Systematic, practical workforce planning to improve productivity and efficiency

Our Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning is a practical approach to planning, that ensures you have a workforce of the right size with the right skills and competences

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Effective workforce planning ensures you will have a workforce of the right size, with the right skills and organised in the right way.

The main aim of the Six Steps Methodology is to set out in a practical framework those elements that should be in any workforce plan.

It also helps you work to the budget you can afford, delivering services to provide the best possible care.

Workforce plans are prepared by staff at many levels.

At a departmental level, there are the staffing rotas prepared monthly by a ward manager, to ensure all shifts are covered by staff with the correct skills and competences, so that patient services are delivered safely and effectively.

At the most complex level, there are strategic workforce plans which maybe an aggregation of all the plans submitted by provider organisations, which are used to support strategic and financial planning, including education commissioning.

Six steps will be useful for anyone working in healthcare human resources, workforce planning, service planning or in designing new ways of working. It helps managers take into account the local demographic situation and the impact on other services, and provides practical hints, tips and case studies to work through.

On the other hand, you may want to rethink the delivery of services in the context of an anticipated shortage of staff with particular skills.


“By implementing this programme, we have changed the culture of the organisation in terms of how people think about workforce planning, from it being seen as something HR do, to something that all managers and budget holders do.”
Helen Allen
Director of Workforce Development, NHS Plymouth


Benefits of our Six Steps Methodology

  • A systematic practical approach that supports the delivery of quality patient care, productivity and efficiency
  • Ensure workforce planning decisions taken are sustainable and realistic
  • Scalable from small ward-based plans to large organisations
  • Being adopted in social care, offering a joined-up approach with community services.

How will the Six Steps help you and your organisation?

Use of the Six Steps, right across your organisation will help ensure that decisions made on workforce design and the recruitment of new staff and teams are sustainable and realistic; and that they fully support the delivery of quality patient care, productivity and efficiency.

In addition you can access a user-friendly online guide which walks you through each step and signposts a range of tools and techniques to support each step.

What are the Six Steps and how can they be accessed?

The Six Steps are:

  • Step 1: Defining the plan
  • Step 2: Mapping service change
  • Step 3: Defining the required workforce
  • Step 4: Understanding workforce availability
  • Step 5: Planning to deliver the required workforce
  • Step 6: Implement, monitoring and refresh.

A range of resources are available to increase the capability of workforce planners. These include:

  • Six Steps e-learning tool
  • UK-wide Workforce Planning Competence Framework
  • Workforce Planning Competence Tool
  • Workforce Planning Development Menus.


To find out more

Visit http://www.healthcareworkforce.nhs.uk/sixsteps

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