- Supporting a London NHS Trust to maintain ancillary service continuity during Covid-19
Supporting a London NHS Trust to maintain ancillary service continuity during Covid-19
Establishing a fully functioning ancillary staff bank for a leading NHS Trust in just 4 weeks.

The Challenge
Our dedicated onsite team typically onboard 250 candidates and process 183,000 hours for the Trust each month.
In February 2020, Reed Talent Solutions were approached to take over the recruitment and management of all casual ancillary workers, previously supplied via an outsourced service provider. We were tasked to create a new staff bank to fill their vacancy gap of 20%, and transition across a pool of existing casual workers, with no disruption to supply of service. Furthermore, this workforce would not be set up on the Trusts’ workforce planning system, Health Roster for the initial few months, so an alternative way of recording shifts, time worked and payroll needed to be found.
With the Coronavirus pandemic beginning to take hold and placing increasing pressure to all NHS frontline services, it was imperative that this implementation should no distract attention of our Staff Bank team and management colleagues, enabling them to effectively manage the surge in demand for doctors, nurses and healthcare workers at such a critical time.
The Solution
Due to the unprecedented demand on the NHS Trust due to Covid-19, we worked tirelessly to get the new service up and running within 4 weeks - a process that would usually take 12 weeks.
Within that time frame we successfully delivered:
- A new dedicated offsite team, who received fast rack training
- New technology platform XMS, configured within 10 days
- Roll out of Robo recruitment technology to directly engage with workers
- Set up of over 150 candidates onto ESR Payroll and XMS
- Transition and set up of Support Suppliers and their candidates to maintain continuity of service and payment for these workers
- Vetted candidates via our fast track remote screening service
The Results
The diversity and robustness of our services meant we were well-placed to deploy an expert team quickly, without impacting the continuity of the critical cleaning, portering and ward host services during the pandemic.
- Delivered in 4 weeks – no delays
- 100% fill rate of staff bank
- Deployed 164 workers in the first week – 90 of those from existing bank
- Set up of XMS and ESR in 10 days
- All workers successfully paid in the first week
Sector
Industry
Results
- Smooth transition of service without disruption
- 100% fill rate
- Recruitment technology platform built in just 10 days
- 164 workers deployed in first week
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