NHS Admin fixed 12 month contract

[Castlecould]

Hi all
I keep seeing NHS Admin jobs listed as a 12 month fixed contract. Does anyone know if this is just standard policy and you’d probably be kept on after the 12 months? or is to cover maternity/long term absences so would just be for the 12 month period?
TIA

No straightforward answer I'm afraid, it's not a 'standard policy', no. The NHS is a huge organisation and to a large extent each trust/organisation sets its own rules about things like this. The reasons for it being 12 months will vary job to job. The most common would be to cover maternity or someone being seconded off to another job, because the department has only been given 12 months worth of budget (might be to do with project or grant funding in some areas), because they aren't sure if they need/want the job long term, there might be a departmental or service restructure/reorganisation coming up (the NHS loves a good reorganisation) so they don't want to increase their permanent headcount, or as a 'stealth' long probation period to see if they like the person (the latter managers are not officially allowed to do but it does happen in practice). So a whole variety, in some cases if you do a good job and they like you it's likely you'd get a contract extension or made permanent but in others (e.g. the maternity leave cover) you'd be unwise to count on it - you may need to find out from the hiring manager if they can give you more information on the reason for the 12 month contract.

One thing to consider if if it's a large trust you may well find that once you are 'in' there are often other opportunities internally (there is always a need for good admin people) so if you are flexible and prepared to take the risk then it may not be a bad thing to go for it anyway (I have taken several 12 month contracts in the NHS over the years and on several occasions got made permanent, on a few not but in those cases I've always found something else) - but it all depends on circumstances, if you'd be leaving a permanent job where you have 10 years service for a short contract where you'd have no service history so no redundancy entitlement for instance that might be not be very sensible, or if you live in a very awkward/rural area or if you can only work very specific part time hours, again you might want to consider the implications if you end up unemployed at the end of the year?

It's isn't always maternity leave cover. I recently ended up with a fixed term contract, in the contract that came through after checks, I did note is just said short term funding as reason for fixed term.
To be honest the remote interview started with it being said HR put a wrong job description out there (making it sound like it was far more call centre-ish then admin at interview) and then on offer it was advised I was only being offered fixed term. (the advert suggested both perm and fixed term position available in my case) but then I came across someone who worked in the department for 3 years and was heading towards a factory.

On my 2nd day, the line manager said they had a very high turnover, it was like a sink or swim type of role with no guidance from what I gathered. Wish I had known that a point of interview so if you get to interview - my best advice is do try and explore why before you get the contract which is where I'd gone wrong.