop their careers, ensuring they have access to the proper training to achieve this. 

As the Workforce Plan suggests, these considerations require strategically developed training, tools and innovative programmes that meet your Trust’s current and future needs to provide the right breadth and depth of skills for all role types.² 

 

Sodexo retains staff through its development opportunities 

Sodexo has the capacity and resources to stay competitive and retain staff in a difficult job market – through development journeys, we support individuals to progress to team leader roles, managers and beyond.   

Our Leadership and Management programme supports our colleagues in taking their first step into line management with responsibilities for operational matters.  

Supervisors and managers can also gain additional knowledge and skills through the Sodexo ILM Level 3 Diploma for Managers.    

By creating programmes, such as the FM Academy, we also offer internally certified practical assessments for middle management to increase their awareness and understanding of FM tools, processes and enablers to deliver our FM Services to our partners better.¹⁷ 

Through offering this self-paced learning, the FM Academy has been shown to: 

• Increase time efficiency for both the Facilitator and Learner  
• Improve workforce flexibility  
• Improve cost efficiency¹⁷ 

Ultimately making our middle management more secure, proactive and confident in their roles, making them happier and more likely to remain within our company. As one FM Academy student says, “I have learnt a lot I can put into my daily role”.¹⁷ 

Alongside the FM Academy, we also train our managers to understand the needs of our colleagues and assess their capability and potential. This includes considering their aspirations, which we can leverage to inform our talent strategy as leaders. If our managers live and breathe those behaviours, they treat their teams with the respect they deserve. 

In doing this, we create robust succession planning, mitigate retention risk and proactively support the career journey of our staff members, ensuring we retain their knowledge and expertise to best help the NHS workplaces we support. 

Support from Sodexo through scalability, quasi-clinical help, training and skills retention gives your Trust the depth of resources necessary to build a robust Estates & Facilities Management department workforce that hits the NHSE aim of creating new ways of working to deliver care. 

With outsourcing support, you can create a department that provides crucial support to the clinical team to ensure optimised patient flow within your NHS Trust. 

 

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^{1. Skopeliti, C. (2022) ‘It feels very unsafe’: the NHS staff bracing for winter as cuts loom. London, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/01/it-feels-very-unsafe-the-nhs-staff-bracing-for-winter-as-cuts-loom} 

^{2. NHS England and NHS Improvement. (2022) Estates and Facilities Workforce Action Plan. London, NHS England & NHS Improvement. https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/B0292-NHS-estates-and-facilities-workforce-action-plan.pdf} 

^{3. HEFMA. (2021) National Workforce Action Plan for EFM could be launched before xmas. London, HEFMA. https://www.hefma.co.uk/news/national-workforce-action-plan-for-efm-could-be-launched-before-xmas} 

^{4. Tapper, J. (2022) ‘A real and present danger’: NHS cuts will put lives at risk, health leader warns. London, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/23/a-real-and-present-danger-nhs-cuts-will-put-lives-at-risk-health-leader-warns} 

^{5. HM Government. (2022) The Sourcing Playbook. London, The Cabinet Office. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987353/The_Sourcing_Playbook.pdf} 

^{6. Sodexo Health & Care. (2022) Employment figures Nov 2022. London, Sodexo Health & Care.} 

^{7. Sodexo Health & Care. (2022) Case study: mobilisation and demobilisation. London, Sodexo Health & care.}  

^{8. Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust (MPFT) Operations case example.}   

^{9. Duncan, P. et al. (2022) Record 7 million people awaiting hospital treatment NHS England says. London, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/13/record-7-million-people-awaiting-hospital-treatment-says-nhs-england} 

^{10. Sodexo Health & Care. (2022) Project Gold NHS Staff Survey Oct-Nov 2022. London, Sodexo Health & Care.} 

^{11. Department of Health & Social Care. The NHS Constitution for England. London, Department of Health & Social Care. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitution-for-england/the-nhs-constitution-for-england} 

^{12. Sodexo Health & Care. (2022) Improve patient experience with Experiencia. London, Sodexo Health & Care. https://uk.sodexo.com/facilities-management/healthcare/experiencia.html} 

^{13. NHS England. 2019 National NHS Staff Survey. London, NHS England and NHS Improvement. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/2020/02/18/2019-national-nhs-staff-survey/} 

^{14. Calvello, M. (2020) 62 Recruitment Statistics Every HR Professional Needs to Know. Chicago, G2. https://www.g2.com/articles/recruitment-statistics} 

^{15. June-Sept 2021 recruitment figures vs June-Sept 2022. HR Frontline recruitment stats Sept 2022.} 

^{16. Sodexo Buyer Journey Research: 17 qualitative interviews with NHS representatives, carried out between Nov 2021 - Jan 2022} 

^{17. Sodexo Health & Care. FM Academy Deployment. London, Sodexo Health & Care.}