The Essential Workforce

The Essential Workforce

The Coronavirus Accelerated Recruitment Portal

One of the most significant challenges of the Coronavirus response was how to harness the wave of goodwill and offers of service from students and people wanting to return to health and social care work.

Our HR Team led the national service providing pre-employment checks for all applicants.  Within a number of weeks 18,000 people across Scotland had expressed an interest and 170 NES staff were redeployed at short notice across NES to resource this work.

In collaboration with the Scottish Government, we have also led on the implementation of Coaching for Wellbeing, a digital coaching offer accessible to all health and social care staff in Scotland accessed via the National Wellbeing Hub.

Support for trainees

We continue to work closely with colleagues in other Health Boards to support doctors in training who fall into the high-risk category for catching COVID-19.  With specialty training programmes involving frequent rotations across different clinical hospital and practice areas, the team liaise with Deanery and Board colleagues to ensure that any trainees who fall into the high-risk category are fully supported to ensure that they are safe whilst at work.

We are responsible for sponsoring any doctors in training who require a Tier 2 Visa to work in NHS Scotland.  With ongoing travel restrictions due to COVID-19, there have inevitably been delays to some doctors moving to the UK, and the team continue to provide guidance to these individuals to ensure that there is a smooth transition when able to travel.  If a doctor is required to quarantine upon arrival, support and guidance will also be provided.

Leadership, Management and Personal Development

We have been redesigning national leadership and management development offerings for health and social care staff in Scotland.  These are now being offered virtually using MS Teams.  Consideration has been given to how best to build the connections and relationships within cohorts using the digital platform to facilitate this.  This allows leaders and managers in health and social care to continue their development online, omitting travel time and supporting learning around life at this challenging time.

Our Education and Management Training team are also redesigning training for managers with a variety of courses, including absence management and induction which is now delivered virtually via MS Teams.

Recruitment Services

In response to the Government lockdown protocols introduced in March, NES quickly produced a set of revised online guidance covering all aspects of the recruitment & selection process - this allowed NES to continue to provide an uninterrupted recruitment service to all stakeholders, internal and external.  All recruitment and selection processes have moved online with guidance reviewed and updated regularly to reflect the ever-changing circumstances - this guidance, together with all the latest vacancies, is available on the NES website.

In addition to the online information, the recruitment team continue to provide bespoke virtual support to hiring managers, panel members, and candidates alike.

NES Recruitment has also been liaising closely with other NHS Board colleagues, working in partnership to help provide a unified and consistent approach to online recruitment & selection processes, and has been particularly influential in the national roll out of revised guidance on Virtual Interviewing.

Health and wellbeing

NES are working with colleagues in NHS National Services Scotland on the availability of the flu vaccine to all staff, with frontline staff a priority.  An online system, ‘Cohort’, has been set up to facilitate booking of appointments, with clinics in a variety of locations, We are also working with partners to ensure that there are enough staff across health and social care trained to administer the vaccine, with educational materials being made available through our Turas Learn platform.

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