The future of non clinical jobs in the NHS

[njg575]

I work as a Band 5 admin office manager and have been told there will be a freeze on all non clinical jobs in the NHS.

I want to progress but feel this has scuppered any hopes of promotion and I am trapped in my current post. I feel very demoralised.

Anyone else in the same position?

i think it's going to be a really difficult couple of years for non-clinical folk in the NHS. Most sensible people know our worth but politicians love to hate us and use us as headline grabbers - "axe the bureaucrats" and all that. I think if you are in an acute trust rather than an ICB or NHS England, then you will probably fare better in the long term. Hang on in there if you can, learn as much as you can in your current role and I think there will be a shift in the next couple of years at your level. Higher up I am not sure.

I've never felt more undervalued and vulnerable working in the NHS. I know whenever they've tried to cut my role/department they ultimately come back because our role is important to our clinical colleagues and patients.
I want clinical services to be prioritised. I'm so frustrated at the service our patients and community is receiving. I just also want to be valued in my non-clinical role.

I'm fucked. Been covering the jobs of 2 other people for over a year and was hoping we'd finally be able to advertise the vacancies. Highly specialised tech role and only one person in the entire trust who knows the systems 🙄 What could go wrong?

My only advice as someone who has been around in the NHS as a non-clinical person for a LONG time (and started out as a medical secretary, now worked my way up to being fairly senior in an ICB, lucky me), is that we have to focus on the fact that we DO have value, and our clinical colleagues know that we do. And if you try to remember every day that your work does help patients and support clinical activity then it really helps. These things are often cyclical - Wes is doing a lot of it for impact, because he has always hated NHS managers and because he wants to appeal to the lowest common denominator of voters who don't understand the complexity of the system. It will get better in a couple of years I think.

I agree with @MakingPlans2025. It'll be tough for non clinical staff for a few years, but as a clinician we can't actually function without you. I've been around long enough to see this cyclical pattern, it's depressing but try and hang on in there.

I am non-clinical NHS and I am one of two people who has to reinterview for a single role. 50/50 on whether I will keep my job, although I expect both myself and my colleague to be out of there soon either way. I must say, from my interactions with NHSE (I don't work directly for them) there is A LOT of chaff. It's farcical how many very highly paid managers there are doing very little in that organisation, and mine, for that matter. There's loads of self-imporrant busy work and very limited discernible patient benefit. Although I may well soon be unemployed because of Wes Streeting's cuts, I think, on the whole, he's right to make them.

Its awful for anyone feeling vulnerable in their job, clinical staff could not function without our incredible administrative staff in the background.

In our Trust, lots of non frontline clinical services are vulnerable too with some services closing and a hiring freeze for many clinical posts whilst they look at redeployment. It’s a horrible time for so many NHS staff and I feel for everyone impacted.

I hope everything works out for you, things will definitely swing back eventually but who knows how long it will take!

I am just hanging on until I either win the lottery or can take my ‘95 pension at 60. Only 9 years to go🫣 Unless they change the rules in that time🙄

No but I have an application in for a non clinical admin role. Within a week the recruiter has phoned me 3 separate times to discuss and arrange an interview, confirm the date and time, followed by the 3rd call 2 days later saying cancel the interview there's a freeze on recruitment. It was left on a "we'll contact you" . Do you know if this freeze is temporary until the next tax years budgets are sorted, or longer term?

where are your concerns coming from?

NHS England is being scrapped

And ICBs have to reduce costs by 50% by end Dec25

thank you, does this affect those employed by nhs or just those employed by nhs england
and you are worried about changing your job/progressing, rather than losing your job op and others?

Hits nail on head.

To be honest OP I think your chances of promotion may be helped if anything. If your employer is freezing admin posts, that just means that they won’t be expanding numbers or replacing admin staff who leave. So if your boss leaves, there might be an opening for you without external competition.

Obviously there is uncertainty in the NHS at the moment after the NHSE abolition (which i agree with albeit whilst being sympathetic to the staff). But if I worked for a trust I’d be relatively optimistic.

A lot of people don’t understand what people’s jobs are. People could argue mine is a pen pusher role, but it isn’t. Everyone tends to think their own role is super important, but in reality, the NHS will never stop and keel over because some roles are removed inappropriately. They’ll just make the mistake and then rehire loads of people later on.

Personally, getting rid of NHSE is a mistake. It needed serious reform, but to work in an NHS with absolutely no buffer from the government who have zero experience in health care? No thanks…

As a non clinical member of NHS ICB I agree with the principle that there are far too many very highly paid managers in our ICB who do very little apart from try justify their own existence. I even heard one of them admit it in a team meeting this week so they do know who they are. The problem is too many reorganisations have been done with the commitment not to reduce staff. Add to that the fact that there are not many jobs out there for these people to go to results in not enough natural movement at this level. This in turn has the effect of ever increasing costs and leaving people like the OP with few opportunities for progression. Those that do appear tend to be filled based on ‘who you know’ rather than on merit.

The change from CCG to ICB left us with far too many layers of management and on top of that top level execs were recruited externally adding another one.
Back office function organisational structures were designed around the people who were in post rather than around what was needed. Staff who were almost CFO’s in CCG’s became 4th or fifth level managers in ICB’s due to the sheer number of senior staff who had to be found a job and no one was down graded so we are also over paying for some positions for demotivated senior managers who have no where else to go. This wouldn’t happen in the private sector where movement of senior managers for promotion is more common.
At the other end of the scale we don’t have enough money to recruit people in at starter levels so are short of transactional level staff. We have too much of a work from home culture so any people needing training or progression are ignored and demotivated and people are able to ‘hide’ if it suits them. We are an upside down pyramid structure with lots of senior managers asking for information but not enough skilled staff able to provide it. Good decisions need accurate and timely information which we are unable to provide so without it bad decisions are made. Lack of decent IT systems which will give us data without personal ID are not invested in so we don’t have access to the data we do have which is needed in order to answer the endless string of questions from too many senior managers who don’t understand their own departments cost drivers.

I'm in Scotland and there's effectively a freeze on clinical roles too. It's awful.

This.

Unfortunately in the NHS, the axe never seems to swing up. So the many VSM will now justify their positions by forming panels to scrutinise those on the ground doing all the actually important work. As seen in my own Trust, right now and many times over the years. It’s basically Groundhog Day.

I’ve just been given a conditional offer for a receptionist/admin role.

Thinking I need to be worried that this will be retracted?

As a complete outsider I am going to be watching this thread with interest. Hugely impressed by the comments from those posters on the inside who are showing such clear-sighted knowledge of their organisation. It gives the rest of us hope.

Clear-sighted and powerless here. I am regularly astounded by the money pissed up the walls by my seniors. Especially those working in the two ICBs my NHS organisation works alongside. Also mind-boggling is the culture, which seems to promote imbeciles, sycophants, and talking heads above doers who can cut through the oily nonsense to actually create a better NHS. So, so many mediocre people with big jobs, there, I suspect, because the people who put them there are less threatened by them than they would be by anyone with a modicum of talent or integrity. I may be cynical. I am Band 6 btw, so nowhere near those dizzying heights.

Must vary by board as in mine there isn’t a freeze.

I’m an 8c so slightly nearer the dizzying heights, but I agree with a lot of this (whilst hoping I’m not seen as an incompetent waster imbecile myself!). Not all of it, but a lot.

I don’t think much of it is intentional. Some is a mixture of the hassle and expense of getting rid of someone. Incompetence is hard to prove. Performance Management is a difficult road to go down, especially if you are incredibly busy and stressed and could do without the hassle. The easiest thing is to move someone on and hope they do better in a different environment.

Often people ‘fail up’ due to their superiors leaving as well.

And actually often one person’s ’waste of space’ is another’s hero. And one person’s view of the apparent pointlessness of a role is down to their own lack of knowledge of it.

But yes, there are a lot of people I come across whose success baffles me and who appear to me to be walking adverts for the Taxpayers Alliance. And I’ve never thought that NHSE or even ICBs are worth having. Not that scrapping them will be more than a small financial help to the providers. No matter what we do, an older and sicker population means that health spending will go up. 70% of NHS cost is staff, and almost all of them are worthy of their pay (and more). Most of the rest is on drugs and buildings.

Failing up is definitely happening. I have witnessed it. Sometimes the only way to get a poor performer out of your team is to recommend them for a promotion elsewhere.