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?

From another part of the CS, but I do feel as if the public sector has really brought this on itself - not generally the individuals themselves, who often go above and beyond for limited pay and progression, particularly at the operational end. But the management - surely part of management is knowing what your team all do, what you could do better and plotting a course to get there. Performance management is a critical part of that, but it’s never done where I am.

I have been on so many courses since joining the CS and the last management one I went on genuinely endorsed the idea that some people should not have regular (half yearly or quarterly) reviews or appraisals because they find them traumatising. I have someone in my team I would love to performance manage, but my manager would prefer them to do nothing and frequently not turn up or turn up late because it is too much paperwork and they’d lose the role permanently. Once I no longer need flexibility and more than average WFH, I am off back to the private sector. I love the idea of doing good, but it is doing my head in watching people take the mickey out of taxpayers and the progression opportunities are just so hard to come by.

And none of this is to imply that anyone who is worried about their job in the NHS is a waste of space. I have a lot of sympathy for those who are under threat.

but I do look at the charts as to where money is spent and increasing debt interest and public sector pensions is a huge part of that. If Wes Streeting doesn’t do enough, someone else is going to have to, because otherwise public opinion will turn.

I’m in Scotland & there is a freeze on admin posts where I work & if someone leaves they will not be replaced.

For clinical posts, everything above band 5 goes through “vacancy management” & will likely be rejected, delayed & downgraded.

Our office manager posts are band 4. 2 have left recently (PA to head of service) - they are not being replaced.

so as a band 7, I am now doing more admin - what a waste of my time - I cost double the amount & should be seeing more patients.

I agree, we are actually too good at looking after our staff to the detriment of the tax payer. I know this will be tough but from a tax payer perspective I do welcome this round of redundancies and hope that senior management are able to make the right decisions on where they should land. Unfortunately it may be too tempting for them to minimise redundancy costs by getting rid of staff at lower levels with lower salaries and less service. There is some hope as the redundancies are apparently being funded from outside the NHS budget which will go some way to getting the right balance of who is left.
Otherwise we will be left with an even higher proportion of overpaid senior managers who are too but no one to implement anything or provide information to make good decisions.

Most provider trusts in England are not on a full vacancy freeze at the moment so you will probably be ok.

Yes this is a good point - the ICB redundancies surely will have to be centrally funded by the treasury, as that is what is happening with the NHSE and civil service exit schemes. So, the cost of the redundancies will not have to be badged against the overall savings target - theoretically meaning that the right decisions should be made about which roles remain.

NHS England is being merged with the Department of health, and ICBs have been told to cut costs by 50%, so there will be significant job losses. Lots of provider trusts are also on vacancy freezes and have been told to reduce "back office"/corporate and management costs. So it is going to be tough for everyone but I think people in non-clinical roles in provider organisations will fare better overall.

My trust is on a full recruitment freeze - clinical and non clinical. This is not just admin staff.

My trust is on a total recruitment freeze too. They have said we all (admin) need to start 'working differently' ie cross covering in other departments who have vacancies therefore increasing our workload massively. They are also trying to get rid of loads of staff with MARS. It's worth about 15k to me and I have discounted it previously but now not so sure. I still need to work though and being in my fifties it probably won't be so easy to find another job. Previously VR followed MARS but I can't see how they could afford that this time!

After the jobs have been cut there will inevitably be more mistakes, because any necessary modernisation wasn’t able to be done in a timely and effective way. Then the media can complain a bit more.

I hadn't realised there were clinical freezes too. Maybe that will be reviewed in the new financial year; it does seem mad, when we know there are so many clinical vacancies and unsafe staffing levels on the shop floor, the impact of which is demonstrated in report after report, especially in nursing and midwifery. URGH. Difficult times.

Sounds exactly like the trust I work for. Admin team halved now due to people leaving and not being replaced. Working differently has involved clinical staff taking admin off us! MARS will ultimately reduce our team even further and we’ve been told to expect it to get worse. I literally dread opening my emails now to hear more doom and gloom.

At a previous Trust some bright spark sacked all the ward clerks, resulting, for a bit, in trained nurses having to answer phones and sort out case notes and all the million and one things ward clerks do. And gosh, that then meant they had EVEN LESS time to nurse. And that was before the demographic time bomb, COVID, the cost of living crisis and us nicking nurses wholesale from WHO red list countries.

Still, I'm sure AI will save the world, eh. (Tries not to cackle hysterically at a) the issues around AI to do with privacy, hallucinations, server farms and crap NHS IT and b) the fact we have a government on the one hand who seems to think AI is some kind of Holy Grail that will solve everything healthcare related while simultaneously stopping funding for radiology AI projects that genuinely do speed up diagnoses.)

I think the human race has finally collectively lost its marbles. There's no other explanation.

Nice to see the HSJ yet again reporting the contents of a letter setting out which bits of ICBs should be binned off before staff have been informed. Keeping it classy.

I'd be out of there in this scenario. I worked in the public sector for 15 years, partly out of a sense of 'duty' & wanting to make a difference and partly because everyone harped on about the pension and benefits. Made the leap to the private sector and have more flexibility, more money, better pension, private healthcare insurance and the work is still rewarding. Honestly the government will never truly appreciate their workers, nor will they ever be remunerated fairly or treated well when it comes to the cyclical re-orgs.

Feel for you all, so many people are ignorant to the value non clinical staff bring to the NHS.

There’s recruitment freezes on clinical staff too. My Trust is massively overspent. Many roles are being redeployed.

Oh god I hadn’t seen this today…

We’ve just had comms come out for reduction of growth in corporate roles to 50% pre pandemic. Whatever that means. The trust are now reviewing all vacancies.
I am on a secondment that was heading to be permanent so likely I’ll go back to my role now which was created post pandemic. No idea what to think now but feel very unsettled all
of a sudden

We had similar. It's the drip feeding that's annoying me, I know they don't know much at the minute but we are all worried about what's coming next. Voluntary redundancies is my guess.

Yes - I used to work in NHS am I totally agree

It really is a hard time to be non clinical in the NHS right now. Even within this thread you can see the negative view of “highly paid managers” being pointless, and it’s very demoralising when that kind of negative narrative is directed at you and your professionalism is called into question. I’m an 8c, and I know plenty of people in roles above and below my banding who are shit at their jobs 🤪 I know some who are incredible. When I look at the roles some of my colleagues who are 8d,9,VSM do, I think hell no would I want that level of responsibility and stress. Being responsible for dealing with national incidents, budgets in the hundreds of millions, making decisions about policy that has a population impact across an entire condition area for the whole of England, and often working 12 hour days and weekends - not for me. There are some that are outstanding and some that I don’t think should have a job. Equally I have some band 6 and 7s who are woeful, and we lack the backing of our organisation to performance management process to get them. They wouldn’t stand up to the capability, skills and level of responsibility that a B7 clinical post requires and I think that’s very wrong. There are many who are brilliant and long overdue a promotion which will now not be possible.

The changes that are currently going on are very extreme, there’s no plan, and it’s hard to see what things will be like at the end. It’s increasingly hard to want to be at work. It’s also hard to contemplate if this is something I want to experience for the rest of my career, as we all know this is part and parcel of NHS and civil service life.

Strongly agree with everything you’ve said.

I was previously in a team of 4 admin staff that now only have 1 person doing those 4 jobs, but I moved in to a team 18 months ago where we are still getting significant funding, in the last few months we have recruited a band 5, a 6 and two 7’s, we are also just about to start recruiting 2 band 4’s, all of these are completely new posts/roles not replacing anyone.

Yes I’ve seen it distributed this morning before the ICB colleagues had a chance to see it.

I am a clinician but I have a post in an ICB. The variations in competence I see are huge, but I agree with past posts that there are fundamental structural problems that get in the way of good decisions being made. We don’t have clear flows of health data informing any of our work. There is also the problem that no one is ever challenged on whether their work is having an important impact. Imo we should be able to say what we have achieved every year and if we haven’t had any significant impact on patients our roles should go. Having said that, it is difficult to have an impact because the budgetary uncertainties and constantly changing requirements from NHSE/DHSC mean we are always on shifting ground.