An Interim NHS People Plan has been released by NHS England et al (2019). The new Chief People Officer will be required to oversee the publication and development of the full People Plan with the aim of helping to build the NHS workforce of the future. If the Chief People Officer is to use the interim plan to guide her as she implements her vision and the vision of the service, then she will have to look very hard for any meaningful detail in the interim plan.
The Chief People Officer will be key to delivering the vision for the next 10 years as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan (NHS England and NHS Improvement, 2019). She will be required to deliver on the NHS's vision of 21st century care; this requires a fundamental shift in the skill mix, types of roles, culture and ways of working. What is not required is ‘more of the same’.
If the NHS Long Term Plan vision is to be fulfilled, it will require a service that is more personalised and patient-centred, with greater emphasis on prevention and increased delivery of care out of the hospital setting and into the community. However, large numbers of skilled nurses will be required to achieve this. The Interim NHS People Plan needs much more detail to demonstrate how to deliver that care and to make known the support and actions that the NHS will require and provide in order to help staff.
This interim people plan focuses on the NHS's aspirations for its workforce and the actions that must be taken immediately if the service is to address some of the most demanding challenges and acknowledges the nursing workforce shortage.
The interim plan has not provided any indication of costs related to how the aspirations in the full NHS People Plan will be delivered. Details of costed action plans have featured in the Government's spending review. These costed plans detail the funds available for the education and training of the NHS workforce. It should not be underestimated how much funding will be required for nursing staff to continue to deliver safe and effective patient care.
A new National NHS People Board is to be convened drawing on people and organisations across England. Its first aim is to develop the full NHS People Plan that is to be published when the spending review has been completed and then to determine individual and collective progress being made; it is also hoped that individual and collective accountability will feature large. The Chief People Officer will also be charged with convening a People Plan Advisory Group and its members will include partners from professional bodies, trade unions, professional regulators, patient groups, think tanks and the local Government Association. Time will tell if the various groups will have any impact on the development and implementation of the full NHS People Plan; failure to include and ask and listen to nurses at all stages will, for sure, have a negative impact on success.
For many years nurses have known that there needs to be recognition that support is needed for the workforce. Nurses have been asking for flexible working, wellbeing and career development and at the same time requesting that more efforts are made to address discrimination, violence, bullying and harassment in the work place. The recruitment of more nurses is an urgent priority but it is vital that we retain our talented nursing and healthcare work force that is fit for purpose and fit for the future. This will require significant investment. In order to retain skilled, knowledgeable and talented staff, the NHS must give serious consideration to the terms and conditions that will encourage and allow the talent to flourish and, above all, to stay. To attract the very best into nursing and the NHS (and those who are the recipients of care deserve only the very best), the NHS has to be a world-class employer that offers fair and equitable salaries, pensions that are of value—and it has to demonstrate that it respects and responds to employee needs.