Bringing the back office home

Supporting NHS organisations on the frontline of the battle against Covid-19 has become more important than ever, says NHS SBS

With almost two thirds of the NHS dependent on NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) to pay their employees, manage their finance and IT systems, or help them purchase goods and services, supporting NHS organisations on the frontline of the battle against Covid-19 has become more important than ever. Providing the essential non-clinical services that keep the NHS moving - whilst also enabling home-working for almost every UK employee - is an entirely unique challenge.

The country has undoubtedly been reminded of just how important the NHS is. As doctors, nurses and other clinicians work tirelessly to provide world-class patient care, an army of NHS employees has also been working behind-the-scenes to support them.

Accountants, payroll clerks, procurement specialists and IT support staff. These are just some of the professionals working hard to keep the wheels turning for NHS providers and commissioners up and down the country.

And the 1,500 employees at NHS SBS are no exception.

While transitioning almost 100 per cent of its UK workforce to home-working within less than two weeks, NHS SBS has continued to process weekly and monthly payrolls for almost 400,000 NHS employees at 90 different NHS organisations, with minimal interruption to its usual service.

More than ever it's impossible not to be inspired by the work of NHS staff in hospitals up and down the country

This included thousands of new and returning members of NHS staff from retirement. In just one week, the NHS SBS team facilitated £1 million of urgent salary payments to these additional NHS workers.

Working from home, NHS SBS teams, in one week alone in April, sent out 25,000 purchase orders to NHS suppliers, ensuring goods and services continue to be delivered to the NHS organisations that need them.

In the same time, almost 88,000 invoices have been paid, including £642 million reaching organisations that are helping the NHS to provide services, and £250 million has been collected and receipted on behalf of NHS organisations, helping cash flow to enable the purchase of valuable equipment and additional staffing.

Working for successful change

By facilitating a major change to NHS funding meanwhile, the team at NHS SBS has helped NHS England and NHS Improvement move a massive £20 billion around the NHS to where it is needed.

In the East of England, NHS SBS experts have worked with two NHS trusts to increase their remote working capability, up from an average of 400 employees a day to 1,500 NHS workers supported to work at home - with this number expected to rise again in the coming weeks. And, after beginning the roll-out of The Edge4Health -a new cloud-based, consumer-style marketplace where NHS organisations can buy goods and services - earlier this year, NHS SBS has made the platform immediately available to around 60 additional NHS organisations. It means that despite not being able to transact via the platform for now, these NHS trusts can use The Edge4Health as a shop window to around 500 suppliers to find available products they desperately need.

David Morris, NHS SBS managing director, said: “Our top priority since the outbreak of Covid-19 has been to safeguard our own workforce, whilst ensuring that NHS employees are paid, orders are processed, NHS suppliers are paid, and that cash continues to move around the NHS. Maintaining the level of support the NHS needs, whilst enabling home-working on such a large scale, has required a monumental effort. By the 1 April, our IT team had ensured that an additional 750 NHS SBS employees were able to work from home safely and securely.

“What has really impressed me is the absolute commitment of our teams to help our NHS colleagues in whatever way we can. We are very much part of the NHS family and it’s clear just how much all of us want to support those working on the frontline. Whilst some of what we have classified as non-urgent activity has been affected, we’ve worked closely with NHS England and NHS Improvement to ensure that business-critical services remain in place - helping minimise disruption for hospitals and other NHS organisations at this critical time.”

Payroll and pensions

As NHS staff work heroically in the midst of Covid-19 - including thousands of former healthcare professionals returning to the frontline - the Payroll and Pensions Team at NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has worked remotely in April, processing new starters at a rate of around 500 per cent more than usual and ensuring hundreds of thousands of NHS workers continue to be paid as normal.

Managing the payroll for almost 400,000 employees across 90 different NHS organisations is no small undertaking in normal times. But with Covid-19 forcing the NHS SBS workforce to operate from home, in April - for the first time ever - all 164 weekly and monthly payrolls were processed remotely.

The Payroll and Pensions Team at NHS SBS has worked remotely in April, processing new starters at a rate of around 500 per cent more than usual and ensuring hundreds of thousands of NHS workers continue to be paid as normal

In an additional challenge, problems with the national Electronic Staff Record (ESR) system, which is used across the NHS to process payroll, led to the platform only being available intermittently at the same time payments were due to be processed - putting significant pressure on the NHS SBS team to ensure NHS staff were paid.

As a result, the NHS SBS Payroll and Pensions Team worked out of hours - calling on resource from other teams - to ensure cut off deadlines were met and that NHS colleagues were paid without interruption

Whilst working hard to ensure business as usual, the NHS SBS team has also been supporting a national campaign by NHS Professionals to attract more healthcare professionals back into the service.

‘Stand Up, Step Forward, Save Lives’ aims to raise awareness of NHS Professionals’ Covid-19 Rapid Response service, which accelerates the bank registration process and moves qualified nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals to the frontline as quickly as possible.

This has led to NHS SBS processing more than 4,000 new starters a week on behalf of NHS Professionals, compared with an average of around 600 before the Covid-19 outbreak began - an increase of more than 500 per cent.

Tasy Warn, Director of Employment Services at NHS SBS, said: “Our top priority these past few weeks has been about safeguarding our own employees, whilst implementing plans to ensure NHS workers on the frontline of the battle against Covid19 continue to be paid as normal. Moving our entire payroll and pensions operation to 100 per cent home working was enough of a challenge, but with the unavailability of ESR at a crucial time in the pay cycle - and the extra capacity needed to manage new NHS starters - processing all of April’s weekly and monthly payments accurately and on time has required a huge effort.

“More than ever it’s impossible not to be inspired by the work of NHS staff in hospitals up and down the country. The motivation for our team at NHS SBS is around ensuring that pay day is one less thing our NHS colleagues need to worry about.”

FURTHER INFORMATION: www.sbs.nhs.uk