Robert: Hello and welcome to the first of a three part series celebrating and diving into both the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and more specifically the upcoming NHS Digital Workforce Plan. My name is Robert Mulligan, content developer in the digital workforce team at NHS England, and I’m joined today by Yinka Makinde, Director of Digital Workforce at NHS England, who as part of this series will be talking to key colleagues passionate about workforce and the fundamental part they play in delivering health and social care. Yinka, we go into detail on the Digital Workforce Plan in your discussion with our first guest shortly, but in a nutshell, can you tell us what its purpose is?

Yinka: Absolutely, Robert. So I’m really excited to have been able to lead this piece of work for the system. It really signals how important developing and supporting us, and we call it the professional digital data, technology and clinical informatics workforce. These are people that operate across health and social care, and they are fundamentally important to not only the delivery of the digital tools that we’re investing in, but also the optimisation of those tools so that we can actually realise the benefits from our digital and data investments. And this plan really sets out how we’re going to professionalise this workforce, build the workforce, and sort of support their sort of education and training over the coming years.

Robert: And as I mentioned, today’s discussion also centres around the now much publicised NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and why we’re delighted that Dr. Navina Evans, Chief Workforce, Training and Education Officer at NHS England, wanted to take part in our discussion today.

Yinka: I in particular was really thrilled to have had the opportunity to spend some time with Navina. Previously Chief at Health Education England, Navina is all about workforce. She describes the publication of the plan as a historic moment that will benefit both present and future members of the workforce up until sort of, I think we’re looking 15 years into the future. So, you know, it was incredible to hear her thoughts on that. And I started by asking Navina what the three biggest challenges were that she hoped the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan will address over the coming years.

Navina: The plan focuses on three big areas. One is train. The other is retain. The third is reform. And all of those areas are really, really important, complex, difficult. The second thing about the Long Term Workforce Plan is it forces us to actually think about the long term. We’re often so stuck with solving the problems of today because they are very all consuming.

But you know, for workforce, we really have to start now and think about the future because it does take time to develop our workforce. And as far as the digital workforce is concerned, I don’t think we pay enough attention to that yet. We are paying some and it’s getting better, but I also think that whilst it’s not specifically in the Long Term Workforce Plan to address the needs of our digital workforce, we do sort of acknowledge that this is an area we need to focus on going forward.

Yinka: I mean, that’s really encouraging. And of course, as we are now in the digital age, there’s two angles to the digital workforce, isn’t there? There’s the specialists, which we’re going to come onto in a minute. Also, even for the wider workforce, there is, I guess, an increasing expectation that they are able to embrace the digital opportunity. Do you have any thoughts on how the Long Term Workforce Plan perhaps starts to consider one of those elements?

Navina: So, in the Long Term Workforce Plan there is a quite an important section on how digital technology, AI, innovation in especially in those areas are just going to happen at a rate that we, the workforce, might not be able to keep up with.

And that patients and the people we serve will have expectations of, you know, even simple things like how to book appointments and having virtual consultations or managing your own records or some Apps, simple things like that. We are falling behind what the population is even capable of. So, there is quite a focus in the Long Term Workforce Plan about upskilling the current workforce and then making sure that the way we train future workforce, we build in the fact that they have to be educated and skilled and agile enough to respond to digital technology. So that is a really important aspect of the plan.

Yinka: I’m really, really pleased to hear about that. So, let’s just segue a little bit into the specialists. We’ve acknowledged that they’re not in the Long Term Workforce Plan, but there is a recognition that they are important. I don’t know how much you are familiar with the work that we’ve been doing, Navina, on that particular workforce.

Navina: Well, let me tell you what I know. So, I remember when I was in Health Education England that we published a report on the digital, data and technology workforce in, I think it was 2021. I think we did some kind of scoping, some modelling. There was an estimate that we were just shy of about 50000 kind of expert professionals in the NHS. And that actually we were doing our own kind of assumptions and projections that we would need substantially more over time. I’ve been told that we predicted, we’re short of 50000, that we’d need an estimated extra 15000 or so, by 2030. Now, things are so rapidly changing in this world that actually, I’m not sure if that’s accurate, but it just gives you the size, gave me anyway, an understanding of the size and the scale of what we need to do. Because 2030 is not that far away.

Yinka: No, it’s scarily not, is it? And of course, there’s so much increased investment that’s going into digital transformation. We’ve got a number of strategic programs at NHS England. So, I guess, what are you hoping that the Digital Workforce Plan will be addressing?

Navina: I’d like to put that in the context of the fact that we are now in one single organisation where training and education and planning and the whole digital world, because NHS Digital came in as well with us, roughly the same time as education and training, that actually we’re much more joined up. We’re much more understanding of what is required. And the, you know, the government has a focus on tech, digital, and we absolutely recognise in NHS England that we can’t do any of that if we don’t have the specialty and specialist skills. in the workforce to enable that to happen. So that’s my expectation.

I need to have these experts to get the rest of the workforce ready and to develop the systems so that we can meet the needs of the people we serve. It’s a bit embarrassing that we don’t.

Yinka: Yeah, I guess so. But, you know, I think we are having very similar problems to many other sectors.

Navina: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair.

Yinka: I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, but I suppose we also shouldn’t be complacent, and I guess we need to recognise that we do need to take action, which is why we have spent, over the last few months, a considerable amount of time working with the system to co-produce a Digital Workforce Plan.

So just let me give you an overview of what that’s going to be looking like. So, the Digital Workforce Plan really signals a commitment from NHS England to focus resource and effort to enable ICSs and providers to address the current shortages. So, we know as you said from the previous Health Education England report that there are significant shortages now, but also projected into the future.

What we very much hope is that the plan will really enable the system to be able to grow the level of quality and maturity and capacity in the system. What’s been really important for us is that it aligns with the principles that are set out in the NHS People Promise in the recent NHS equality, diversity and inclusion improvement plan. And then it complements the Long Term Workforce Plan. As I said, it’s been co developed and essentially what it has is 15 collective national commitments, right, set out into three sort of core objectives. So, one is about developing the right roles. One is about developing the right talent in the system. And the other is about enhancing profession recognition.

So, what we really hope is that together, and this really does need to be regionally led and locally delivered, but between us, over the next sort of five, seven years or so, we will start to see sustained growth in this workforce and in the professionalism of this workforce as well.

And then that will, that will hopefully support all the great stuff that is in the Long Term Workforce Plan. So, hearing that, do you think we’re sort of hitting on the right notes?

Navina: Absolutely. Just what you described is so closely aligned with everything else, which I’m sure we worked really hard to make sure that’s the case. And that is, again, as I say, part of the benefit of us all being in one organisation, it’s got to be better than the sum of its parts. And this, I think is a really good example of that. And then the delivery will have to be the same again for all of us. So, I can totally see that this benefits. The other thing, Yinka, I’m really pleased to hear about is, you mentioned the People Promise, you mentioned the EDI Improvement Plan, so there is a real understanding of how we need to, of the people side of this workforce, you know? Because I think there’s a, or maybe there might be a, it may be a false… impression that we think about tech and tech people or digital people as technicians. But actually your cultures of your team, the culture of your services, like any other service, the success depends on the people side of things.

Yinka: Absolutely. And also, because we know from the research that our system colleagues are really struggling to attract and retain. People in this part of the workforce. We need to work harder because. We are competing on a, in an open market, people who are architects or analysts or data scientists don’t really have to come and work in health and care. They could go and work in finance. They could go work in retail. So it’s a different problem to the problem that we have when it comes to clinicians, right? So we really need to work harder to make sure that we are also creating an environment that they want to come and work in.

Navina: We know that actually whilst pay is really, really important, often people talk about the other rewards of their job as being equally important, if not more important, you know, feeling valued, belonging, and all of those sorts of things are really, really important.

Yinka: Yeah. So, Navina, I just wanted to spend the last few minutes reflecting on, so we’ve got these two, you know, pivotal plans. Inevitably, there are going to be some challenges with delivery, particularly for the system that will be expected to be, you know, executing the actions and the recommendations in these plans. What do you see might be the biggest challenges or barriers to us actually successfully delivering on some of those recommendations? And is there any advice that you can offer?

Navina: So, I think we sometimes make things more complicated for ourselves than they need to be because the way in which you’ve described the plan and I’ve described the other plan, you know, there’s so much synergy. There’s so much overlap. In fact, you can’t do one bit without the other. Um, and that comes back to the synergy point. So actually we should be pulling, you know, different asks and of course, you know people might say, well, why do you just have one plan that included the digital workforce in a single plan? Well, we live in a world where things are commissioned in a particular way or funded in a particular way or whatever it is, but we can be smart about delivery. It’s the same with someone who said, oh, Long Term Workforce…. and then we have an EDI Plan and then we have this. And, you know, and I said, but isn’t EDI something you’re doing anyway? All you need to do is look at the EDI Improvement Plan and think, oh, how does this map onto what we’re already doing? You know, this is done, done, done.

This is where we focus our attention. It should just be something we overlay and bring together. So ,I think the problem we have is self-inflicted. So, we really need to challenge ourselves on how we join things up.

Yinka: And what’s your vision for this time next year? Where would you like to see things?

Navina: This time next year, we’re talking really about current existing staff. You know, a lot of the Long Term Workforce Plan is about the future. I think that this time next year, what I’d like is for people to start to see that we have put our money where our mouth is, where the, where it comes to the kind of workforce plan is concerned. So they, I, cause I think a lot of people will be saying, yeah, it looks great, let’s see if you actually deliver. So that’s, they’ll start to see that, but equally importantly we will have started to address what it feels like to work in the NHS right now around things like retention, around morale, around the culture, around the conditions in which we are doing the work we have to do so that we can be really effective and, and productive. And that’s where I think technology and digital can really help liberate our staff this time next year, so that they are feeling much more productive.

Yinka: Brilliant. Well, Navina, it’s been fabulous having the opportunity to talk to you about workforce plans today. So thank you very much.

Navina: Thank you for having me.

Robert: So, reflecting on that then, I think for me, Yinka, I’ve always thought, but never said, oh, why the need for another plan? And I think Navina hit the nail on the head there. There is a need for these separate plans for these niche areas. They don’t deserve a chapter in one big overarching plan.

Yinka: I do think there is value in having a separate plan. I think the opportunity that that gives us is the ability to really go into the level of detail that we need for the particular workforce that we are trying to serve. In particular, there are three things that I think I wanted to reflect on. So the first is that this is about people and we’ve got to make sure that whatever we’re doing with respect to these plans, we are trying to make sure that we are developing a workforce that is happy and that really wants to stay.

Number two, I think, yeah, both these plans give us the opportunity to think about the future and maybe we’ve not been able to do that as much previously, so the focus on pipeline development, thinking about how we are encouraging people to think about different careers at school age is fantastic. It gives us the opportunity to really start to build a sustainable workforce into the future that is able to adapt to the needs of not only now, but the future.

And then the third reflection I have is Navina’s invitation for us to synergise, to come together and to try and support some of the delivery of these plans together and I think that makes a huge amount of sense. Just one example of that, there is a lot of focus in the Long Term Workforce Plan about how apprenticeships are going to play quite a big role.

And also, there’s an impact on that, obviously, working more closely with the education sector. We also have a focus on apprenticeships and increasing the uptake of those amongst the digital, data and technology workforce. And so I’d like to think that we can work on something like that together, working with the education sector together, working with Department for Education together, to do that really well.

Robert: Your first point there, it was that openness and honesty that really comes across well, and what also comes across really well in our second interview with Amanda Rawlings, who’s Chief People Officer, University Hospitals, Derby and Burton. Here’s a sneak peek.

Amanda: So, we’ve got 12 graduates, we’ve got apprentices. So, we’re growing our own digital capability internally, while actually having to go to market with certain skills. And that goes across all professions. So, my understanding of the workforce plan that’s coming is actually around recognising we’ve got to invest in people and give them more flexible ways of learning and development.

Yinka: Listening to Amanda about the work that they’ve been doing locally around graduates and apprenticeships is really encouraging and they’ve made it work, which is fantastic because I know that when we ran the regional discussions there was definitely variation in terms of how successful people felt they had been with those.

Robert: So, a conversation not to be missed then. Yinka, Thank you so much for your time today.

Yinka: Thank you Robert.

Robert: And of course, thank you to Dr Navina Evans, and thank you too for listening to our Digital Workforce podcast.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to a podcast produced by Robert Mulligan for NHS England.