Health Professions: Flexible Working
(asked on 7th June 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help promote flexible working for (a) doctors and (b) nurses in the NHS.
The Department is helping to promote flexible working for doctors and nurses through the interim NHS People Plan which outlines the new offer for staff and sets out what support will be offered to National Health Service staff including flexible working. The interim NHS People Plan will be developed over the summer with publication of the final version expected after the spending review later this year.
The Government also made a manifesto commitment to “…strengthen the entitlement for NHS employees to flexible working to help those with caring responsibilities for young children or older relatives.” This includes the improvement in the use of technology to help trusts with e-rostering and e-job planning to optimise the use of their permanent and temporary workforces.
The Junior Doctor’s contract agreement provides for £1,000 less than full time trainee allowance to recognise additional costs such trainees face.
NHS Improvement continues to promote flexible working for staff including doctors and nurses through its NHS Staff Retention Collaborative. This initiative initially focussed on nurses and clinicians working in mental health but has now been extended to all staff groups1.
Flexible working for all staff including doctors and nurses is promoted through the NHS Constitution which states that staff have the right “to fair treatment regarding leave, rights and flexible working” and also states that “employers…must consider flexible working requests by employees with at least 26 weeks continuous service”.2
The Department is currently working closely with NHS Improvement to roll out smarter staff banks. As well as reducing reliance on expensive recruitment agencies, staff banks provide a further opportunity for flexible working in the NHS. Effective staff banks can give staff the freedom to manage their own time, using simple, user-friendly technologies to pick up shifts when they want them, get paid quickly, and have control over their pension contributions. Furthermore, where several banks are joined together into collaborative banks, trusts can dramatically increase the size of the flexible workforce they can reach and increase the opportunities for those working flexibly to choose the shifts that fit in with their lives.
Notes:
1 https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/improving-staff-retention/