Almost three years ago, we radically overhauled how we welcome new staff to our organisation and we are delighted that we are now retaining many more new staff.
We employ 8000 staff and recruit 1000 new starters each year. In 2015, we identified that staff leaving in their first year of employment accounted for 40.3% of our overall staff turnover and took steps to change. We successfully cut turnover of new starters to 22.1% in 2016/17, and this figure currently stands at 20.9%.
Our re-launched new starters programme includes improved training for managers in recruitment and retention, a digital ‘new starter portal’, and a welcome day to ensure all our staff have a consistent, thorough and personal induction to the Trust.
Our approach is now featured on the NHS Employers website as an example of good practice for the NHS.
“We conducted a ‘deep dive’ into our staff turnover in 2015/16, which revealed that staff leaving in their first year of employment accounted for over 40% of our overall turnover,” explained the Trust’s Director of HR, Sandra Le Blanc. “We immediately reviewed the experience and support we give to newly-recruited staff, and we are delighted that our new starters now give us very positive feedback on their experience of joining us. In 2016/17 we retained an extra 100 new staff, and we have achieved this again this year.”
The Trust’s retention programme, led by Senior Organisational Development Advisor Rob Fordham, uses digital portal to allow new recruits to engage with the Trust as soon as they are offered their new role, and familiarise themselves with key information about their new place of work and its values.
A radical overhaul of the corporate induction developed the Trust’s ‘welcome day’ – which is now the first day of every employee who joins the Trust. During the day, new staff meet the Chief Executive, are introduced to the Trust’s ‘great place to work’ programme, receive key information around pay day, annual leave, pensions, etc and a brief introduction to statutory training, in addition to a lunchtime ‘marketplace’ for meeting teams from the Trust. The key to the success of the day, says Rob, has been to focus on the people joining the Trust and their values.
The Trust also introduced a robust local induction programme catering for the first six months of employment, and a two-day training course for recruiting managers.
“The programme is about supporting, developing and nurturing new starters throughout their first year,” said Rob. “New starters bring a fantastic wealth of knowledge and different experiences to the Trust, and it makes perfect sense to do all we can to retain people who have been recruited because they are excited about the values of our organisation and want to use their skills to benefit east Kent’s patients.”
Read the case study on NHS Employers' website
