The North East and North Cumbria Provider Collaborative (NENC) corporate programme focuses on areas where they consider there are opportunities to do things in different and better ways and at scale across providers in the region and to share best practice and find practical solutions.
Many of the enduring and longstanding challenges faced by providers in NENC include financial challenges, workforce sustainability and supply, changing population dynamics and needs, estates challenges and understanding the complex digital agenda. All of these challenges interact with workforce in some capacity and required a collaborative approach and solution.
Action taken
A shared understanding of values and intent among trusts, coupled with a clear sense of purpose, was crucial to successfully addressing workforce issues, alongside governance frameworks designed to support and reinforce this collaborative approach.
They initially focussed on some small but tangible projects, such as car parking costs for staff and variation in mileage rates, which allowed them to establish quick wins whilst learning about each other's organisations.
After recognising the joint challenges around workforce across corporate workstreams there are now monthly informal meetings of the chairs of the corporate programmes across the 11 trusts, including HR, finance, digital, estates, people and digital. This has been a key enabler in driving progress.
In these meetings they ask three key open questions on an ongoing basis - do they have the right staff, are they supporting them to be as valued and productive as they can be for patients, and are they in the right place?
Outcomes and impact
The NENC launched an HR 'portability agreement' to allow the effective temporary movement of staff between all foundation trusts to support operational service delivery. The portability agreement negates the need to duplicate agreed organisational checks including pre-employment checks and statutory/mandatory training requirements.
The portability agreement has led to turnaround times moving from three months to three days in some cases. It means NENC providers can be more agile in responding to service needs, particularly when this involves specialist staff moving from their main employer, on a temporary basis, to support service provision in another foundation trust.
Launched in 2024, a significant piece of work has also been done around the development of leadership roles and a structured development and learning programme to give directors opportunities for exposure to executive spaces across the 11 partner trusts.
The North East and North Cumbria Provider Collaborative is made up of all 11 foundation trusts within the integrated care system including eight acute and/or community trusts, two mental health, learning disability and autism trusts and one ambulance trust. See the full membership and more on their work here.