Skills Pledge

The Skills Pledge allows healthcare employers to publicly demonstrate the importance they place on investing in the skills of their workforce. It is a voluntary, public commitment by an organisation’s leaders to support all employees and encourage them to develop their basic skills – including literacy and numeracy –

and work towards qualifications that are relevant and valuable to the healthcare sector.

Making a commitment to the Skills Pledge opens up access to the £100 million additional training funding currently available to healthcare employers each year through the Joint Investment Framework (JIF). It also provides employers with a right to help and advice from a Train to Gain Skills Broker or one of the specialist healthcare Skills Brokers working through the Skills Academy for Health.

Skills Brokers work with employers to understand their workforce priorities; help identify skills needs; design an effective training package to address those needs; and identify a suitable training provider to deliver the training.

The Skills Pledge helps to facilitate an overarching strategy that:

• increases SHA investment funding for NHS staff – in Agenda for Change bands 1-4 (and their equivalent in the independent and voluntary healthcare workforce)
• modernises careers and explores new ways of working
• targets skills development and qualifications at levels 3 and 4, Skills for Life, English for Speakers of other Languages and Apprenticeships
• tackles skills needs identified in the Leitch report
• supports wider agendas related to delivering NHS targets such as:
• up-skilling non-clerical staff to ensure they are able to make an effective contribution to modernised healthcare delivery
• improving IT infrastructure and data capture to support a reduced waiting times strategy
• meeting health and safety requirements.