Select a region
Jersey’s Health Department has been dealt another blow with the departure of an experienced interim HR director who had been brought in just this year to improve its staffing crisis.
Bill Nuttall, who specialises in interim and HR work for health organisations and only started work in at the beginning of this year, said during Thursday's meeting of the Health Advisory Board that he was leaving the organisation for family reasons.
His parting advice to Health was to take more hiring processes away from central government and into the department.
“We’re going to try and reduce the time it takes to hire, to make the offer," he said.
“We need to have clearer discussion with people at Broad Street. We feel we’re not in control of the administration side.”
He was joined in calling for recruitment to be moved to Health by Obi Hasan, the finance lead on the department’s Change Team.
They told the Board that around half of recruitment processes had been moved to the department, but that crucial steps still had to be taken at Broad Street.
Mr Nuttall cited the time it takes for letters to be sent to applicants and inductions as examples of processes that are too slow when they are centralised.
As parting words, he said: “I would wish that HCS had its own recruitment administration team to support the work that is actually being done.”
Mr Hasan told Express previously that the process of hiring a new member of staff currently has as many as 66 steps, and can take up to 305 days or 10 months.
These steps include filling out a form to get permission to post an advert when someone is leaving – but departments can't actually post the advert until the predecessor has left.
"When I was a recruiter, we would be going and speaking to people all the time," Mr Hasan said.
"And even if there was a sniff of somebody thinking of leaving, we'd one, try to retain them if they were good, [and] two, we would immediately start to start regarding the market.
"Let's start looking before anywhere near the person actually resigns. When the person resigns and then there is a period of their notice period, we'd be actively recruiting."
But at HCS, "we can't go out until the person has resigned", he said.
A recent healthcare assistants open day event had seen some success, Mr Nuttall said.
Speaking to the HCS Advisory Board on Thursday, Mr Nuttall confirmed that he would be leaving as he felt compelled to be with an ill family member.
In a personal statement he read out, he acknowledged that there had been “speculation” around the reasons for his departure, but said: “I wanted to actually confirm this is down to family and private health matters regarding a member of my family who needs my support back in the UK.
“It’s not to do with any work issues.”
He added that it had been “an absolute pleasure and joy serving the people of Jersey” and that it had been “an absolute privilege” to work in the island’s Health department.
He added that the decision had been “a tough call” but that it had ultimately been “a no-brainer".
Mr Nuttall is a specialist in working as an interim HR director, as well as in rebuilding health organisations and trusts. He has helped other large health services and NHS trusts rebuild their management and was a deputy director for King’s College Hospital.
Express understands a successor is in the process of being hired, and Mr Nuttall told the board that he was “sure this person will take HR and workforce to a different level”.
INSIGHT: Check-up – How is the transformation of Health progressing?
INSIGHT: How do you solve Health’s “£35 million problem”?
Care watchdog will not be "rating" the Hospital during inspections
Under-pressure Health given more cash to deal with "funding gaps"
FOCUS: "We have underinvested in Health"
OPINION: Where is healthcare heading?
Health watch: What system of healthcare do we want?
How do the public want healthcare to be funded in future? We still don't know...
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.