Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: What became really important early on was listening to the voices of the people who do the work. It is about recognizing why they've created these manual processes in the first place and then trying to demonstrate and prove the concept to them. The digital solution can support them and make their work lives easier. Foreign.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to a new episode of the what Works podcast series. Today we're joined by Alfredo Thompson, Chief People Officer at Royal United Hospital's Bath NHS Foundation Trust. Alfredo shares his transformative approach to talent acquisition and onboarding, turning a compliance driven process into a strategic business growth function. We'll explore how customer orientation, systemic HR and cross functional collaboration have significantly reduced vacancy rates and boosted employee retention at the nhs. Let's get to it.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Alfredo, welcome to the what Works podcast.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Great to have you. I'm so looking forward to our conversation today. As we get started, Alfredo tells you a little bit about yourself and about your organization.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Sure. So my name is Alfredo Thompson. I'm the Chief People Officer at the Royal United Hospitals here in Bath, England, the uk. So I've been here for now, now for about three years. And our hospital is a traditional, what we call a district hospital. So we offer services to the people in our communities from a people function perspective. We cover everything from joining the organization all the way through to exiting. So pretty standard.
[00:01:54] Speaker C: How many employees do you have?
[00:01:55] Speaker A: So currently we have about 6,500 substantively employed colleagues. With our contingent workforce that goes up to about 8,500.
We're based on primarily one site, but we have a number of bespoke sites that we offer our services across as well.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: A complicated business, obviously a complicated organization with healthcare.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: I know it's quite challenging, but very rewarding. So tell us about the problem that you are facing as you were embarking on this transformation.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: I think twofold. I think number one was around at the time I joined, we had really high vacancies. So it was becoming really difficult for us to find talent in order to deliver the type of care that we need. So that was problem number one. Problem number two was around the experiences that they had when they did manage to apply for roles wasn't the best. So my challenge was how do we break it apart and how do we then put it back together if we had a blank sheet of paper? So we're a heavily regulated organization because of healthcare and what we had to do was work within the parameters of the national guidance. So when we started we had a vacancy level that was really High. Our vacancy level is now 1.4%, which is quite good. And then the second starting position was we were losing about 20% of the people that we hired. Within the first 12 months, we've seen massive improvements in terms of not only being able to fill our positions, but also people wanting to stay with us much longer than previously.
[00:03:40] Speaker C: You accomplished all of this in about three years. How did you do that?
[00:03:45] Speaker A: It really was about how do we transform our services from a traditional NHS administrative recruitment function to creating a more candidate focused experience function. And within that, it really was around using four big things. One, it was how do we simplify the processes? As I said before, heavily regulated in terms of industry. And it really is about how do we look at the parameters we have to work in and really make it simple. The second one was about process and redesigning processes. The third area was around how do we introduce technology in order to speed up that process. And probably the most important one was how do we collaborate across different organizational functions in order to provide that great candidate experience that we were aiming for.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: So let me unpack this a little bit. So the first one was about simplification, you said. So how did you simplify these complex recruiting processes?
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Our process was taking long period of time to bring people into the organization. And when we started, in terms of our discovery phase, we discovered that the length of time was dependent on the person who was managing your particular campaign. Because we didn't have standardized processes, most of our colleagues were using variations of different spreadsheets. A really good example was we had, I think that the figure was four or five different versions of a welcome letter that you would receive. And it was dependent on the individual that was managing your onboarding process. You got different information. So it was really going back to the board in terms of mapping our processes and working collaboratively with the recruitment team in order to design what the future state looks like. That is really simple for them. So that high level, that's the process that we did.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: You also said you used technology. How did it go about technology?
[00:05:53] Speaker A: That was one of the huge challenges as well. So we are given technology that we must use. And what we discovered was that it wasn't probably the most appropriate. So we went out and we scanned the market. We chose an alternative solution and that was an entire change process on its own in terms of simplifying. It gave us the opportunity to do even further simplification of our process, but also work collaboratively with our digital team, work collaboratively with our, with other parts of our business. In order to make sure that the process is candidate focused, but also that it meets the sort of regulatory obligations that we have. It was a change process because at the same time what we were doing was introducing a self service for the hiring manager. So it gave them even more transparency about where their candidate was or is in the hiring process. So really the culture shift was moving away from as a recruitment officer, I have all the information and I'm in control to giving that control back to our candidate and the hiring manager.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: That's fantastic. How did you manage that change? How did the hiring managers react? I imagine the candidates were happy about getting more transparency, but what about the hiring managers?
[00:07:24] Speaker A: The change was slow and painful, looking back at it. But what it required was being visible, being active. It required having sometimes some really tricky conversations with really busy clinicians about fundamentally the process that you, you have in front of you now is to protect you as the hiring manager, protect us as the organization, and also protect the candidate. We also, as part of the process, had to introduce inclusive recruitment training. We tapped into using it as an opportunity to start to get more information and insights from our hiring managers about what is it that we need to do as a corporate function that makes their working lives easier. So those were the approaches we took.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's amazing. So it was slow and painful, you said, but you got it done. Obviously you got through it.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Slow and painful. And as I've said, we're seeing the outputs of it now because of our low vacancy rates. But also we introduced things like regular net promoter scores, pretty industry standard stuff in terms of getting customer feedback. So that's the culture shift mindset that we're trying to create. Still not there. 100% are trying to create in the people function as well.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Balancing that regulatory compliance, which you of course have to do with the customer focus. That's always challenging. How are you dealing with that?
[00:09:02] Speaker A: It's a learning process for us, to be fair.
I think one of the things that we're trying to embed in our wider organizational culture is that we lean into the heavy stuff. We lean into the difficult things. We lean into having difficult conversations with our managers. So it's creating those adult to adult type conversations about these are the things that we can change, these are the things we can't. And here are the reasons why we can't change those. We have weekly question and answer sessions with our executive teams. We have monthly all staff virtual briefs. And one thing that was really important for us as an executive team is to be active and Visible. So we all visit as many different larger departments as we possibly can. And that's standard in terms of our way of working.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: I want to double down on the last piece that you said that might be the most important one. Working across the organization to get all of this done. Tell us a little bit more about how this worked and how it was different to how you'd worked before.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Sure. Collaboration was the key success ingredient. So what we did really early on was establish a project group which looks at the different key stakeholders that impacts on the candidate's journey into the organization. Brought those people into a room. What became really important early on was listening to the voices of the people who do the work. It is about recognizing why they've created these manual processes in the first place and then trying to demonstrate and prove the concept to them. The digital solution can support them and make their work lives easier. Like all collaboration, it's not easy in the first place, particularly if my priority isn't necessarily your priority. It was about how we went around having the conversations with colleagues about the reason why we're doing this. And what was also important, I think in reflecting back on it was our ability to then go back and use the data to tell the story about the improvements we're making.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: It's a big journey. I mean, that's a cultural journey in itself too. How has been the reaction internally to kind of working on this cross functional team on this?
[00:11:31] Speaker A: I would say positive. I think there are some niggling process issues we still haven't managed to crack. But again with our continuous improvement methodology, those are things that we've empowered, whoever it is who identifies that, to sort of resolve those issues themselves. I think just reflecting on the stories that I've heard, colleagues in HR much more willing to pick up the phone and speak to digital. Digital are much more willing to speak to us. So it really create more networks that wouldn't necessarily have existed as a result of this. It's actually interesting talking to you now that the recruitment function now sits in the same building with the digital solution.
And before they were in separate parts of the organization. And that was an active choice. That was a choice that came out of this program of work as well.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: So what's next for you? I know you had such impressive results, but where are you taking this next?
[00:12:35] Speaker A: What we're focusing on is really how do we move that? How do we coalesce that energy to really focus on our purpose, which is around creating an environment where every single individual feels like they matter. Doesn't matter whether you are patient, whether you live in the community where you're a member of staff. Every interaction with us needs to be a moment where you felt like you've mattered.
So the next two years is really about working with our line managers. Pretty much the same approach. How do we simplify it for you so that your working experience is really easy? How do we make our processes really easy and simple to use? How do we enable technology? How do we make introduce technology to make it easy? And more importantly, how do we make it easy for you to connect with the people we work with, the people we care for and the people that live within our community? So that's the next big program. It's all centered around line managers, of.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Course, the manager enablement. That's going to be another very interesting journey and I think a very powerful journey as well. More important than ever. One, one last question. Your role as the Chief People Officer. We're actually just embarking on some research on the Chief People Officer Citro role. How did you see this change over the last years? Or did you see. Do you see a role change?
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah, my role has changed massively over the past, I would say 18 months. So in our industry, resources are hard to come by in terms of money, in terms of whether it's capital investment, whether it's revenue. We are a not for profit organization because of the nature of the industry here in the uk.
So my role has massively changed. It's brought up the importance now of investing in building capabilities around change management, building capabilities around employee productivity and around traditional people HR skills. Within all of that, it is about organizational design and systemic HR as well. You know, we can't talk about governance without accepting or recognizing that it impacts in terms of people and rewards. We can't shift our strategy without recognizing that it impacts all different aspects of people. Reward, recognition, the way we deliver work, the way we go about designing our work processes. So those are the key areas that I've seen shift, particularly over the past 18 months.
[00:15:30] Speaker C: What an important role. I think it's more and more the chro or chief People Officer role is getting, I think so critical and more critical than it has ever been.
And yeah, employee productivity. I mean, I think this is still a wide open field almost that we have to have to tap into. And we could probably talk about that for another hour or so. I know we are always talking about AI. Where is your organization tapping into AI? I'd imagine a very tapping, challenging in, in the sector you're in and that especially government and, and not for profit.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. It's quite interesting because when was it? Probably Wednesday. We had a conversation as a senior leadership team about how, how do we go about tapping into artificial intelligence in our sector?
And again, because of the regulation, we sort, we, we have to wait until there's national guidance around that.
There are some now, but we've introduced a technology platform again within the people function, which is AI enabled. As a result of that, we've been able to save not only on sort of headcount, but we've also been able to start to quantify the amount of time that we are giving back to not only the people function, but also the business.
So lots, lots, lots of possibilities for AI within our business. We're about to go through redesign of our corporate services and one of the key things that I've been advocating for is that whatever we do has to be digitally enabled and it has to tap into AI solutions that are out there. That makes our working lives easier and frees up time so that we can become more productive and do what it is that we're here to do, which is treating vulnerable people and getting them better as quickly as we possibly can.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Wow. Now, on that positive and powerful note, thank you so much, Alfredo, for your time. I think that was fantastic. I would have liked to talk even longer with you, but I know we're out of time, but thank you. I really, really appreciate your time and all your insights.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Thank you very much as well. It's really appreciated. So thank you.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Thanks for listening in to this episode of the what Works podcast. It was great to talk with Alfredo Thompson about the transformation happening at the nhs. His approach to simplifying recruiting, leveraging technology and focusing on leadership development shows how HR leaders can make a real impact in both efficiency and employee engagement. As companies continue to face talent shortages, retention and hiring challenges, shifting towards a more strategic and candidate focused model can make all the difference. Be sure to subscribe for more conversations on how HR leaders are driving meaningful change in today's workforce and keep figuring out what works in the new world of work.
