Background

Mersey Care NHS Trust, Wirral Community NHS Trust, and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust are all part of the same Integrated Care Board (ICB). These Trusts were eager to collaborate in managing their temporary staffing expenditures and reduce their dependence on agency workers. Although each Trust had different temporary staffing solutions with varying contract end dates, they shared a common objective: to select a single provider to manage the agency supply chain and direct engagement provisions across all three Trusts.

Challenge

The Trusts engaged in multiple discussions with NOE CPC (North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative) to outline their requirements. Through these discussions, the group agreed that a Neutral Vendor model would be the best approach for all staffing groups. Given the significant level of agency spend across the three Trusts, a formal procurement process was required.

Key Aims

1. Establish a unified provider and approach across all three Trusts.
2. Implement a Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement solution.
3. Improve staffing fill rates across the three Trusts.
4. Provide detailed management information to enable collaborative initiatives aimed at reducing agency expenditure.
5. Align the supplier base across all Trusts.
6. Streamline processes for temporary staffing and finance teams to increase operational efficiency.

Solution

Following a competitive tender process, the collaborative awarded Agile Workforce Services the contract for both Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement provisions. Due to the different contract end dates for each Trust's existing arrangements, a phased implementation approach was agreed upon, with the final Trust scheduled to go live in April 2024.

Agile Workforce led the project, using Gantt charts, risk registers, and weekly project meetings to ensure the project stayed on schedule. Agile also co-ordinated with the incumbent providers, guiding the transition and managing the migration process.

Stakeholder engagement was critical to the project’s success. Agile held presentations for key internal stakeholders to ensure all departments were fully informed and prepared ahead of the go-live dates. Additionally, Agile conducted virtual sessions for all suppliers, ensuring that agencies and candidates understood the new arrangements before the transition.

The implementation timeline was as follows:
• Mersey Care NHS Trust went live on 29th January 2024.
• Wirral Community NHS Trust went live on 12th February 2024.
• Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust went live on 8th April 2024.

Testimonial

“Our Trust awarded Agile as our Neutral Vendor and Direct Engagement provider at the end of 2023. Prior to Agile our Trust did not have any solutions in place for agency management so these services were brand new to our Trust. Agile supported the trust to quickly establish a key project group with representation from all key areas of the Trust and gave a clear plan to work to over the implementation period. Given the size of the Trust there were lots of different stakeholders to capture for training, and Agile ran a significant number of training sessions for our teams both on the new services and on the LMS system which was being introduced. Agile also came on site throughout the go live period to ensure that the go live went smoothly. The solution was implemented seamlessly with no disruption for any agency workers, and Agile have become an extension of our temporary staffing team”

Cathie Brocklehurst, Strategic Lead for Workforce Operations Services & Workforce Governance, Mersey Care NHS Trust