As set out in the NHS Long Term Plan and We are the NHS: People Plan for 2020/21, the NHS must lead the way in valuing, caring for, listening to, educating and rewarding our people.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan is the first comprehensive workforce plan for the NHS, putting staffing on a sustainable footing and improving patient care. It focuses on retaining existing talent and making the best use of new technology alongside the biggest recruitment drive in health service history.
To improve the experience of our people and make sure they stay with us for longer, we all need to take part in a cultural transformation. We all want our people to be happy, healthy and able to make changes throughout their career – from the start to their retirement – which suit their individual ambitions, life events and skills. This can’t happen unless everyone takes part in driving this change.
Through the National Retention Programme, we want to support systems and organisations to value and retain their people. We will bring together local and national experts and experience to offer information, tools and practical support for systems and organisations across the NHS to help you deliver the NHS people promise.
In collaboration with our wider directorate and colleagues in our clinical directorates, we are working with our people promise exemplar organisations to deliver the interventions set out in the People Promise, together in one place, at the same time.
Key resources
- Improving staff retention: a guide for line managers and employers has been updated by the National Retention Programme and NHS Employers. This guide is aimed at line managers, employers and leaders, and anyone involved in the retention of our NHS people. It contains information on supporting colleagues in their late and early career with specific focus on induction, reward and recognition and menopause support. By using the guide, we hope you will feel supported to take positive action to help retain your talented and skilled staff and equipped to have regular conversations with colleagues to discuss how you can support them to stay.
- Resources to support colleagues in early and late career.
- In collaboration with the nursing directorate, the National Retention Programme has launched resources to support the delivery of five high impact actions that impact on early career, experience at work, and late career, maximising the retention and experience of our nursing and midwifery staff. These include:
People Promise Exemplars
The People Promise Exemplar programme includes organisations from a mix of acute, ambulance, community, mental health and primary care sectors– with which the national and regional retention teams alongside other teams at NHS England are working to deliver the high impact interventions set out in the People Promise together in one place, at the same time in order to achieve improved outcomes and optimum staff satisfaction and retention.
International retention resources
A dedicated careers hub features stories of six internationally recruited NHS nurses at different stages of their career and resources to support internationally recruited nurses to achieve their ambitions, explore their own career journey and access resources to support them to stay well.
Campaign resources are available for NHS and local authorities to support the careers hub on the Department of Health and Social Care campaign resource centre.
The International retention toolkit, produced in collaboration with NHS Employers, outlines actions employers can take to ensure internationally recruited staff will want to stay, thrive and build lasting careers in the NHS. This toolkit supports international staff in the NHS by improving their experience at work and enabling them to stay, thrive and build lasting careers in the NHS.
The tools and examples set out in this hub are centred around all the themes of the NHS people promise.