“What we wanted was a big database that could help us deliver real
improvements through an integrated solution.”
—Jim O’Connell, Director of Workforce and
Organisation Development, NHS South Central
on one central data repository. “In the past, we’ve had unreliable local reporting and unreliable central reporting,” says Jim
O’Connell, who served as ESR programme director through
most of the ESR implementation. “To this day, we really don’t
know how many people are employed by the NHS, and we
won’t know until we get the final person on the system.”
us it wasn’t about the whizzy stuff,” says O’Connell. “What
we wanted was a big database that could help us deliver real
improvements through an integrated solution that could take
us from A to Z in a logical manner. Oracle was far better
placed to deliver appropriate solutions than the competitors.”
AN AILING SYSTEM
Lack of consistent, comprehensive reporting data affected
more than the NHS’s ability to track how many people it
employed. HR management processes were an inefficient mix
of technology and paper-based systems, and there was massive
duplication of data entry. It was impossible for managers to
benchmark performance standards, absentee rates, or training
opportunities. O’Connell had several years of HR experience
within the NHS when discussions started about development and implementation of a new system.
He knew the NHS needed a comprehensive
solution, but because the most visible need
was in payroll, the discussion began in the
Finance Directorate. “Our payroll systems
were ancient,” he explains. “They were
output-based green screen technology and
didn’t tend to be integrated with anything.
Occasionally, there were feeds between HR
and Payroll, but that was more the exception than the rule. There was a risk that this
was going to be a very finance-centric or
payroll-centric project. At the time, I was
working locally as an HR director, and I
felt, along with others, that it would be a
huge missed opportunity if it weren’t a fully
integrated solution. If we were replacing 29
payroll systems, why on earth couldn’t we
replace the 38 HR systems at the same time?
The Department of Health workforce people
pretty quickly jumped on that bandwagon
and said, ‘Yes, you’re right; we need to look
at an integrated solution.’”
As the development team considered
options, the complexity of that dual HR/
payroll challenge guided their decision. On
one hand, they wanted a vanilla product, but
on the other, the NHS had been in existence
since 1948 with a vast array of different
types of terms and conditions of employment, wages, and salaries. “Some providers
were very focused on the technology, but for
A MOVING TARGET
Unifying 67 independent, aging systems was just one of the
complexities of the ESR. A trend toward what O’Connell calls
“plurality of service” lent another complication. The NHS has
always relied on commercial sector delivery for some of its
healthcare services, but that reliance is growing significantly.
“We anticipate that over the next several years, we will see
many more organizations that are not part of the NHS family
providing services to our patients,” says O’Connell. “If you’re
comparing the provision the NHS could buy from a commercial
provider versus from the NHS itself, then
we need to have good benchmark data
about our workforce. That’s something we
didn’t have and can now get with ESR.”
Internal restructuring was another
factor. When ESR was in the initial design
stage, NHS was comprised of 100 strategic health authorities; during the first
two years of the project, that number was
reduced to 28 and in 2006 was reduced
again to 10. Over the last two years, NHS
has begun decentralizing administrative
accountability to allow the 600 local and
regional healthcare trusts to innovate
and flourish in a more-competitive marketplace, with freedom to make decisions based on local circumstance. These
changes in governance put external pressure on the ESR team.
“Typically, when you’re doing an implementation, you try to limit the amount
of change that’s happening around you,”
says O’Connell. “But for the first time in
decades, our whole pay structure was
being reformed, and it was happening over
multiple years. We didn’t have the luxury
of saying, ‘This is a four-month implementation, and we’ll just freeze.’ A lot of people
thought that was going to sink us, but
ultimately, it kept us agile and focused and
made us flexible.”
Despite the pressures, O’Connell and
Life Choices
Hardest thing to do: Calling in
sick when you’re the boss
Education: Master of Business
Administration, Loughborough
University, England; Bachelor of
Business Studies, University of
Limerick, Republic of Ireland
Professional affiliation: Fellow,
Chartered Institute of Personnel
Development, U.K.
Favorite books:
Most inspiring:
The Power of Now,
by Eckhart Tolle
Current thriller: The Beach,
by Alex Garland
Classic: Wuthering Heights,
by Emily Brontë
Favorite bookmark: You Tube
Favorite hobby: Travel
Favorite destination: Budapest
Favorite health advice: Stop
smoking
Favorite drink: Stoli Vanilla Vodka
and Diet Coke . . . or a beer
Most essential item in
medicine cabinet:
Co-codamol [for headaches]
