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Scottish Health Workforce Plan - 2004 Baseline
Commentary by Mark Butler, Director of Human Resources, NHSScotland
Planning the size and shape of Scotland's largest workforce for 5, 10 and more years hence is a huge challenge.
It is something that does not stand on its own. Getting workforce planning right depends on getting service planning right. It requires us to take a hard look at issues that will shape the future and to take well-informed decisions to get the right staff providing services in a way that meets Scotland's needs now and in the future.
Nor can we plan properly on our own. NHSScotland and the many partners on which it relies need high quality information and first-rate workforce planning, if we are to deliver change built on firm foundations.
This Baseline National Workforce Plan is an important step forward. As part of a comprehensive workforce strategy it will help us all focus on the nature and scale of the challenge ahead. As an annual publication from the National Workforce Committee, it will help give direction to those whose job it is to assess and manage supply and demand around the healthcare and social care workforce whether at a local, regional or national level.
The Plan should help us identify gaps in services now and in the future, and to take the right action to fill those gaps. This will include designing work differently to make sure people can put their skills to best use and can maximise the reward they get from work, whilst always providing services in the way they are needed. And it should help make sense of all the changes that are affecting people in healthcare, describing change as it affects real people in human scale.
Our Workforce Strategy will, in time, take us to a place where what we do is described as services provided by teams, defined in terms of skills, knowledge, occupational standards and competences, created by the right blend of education, training, development and experience.
No one should be under any illusion about the scale of what lies ahead. I hope the Plan will provide an essential focus for the work of NHS planners and leaders in NHSScotland and for our partners, and that it will be used intelligently, as a platform not only for increasing staff numbers but also for shaping the development of new roles and new ways of working on which sustainable care depends.
There is much more to do but this Plan should be seen as part of a serious intent to get our workforce planning right and to provide the right services for the public.
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