Staff Bank

Sustainable support with guaranteed fill

Staff Banks have revolutionised the temporary staffing landscape for the NHS, with new apps making it easier than ever for healthcare professionals to view and book shifts. Technology can make our lives more efficient, but what it can’t do is make human connections. A stand-alone app or system-based Staff Bank solution will always have limitations when it comes to actively engaging workers.

With 30 years’ experience in attracting, recruiting and retaining healthcare professionals, we know that people are critical to developing truly effective Staff Banks. We achieve exceptional fill rates and cost savings by deploying dedicated onsite teams, to work in true partnership with you and your technology, continually optimising and managing your banks.

Flexible NHS first approach

We take a uniquely flexible approach to the way we use technology to support the delivery of our healthcare staffing solutions.

We put the needs of our healthcare customers first, ensuring that whatever technology solution is needed, operational change is managed carefully, and disruption is minimised.

We will underpin our people-led solutions with your technology of choice, be that an existing or preferred e-rostering system, or our proven Staff Bank and Direct Engagement-enabled Vendor Management System (VMS).

Why our people add value

Our teams will work hand-in-hand with your teams, operating as an extension of your employer brand.

We won’t implement and leave you. We’ll own the Staff Bank, constantly working to keep workers engaged and active and proactively driving fill.

We’ll also support you to improve how you manage demand and provide all the detailed MI reports you need to demonstrate the benefits.

At a glance

Bank Attraction

A dedicated team of recruitment experts can support you to build a bigger and more sustainable resource pool that extends well beyond your substantive teams, including agency and bank-only workers.

Actively recruiting bank-only workers is critical to reduce the pressure on substantive staff to cover vacant shifts and preserve their morale.

A larger and more varied bank also maintains a healthy level of competition, so rates can be effectively controlled with ‘reduce or replace’ strategies.

Proactive Engagment

The key to maintaining an effective Staff Bank is communication, keeping regular contact with workers to ensure they stay actively involved with the bank and remain compliant. An onsite team, with instant visibility over your vacant shifts can take a proactive, ‘hands-on’ booking approach.

Bank workers need to know that someone is there on site or at the end of a phone to support, appreciate them and understand their priorities. Using empathy to build a rapport with the staff you need to rely on to fill extra shifts is critical, as even the most dedicated of workers often need some convincing to spend a Saturday night in A&E.

Workforce Planning

Our onsite bank teams continually gather and analyse data so they can understand exactly what is driving demand and map and predict regular patterns or spikes.

This detailed and data-driven understanding allows us to work more planning into the booking process, better match capacity to meet known fluctuations, and identify and fix inefficient processes.

Intelligent Matching

Our VMS system ‘intelligently matches’ bank workers to shifts, based on multiple factors including their skills, preferences and recent experience in specific departments. A human factor extends the value of these systems even further. Our onsite teams can improve workforce utilisation significantly by promoting multi-specialty working.

This benefits clinicians keen to broaden their experience beyond their core specialty and maximises the capacity of the bank (over 40% of our clinical bank workers cover one or more specialties). Our teams also ensure that opportunities to book the same workers into regular shift patterns (and preserve continuity of care) are not missed.

Managing Organisational Change

Embedding change is never easy. Time needs to be spent, well beyond implementation phases, explaining, reassuring and supporting staff to ensure everyone holds firm to the plan.

Engagement is the key to this, agreeing, communicating and reinforcing rate strategies and authorisation protocols across all internal staffing levels with full support from leadership teams. Without people to drive this, adherence to new protocols is likely to slip, impacting rates and fill.

Compliance Management

Our recruitment experts can help you maximise candidate availability by keeping on top of bank compliance. Regular clinical audits identify workers with imminent compliance issues (e.g. certifications due to lapse or appraisals needed), so action can be taken early to maintain their workable status.

Often bank workers need chasing to provide necessary documentation, and being able to do that on site, in person, or quickly take a certified photocopy, saves time and effort on both sides.

Medical Staff Bank Case Study

Medacs Healthcare has been working in partnership with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals for over 20 years, implementing on-site managed service programmes, working to control charge and pay rates and delivering significant savings for the Trust. In line with NHSI directives, the Trust needed to establish a new medical staff bank by April 2018 and was keen to participate in the Department of Health’s new Flexible Bank Pilot programme.

Medacs Healthcare has been proactive, responsive and supportive in terms of setting up the whole service… we’ve just got a really good, open, honest relationship.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Workforce and Education Director