Trusts need to ‘think imaginatively’ to keep staff

As well as improving care quality and outcomes from workforce stability, NHS Improvement said the move would also help trusts reduce their vacancy rates and lower their need to use costly agency workers.

The guide outlines seven essential steps every organisation should take to improve its staff retention.

It covers advice on reducing variation in working environments, empowering staff, and tailoring roles to match the different stages of a worker’s career.

The guidance also features ‘innovative and proven’ techniques to improving staff retention being used by NHS organisations.

NHS Improvement said it was now calling on all trusts to ’think imaginatively’ on what they can do to encourage their staff to stay with them, and then ‘take action’ where necessary to make it happen.

The guidance said: “This improvement resource outlines key steps to improving retention of clinical staff. We have distilled our advice from interviews with trust HR directors, directors of nursing and medical directors.

“We recognise that no one action will boost retention on its own – sustained action in several areas is needed. We also know that external factors like private sector wage growth, the strength of the pound and the increasing demands of a clinical role in the NHS all make it difficult to retain staff.

“But there are factors in trusts’ control and trusts are exploiting these in their efforts to improve retention. These factors are covered in this resource.”

These factors include enabling flexible working, providing clear career progression and the ability to adapt roles as staff get older.

The guidance also warned that staff retention was becoming ‘harder than ever’ across the NHS and was seen by some nurse leaders as more challenging than getting students onto undergraduate nursing courses.

Ruth May, executive director of nursing at NHS Improvement, said in her introduction to the guide: “Patients deserve good quality, reliable care that meets their needs from the NHS, and the best way of achieving this is via the service’s talented and dedicated staff.

“But, we, local and nationally have to make it easier for our staff to want to do this for the long-term.

“Clinical workers are the NHS’s greatest asset which is why we’ve developed an intensive support package and resources for organisations, so they can take the steps needed to keep our valued staff.”