Optimising Neighbourhood Workforce Ecosystems

Introduction

The Government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England is predicated on a reinvention of the NHS through 3 radical shifts:

1. Hospital to community
2. Analogue to digital
3. Sickness to prevention

The Plan describes a shift to continuous, accessible and integrated care by bringing more integrated services into local communities, supported by creating a new workforce model with staff genuinely aligned with the future direction of reform.

The purpose of the work is to enable the optimisation of neighbourhood workforce ecosystems in the context of integrated neighbourhood health (INH) and integrated neighbourhood teams (INT).

Overview of Findings

  • There are fourteen inter-connected workforce factors to an effective integrated neighbourhood workforce ecosystem, which must be considered at multiple layers (City, Neighbourhood, Team).  Some will be more important than others at each layer.
  • The two foundational requirements for an effective workforce ecosystem are:
  1. System thinking
  2. Collaborative culture and communication

The other twelve factors rely so intrinsically on these, that investment in the other factors is unlikely to yield any real improvements without them.

  • The foundational workforce factors, ‘Systems Thinking’ and ‘Collaborative Culture and Communication’ are essential to every collaboration, but on their own will not create the wider workforce ecosystem required (they are necessary but not sufficient).
  • The key to considering the remaining twelve factors is to establish the combination of core workforce factors in any given context / scenario.  It is likely there will be between three and six factors which work together (synergistically) to directly address the workforce ecosystem requirements.  These cannot be addressed individually; it is the connectivity between these factors which will unlock system potential.
  • As an example, in considering how to improve ‘digital transformation’, it is possible that in addition to the two foundational factors, the other connected core workforce factors are supportive environment, equal partnerships, training and change management.  In a different scenario these factors will be different as they are context dependent.
  • Approaches need to be designed with an understanding of how the factors interact in a way which improves or undermines progress.  For example, there will be little or no benefit in training people if they’re not supported to apply their learning.  Similarly, weak collaborative culture and communication will undermine equal partnerships and effective systems thinking will improve management of change.
  • The relative importance of factors and strength of interdependencies will be dynamic and may change over time and therefore this has to be an iterative approach with all of the factors kept constantly under review.  This requires a collaborative approach to explore and address multiple perspectives.

For further information and to find out more, please see the below documents: