13 October 2017

The Trust which runs Shropshire’s two acute hospitals has taken a creative approach to the way it advertises nursing vacancies in a bid to reduce its reliance on agency staff.

Staff at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust have taken a creative approach to improving the way the organisation advertises nursing vacancies. Pictured, from left, Nick Holding (Senior KPO Specialist), Laura Sheldon (Workforce Apprentice), Denise Gibbons (HR Advisor), Victoria Maher (Workforce Director), Denise Bennett (Ward Manager), Tammie Rowlands (Staff Nurse), Richard Jones (Senior Communications Specialist), Michelle Bowen (Ward Manager), Alex Brett (Deputy Workforce Director) and Marie-Claire Wigley (KPO Specialist).

An innovative team of six members of staff from The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which included Ward Managers and Staff Nurses, spent a week away from their day job to evaluate the organisation’s current recruitment process in a bid to make job adverts more attractive.

Future job adverts for Staff Nurses at SaTH, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) and the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford, will include a link to a revamped webpage for every ward and department. The plan is for every Ward page to have a ‘Meet the Team’ section where applicants can watch a video and read more about the people they would be working with, a ‘Join our Team’ section that sets out how new staff will be supported and developed and a ‘Our Staff, Their Path’ section which illustrates how staff on the ward have progressed to their current position.

The improvements were made during a Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW) as part of SaTH’s exciting five-year partnership with the Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) in Seattle, which is widely regarded as one of the safest hospital in the world. Recruitment, along with Respiratory Discharge, Sepsis, Ophthalmology Outpatients and Patient Safety, is one of five areas that SaTH is improving through its partnership with VMI and the introduction of its own Transforming Care Production System.

Michelle Bowen, Urology and Vascular Surgery Ward Manager at RSH, said: “By taking time away from the ‘every day’ to look at our Staff Nurse job adverts we found that only 0.75% of people who viewed an advert put in an application. This obviously isn’t good enough, we should be aiming for at least 10%, but when you look at the adverts we have been putting out it is understandable.

“Prior to this RPIW we were advertising for Staff Nurses using one advert that listed multiple vacancies. We took this advert around the wards and asked our teams what they thought about it. The feedback was ‘yawn’, ‘boring’ and ‘bland’.

“Our nursing teams were asking ‘people do great things at SaTH every single day, so why are we not shouting about it from the rooftops in our job adverts?’ As a Ward Manager with nursing vacancies the feedback was absolutely right and that is why we will move away from one generic Staff Nurse advert and have introduced specialist adverts for each role.

The changes have so far only been made to Ward 26 Urology and Vascular Surgery but the plan in time is to role this our across every ward and department at RSH and PRH. Moving away from one generic job advert to individual adverts for each ward also allows Ward Managers to regain control of their own adverts.

Michelle added: “Ward Managers have wanted to regain control of their own adverts for a long time so this process change has been really well received.

“The Recruitment Team at SaTH was really supportive during this change and between us we have managed to reduce the time it takes from opening to closing an advert – including the 14 days period it is open for applicants – from 21 days to 15 days.”

Victoria Maher, Executive Sponsor of the Recruitment Value Stream, said: “What the team achieved in just week one is remarkable and will make a really positive difference to our patients.

“I am confident the changes will make our job adverts stand out from the crowd and help us to recruit more Staff Nurses, enabling us to reduce our use of expensive temporary and agency staff who, although do a great job, are unable to provide our patients with a continuity of care.”