NHS Trust on the South Coast

An NHS Trust in the South East was looking for a supplier who could provide staff across all of their sites including Healthcare Centres. They chose to work with Manpower as primary supplier because of our ability to provide all the types of staff required to the 20 plus locations within the Trust. 

Not only do we supply a range of roles to support many functions, we also offer the flexibility to cover short-length shifts – which form a large part of the requirement. Manpower supplies up to 80 temporary staff each week across several sites and departments.  Through this service the Trust has a single point of contact to place orders and only pays for the hours it needs.

Improved speed of response
The requirements across the Trust consist of a combination of ongoing roles and ad hoc orders to cover holidays and unexpected absences such as sickness. As with many NHS Trusts reliability and speed of response are key requirements of their temporary resourcing supplier. Many of the orders we receive are for the same day or next day and the Trust has agreed that we have the best response times and processes to support these needs. In order to meet all needs we maintain a resource pool of fully vetted and security cleared staff who can be called upon to fill all orders - even the most urgent, very short notice requirements. This resource pool is constantly updated to ensure enough people are available when required. Within one hour of an order being placed, we let the Trust know whether we have a suitable member of staff available and we provide the member of staff’s details to ensure that the Hiring Manager is fully informed.

Ability to provide a wide range of skills across various shift patterns
We supply up to 80 temporary staff each week across multiple locations and various skill sets, including administration, secretarial, data entry, receptionists and cleaners. Many of the staff we supply to this Trust work 2-hour shifts to clean Health Centres in the mornings and evenings before and after opening hours, as well as other NHS buildings. We thereby ensure that the Trust only pays for the hours it needs, whereas some suppliers charge for a full day. The thorough selection process our candidates are taken through includes an assessment relevant to the role. Our assessment package has more than 70 different assessments ranging from attention to detail to data entry and literacy.

Single point of contact
We introduced a single point of contact who keeps in regular communication with the Hiring Managers to understand their needs and is available throughout the day for the immediate requirements. This contact ensures that we supply all temporary personnel in the timeframes required across each NHS department. A full feedback mechanism has also been implemented so that we can monitor the level of service we are providing and through continuous improvement we can ensure that the NHS Hiring Managers are receiving the best possible service. Our local office has the full support of our National NHS Account Manager who is available to share best practice, ideas and processes.

Streamlined order process
Prior to using Manpower, the Trust was unaware that they were using suppliers from outside the Buying Solutions Framework and that as a result, they were incurring a wide range of charge rates and processes for the services being delivered. By appointing Manpower as primary supplier they have been able to reduce their costs and management burden. They benefit from the pricing agreed under the Buying Solutions Framework and streamlined processes that our single point of contact provides. We use a standardised order form to streamline and simplify the process for all NHS Hiring Managers who are authorised to recruit temporary staff. We keep the NHS Hiring Manager informed of the status of their order on a regular basis and remain in contact with both the manager and the member of staff for the duration of their assignment to ensure we can quickly respond to changing needs.

Fully vetted and security cleared staff, including enhanced CRB disclosures
We supply both patient-facing and non patient-facing staff and ensure that the appropriate checks are carried out for each role in line with NHS pre-employment standards. This includes ensuring that thousands of candidates have appropriate CRB checks completed each year.

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