We are trying to make it easier for everyone to move around in our Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin NHS system – whether that is to deliver patient care or for their own development. We want to stop wasting time on unnecessary and repetitive administrative tasks.

Our new Workforce Sharing Agreement is intended to help us be a bit more flexible as employers, and to offer our people a wider range of employment experiences. It is the start of something different, creating a sense of one workforce for our system.

Sara Hayes, Deputy Chief People Officer for NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, said: “The Agreement enables people employed by one of the signatory organisations to work in another but without having to do their employment checks and mandatory training again.

“It’s a bit like the EU – free movement across borders with light touch passport control. So you might also think of this as a staff passport.”

At the moment, the participating organisations are NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin (NHS STW), Shropshire Community Health Trust (SCHT), the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals (SaTH), the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital (RJAH), and Midlands Partnership University Foundation Trust (MPUFT). We can add more signatory organisations over time.

Our Workforce Sharing Agreement can be used to:

• Enable you to follow the whole patient pathway, whichever organisation it falls in (e.g. MSK)
• Support you where there is a development opportunity
• Give you a fresh experience if you have itchy feet (end hopefully encourage you to stay in our system’s employment)
• Participate in a rotational training programme
• Help you create a whole job out of a combination of hours in several organisations
• Provide Mutual Aid – for example, in a pandemic.

We are already putting this new Workforce Sharing Agreement into practice. Our first workforce sharing scenario has been approved between line managers in SaTH and RJAH, and our first Licence to Attend has been issued to an individual to enable free movement to the host employer without needing to complete fresh employment checks and mandatory training.

HR, Recruitment, Rostering and ESR teams in each signatory organisation are all aware of the process and should be contacted in the first instance if there are queries about the operation of the Agreement or the process to be followed. They can support individuals and managers to put this to good use.

Where can I find more information?

There are now some pages on the system intranet – called Shro and Tel, which is accessible to people from all system employees as long as you have registered for a login. The information on these pages explains how it all works, what it is for, who the partner employers are etc.

The documents are also there – the Agreement itself, for transparency, as well as the process flows describing the ‘how’ and the two forms (light touch admin) that need to be completed for each sharing scenario, and for each individual shared.

Please take a couple of minutes to register to use 'Shro and Tel' using your NHS email address. Once you are logged in, please head for the Workforce Sharing section.