SHuRePlan

How do these workforce inputs map onto workforce skills, roles and numbers?

Having identified the workforce inputs required in terms of activities to be done, the next step is to identify what this means in terms of roles and numbers of staff.  There are a number of steps to this:

Identifying the workforce numbers required and when they are required

The pattern of the activities and when they need to occur can be totalled to give an indication of the total workforce input required and when it is required.  This can be used to identify the pattern of staffing that is likely to be needed at different times of the day, of the week or even of the year.  An additional allowance should be made for activities that have not been captured by the activity analysis and to allow some flexibility for peaks and troughs in workload. 

Identifying the roles

How roles are constructed will depend on the pattern of staffing required on a given shift.  If a total of only one or two people are needed to cover the workload it makes little sense to develop specialised roles.  One would look for individuals with a sufficiently wide range of skills to cover all of the activities required.  Similarly one might seek generalists where much of the work has to be carried out by individuals or very small teams e.g. in community services.

Larger numbers will allow more differentiation of roles by clustering activities in terms of level and type of skill required.  While there is a growing body of knowledge in relation to what existing or new roles work there will always be a need to adapt to local circumstances and the capabilities of the available staff.

Mapping roles to staff types

While the aim is to develop greater flexibility in the workforce and roles, which are designed around patients’ needs, a large part of the workforce will continue to be drawn from established professional groups. As we move to planning supply in step 4, it is important that we have established demand in terms of the types of staff that might potentially fill the planned roles.

There are likely to be a number of different types of roles which we would need to identify:

• Those that fully match the skills profile of a specific professional category e.g. Mental Health Nurse, Cardiologist, Therapeutic Radiographer etc.
• Those that are enhancements roles drawn from a specific professional group with additional skills training required to support the new role e.g. Nurse practitioner.
• Those that could be filled from more than one professional group but require additional skills training or development to fulfil the role e.g. some Mental Health ‘star worker’ roles which can be drawn from Mental Health Nurses, Occupational Therapists or Social Workers.
• Roles that could be filled by staff who are not professionally qualified but whose training might be a step on the way to a professional qualification e.g. Assistant practitioners.

Practical approaches and shortcuts
Ratios and benchmarks

A full analysis of workforce demand requires a careful analysis of how patients access services and the workforce inputs in terms of time and skills required to meet the patient needs. However, for many practical purposes it is possible to use ratios linking staffing numbers to specific factors such as weighted population or occupied beds. However, such approaches make assumptions about the intermediate factors remaining the same. Their principle uses are:

• Making quick estimates of workforce demand where no changes in service models or ways of working are anticipated.
• Diagnostic benchmarking – i.e. asking why staffing ratios are different for apparently similar services