How NHSBSA used Amiqus to speed up their recruitment process
Amiqus’ remote pre-employment screening technology saved £1.3 million worth of time for NHS recruiters
Overview
- NHS Business Services Authority is a central shared HR service for the NHS. They manage over £35 billion of NHS spend annually, delivering a range of national services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients and the public.
- In March 2020, NHS launched the ‘bring back staff’ initiative to recruit returning clinicians to support the frontline health services and the vaccine rollout.
Problem
Before using Amiqus, there was a three week delay to verify documents, conduct right to work and identity checks.
Solution
Amiqus provided its fully digital and remote pre-employment screening technology to recruitment services used by the NHS.
Result
£1.3 million worth of time saved for NHS recruiters in 2021, speeding up the recruitment of returning clinicians.
The challenge
Prior to using Amiqus, employee onboarding and re-screening processes were slower than necessary, typically manually managed on an outsourced basis , paper-based, challenging to be completed remotely and prone to inaccuracy.
Below, NHS BSA’s Samantha Peterson, Head of HR Transactional Services describes the bottlenecks and delays facing NHS in safely deploying 35,000+ clinicians in response to covid-19.
“Recruitment and retention are major issues for the NHS. The impact (Brexit and the pandemic) have had on recruitment for the NHS is significant and recruitment and HR colleagues across the NHS are telling us that they are still struggling to deal with the impact of the pandemic on their own staff, let alone onboarding new staff to bridge the gaps in their workforce.”
Under the ”bring back staff” scheme, there was an overwhelming response to the call to come back to the NHS to support frontline services. In March 2020, tens of thousands of people had to be recruited, which was the first program that the NHS BSA were asked to deliver.
The biggest barrier to quickly recruit staff was the traditional onboarding processes which were manual and paper based, required face to face contact and lacked streamlined access to various data sources. It was important to cut down the number of days it took to bring people on board and get them out there, putting life-saving vaccines into the arms of people who most needed it.
Using Amiqus
By working closely with NHS teams, Amiqus was able to adapt its existing proven technologies to meet specific and complex needs to help significantly reduce the backlog of volunteers to the covid-19 emergency in a secure and remote first approach. The overall result being qualified, fully vetted people able to provide front line care faster to people who need it.
“Working with trusted partners can’t be underestimated. The customers that we deliver the services for, expect that we work with secure, stable and efficient systems to provide the best user experience. I believe, we’ve got that in Amiqus.”
To support the delivery of the bring back staff initiative and have a long term impact across the NHS, Amiqus undertook three key tasks:
- Creating a bespoke check that connects directly into the NHS – ESR system, using an API, to cross reference and verify current membership and good standing of medical professionals in a fully automated way.
- Delivering a secure and seamless means for candidates to share their vetting information with NHS teams which allows for instant ID verification and corroboration, followed by digital submission of criminal record checks via DBS.
- Creating a secure means for candidates to passport their information, DBS results and Identity safely and securely between NHS trusts and bodies to remove the need for duplication of data and effort.
The impact
Before using Amiqus, NHS BSA were looking at around 3 weeks of delay at the recruitment manager level just to verify identity documents and right to work. By using Amiqus, they were able to successfully conduct nearly 16,000 pre-employment checks across various services. This led to safely and rapidly deploying volunteer returners to front line roles for the vaccine rollout and necessary checks were completed in as little as 2 days.
“The benefits of having an agile shared service like Amiqus, with the right tools that are able to deliver the right service during this time, is invaluable to the NHS. The time we’re saving by using Amiqus is phenomenal and has the added value of reducing stress among our recruiters, who continue to be pushed for resources.”
The partnership with Amiqus has also made a real difference to NHS BSA’s growth work. They are now able to be more creative with the services they can offer and use this collaboration with Amiqus as a blueprint for NHS trusts across the UK. Accessing the digital pre-employment checking service ensures that there is no lengthy procurement process; through the freeing up of internal resources and the creation of capacity, the health service, and ultimately patients, can quickly reap the benefits.