Sustainable workforce strategies: reducing temporary staffing costs through collaboration
16 September 2025
At this webinar, trust leaders shared how they're tackling financial sustainability.
Improvement
Race equality
Chair:
Dimple Keen, head of development and engagement, NHS Providers
Speakers:
- Donna Griffiths, chief people officer, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust
- Bridget O’Kelly, chief people officer, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Key takeaways
- 47% of delegates were already in the process of implementing actions to reduce agency spend by 30% before the end of this financial year. A further 25% of trusts had already achieved or were close to achieving this saving.
- We also heard that the greatest challenge for trusts in reducing agency spend were clinician shortages, as reported by 66% of delegates.
The event covered
- How University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire have used quality improvement methodologies to reduce variable pay.
- How a strong focus on embedding cultural change and communication, helped Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust improve bank worker experience and reduce temporary staffing costs.
- Take aways on what good looks when working with staff to co-produce approaches to sustainable long term workforce solutions.
Watch the recording
Hear Donna Griffiths share learnings from a five day ‘Rapid process improvement event’ (RPIE), involving and engaging teams from across the organisation to understand variable pay and its drivers, and use improvement methodology to identify opportunities to address the root causes.
Hear Bridget O’Kelly outline the approach taken collaboratively across 27 providers within the South East temporary staffing group.
Their work as a region enabled them to understand both the individual trust and regional challenges and optimise the provision of temporary staffing to improve the experience of bank and agency staff, standardise processes, reduce competition and improve opportunities for cost-saving.
