The National Health Service (NHS) is a testament to the commitment of people to care for one another, irrespective of wealth, class or background. There would not be an NHS without the people who work within it, so we have a responsibility to ensure that we create the conditions to ensure our people can thrive, grow and fulfil their potential.
The values of the NHS are set out in the NHS constitution[1] and commitments to the NHS Workforce are set out in the NHS People Plan[2] and the NHS People Promise[3] which states “this is a promise we must all make to each other – to work together to improve the experience of working in the NHS for everyone.”
In 2022, the Government published ‘Leadership for a collaborative and inclusive future’[4], colloquially known as the ‘Messenger Review’, after General Sir Gordon Messenger, who led the review together with Dame Linda Pollard. The review focused on the best ways to strengthen leadership and management across health and adult social care in England.
This report sits alongside other reports focusing on supporting and developing the workforce using talent management as a tool to attract, identify, nurture, mobilise and deploy individuals to ensure we have the right people, in the right roles, at the right time to ensure the delivery of high-quality patient care and patient services and continuous improvement to how these services are delivered.
One way organisations can use talent management to help is by identifying groups of people at similar stages within their career, with similar career aspirations, and offering targeted interventions to meet their immediate career goals. Bringing these people together is creating a talent pool. Talent pools should be inclusive and diverse.
Talent pools offer organisations the ability to access a diverse range of skills and expertise and diversity is invaluable for solving complex problems, fostering innovation and enabling organisational agility. They can reduce the cost of recruitment and improve hiring times while improving retention.
Talent pools can also help build robust talent pipelines, identifying a wider cadre of individuals with the potential to fill a wider range of roles at various levels over a wider timespan within a specified grouping, such as a profession or a service. Talent pipelines normally cross organisations, sectors and may span educational institutions such as universities and medical schools.
We hope this short video offers enhanced understanding of talent pools and pipelines. For any questions about how we work with your health and care system or organisation to build robust, diverse and inclusive talent pools and pipelines please contact us at: [email protected].
[1] The NHS Constitution for England
[2] NHS People Plan
[3] NHS People Promise
[4] Leadership for a collaborative and inclusive future