The organisation
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust is the largest NHS organisation in the East of England.
It was formed in 2018 with the merger of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust and The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and has around 10,000 staff providing services across Colchester and Ipswich hospitals, local clinics, and community services.
The trust has a key focus of supporting and developing staff as well as ensuring it drives the latest technology. This involves ensuring that services are made more accessible, and making the most of the information available.
The challenge
Prior to implementing Selenity ER Tracker, the trust’s Employee Relations (ER) team tracked and logged ER cases using spreadsheets, which meant the team had to manually input the data.
This presented a number of challenges, including the corruption of files and errors during the filtering of data types.
The biggest problem that the team encountered was that the Excel file often became corrupt resulting in loss of data
File sharing and collaborative document access also became a problem, as multiple users weren’t able make live edits to cases without taking documents offline.
Lucy Owers, employee relations officer, explains: “The biggest problem that the team encountered was that the Excel file often became corrupt resulting in loss of data.
“Using spreadsheets made it complicated to add information in different formats and particularly difficult when using mandatory fields.
“Fields were often left empty, which made it hard to filter and segment data concerning a particular case.
“During the filtering process it only came up with half of the information, making the data unreliable with formatting issues. This meant we had to manually generate reports, which was a complicated and inefficient process.
The solution
Tired with an inefficient and unreliable process, the trust needed a bespoke case management system designed specifically for HR practitioners.
Averaging at around 57 cases a month, it was essential that the new software could help to increase the efficiency of data entry and assist with the generation of reports.
The ER team uses the solution to record and manage the following case types: disciplinary, grievance, bullying and harassment and general enquiries around employee sickness.
It is used by all of the team, including advisors, admin staff and managers within the department.
“To embrace the new solution, the employee relations team finalised all existing cases and transitioned to Selenity ER Tracker to record, track and manage caseloads going forward,” said Owers.
Our employee relations team have full access to Selenity ER Tracker and our vision for 2021 is that all managers across the trust will be using this to ensure that the system is being used to its full potential
“Our employee relations team have full access to Selenity ER Tracker and our vision for 2021 is that all managers across the trust will be using this to ensure that the system is being used to its full potential.
“Our most-common case type is disciplinary, and the length of time for completion varies from case to case.
“Selenity ER Tracker offers a fast-track option which gives employees a six or 12 month warning to appeal, therefore saving us time from going through the whole investigation process.”
The outcome
With the trust’s HR case management data now stored in the cloud, the ER department has been able to improve the quality and security of data stored on the system.
The intuitive and easy-to-use functionality means that the trust can manage cases in real time and has greater visibility of the cases right across the organisation.
Emily Turner-Hennings, HR officer, said: “The new system is easy to access as we can log in remotely 24/7. Having all of the information in one place has also made a big difference for our senior advisors. It means that if a member of staff is out of the office they can view specific cases and access the necessary information to allow them to easily cover caseloads.
“The email notification feature is beneficial to us as an organisation too. Selenity ER Tracker notifies users when they have been assigned to a case, and this is effective because you can pick it up in real time and, from a management perspective, it shows a transparent view of which team member is assigned to each case.
“One of the biggest differences is no file corruption. This data can be backed up online through the cloud, it’s smoother to access, and a quicker, slicker process for us.”
The trust is able to see greater transparency of cases right across the organisation through the dashboard and reporting suite in Selenity ER Tracker.
. It’s a much-better process of displaying data compared with the previous method which became complicated and unreliable
And staff can now quickly generate monthly reports and communicate this with the wider organisation, as well as other departments.
Owers concludes: “The dashboard enables us to view recent activity and have more options in filtering information, we can make these more targeted and search specifically by name.“We can get a real understanding of what the team is dealing with and where they need support. We’re able to easily run reports and circulate these with the rest of the team.
“Cross-department visibility enables us to access reports on each area of the business. It’s a much-better process of displaying data compared with the previous method which became complicated and unreliable.”