UK 
United States
By Will Owen - Director of Healthcare, Local Government, and Higher Education, ServiceNow
Naturally, an organisation as big and complex as the NHS faces multiple challenges across all its departments. In dealing with these challenges, however, one thing is universal; it all comes back to patient care.
Whether you’re navigating budgets constrictions, medical innovations, or behind-the-scenes planning, every decision or investment ultimately comes down to how it will impact the patient at the very end of the process. And the employee experience is no different. Healthcare staff must be provided with everything they need to do their jobs to the very best of their ability in order to best serve the patient, and yet, ServiceNow and ThoughtLab research shows just 18% of healthcare executives in the UK and Ireland consider employee experience to be a strategic priority.
The healthcare landscape today
What this actually means is simple; across the UK and Ireland, the healthcare industry has a people problem. The facts speak for themselves; a recent NHS staff survey shows approximately a third of employees didn’t feel enthusiastic about their job in 2022. In addition to this, around a third of NHS trust employees regularly think about leaving the organisation altogether.
This suggests a significant employee engagement issue — one that could have considerable repercussions on patient care in an already stretched industry. Early this year, around 7.21 million people were reported to be awaiting NHS treatment in the UK and Ireland, with 3 million of those patients having been waiting over 18 weeks, and staff shortages are only adding to the problem. At the same time, the UK job market recorded a record number of vacancies, attributed mainly to shortages in the healthcare sector.
These shortages, combined with limited funding, and an ever-increasing backlog of patients lead us to a simple truth; our NHS cannot afford to lose staff over a negative employee experience. And fortunately, we don’t have to. With the right investments, it’s possible to harness a positive experience that better serves healthcare employees allowing them to do what matters most; better serve patients.
Driving a better employee experience in healthcare
The need to do more work with fewer resources is a burden felt by many healthcare workers across the region. Public sector organisations are often challenged by outdated legacy technology or clunky back-end processes, and the NHS is no different. Tasks that should be straightforward, such as booking annual leave or checking shift patterns, end up eating valuable time that could be better allocated elsewhere — on patient care, for example.
This isn’t just detrimental to the service the patient receives; it can also be incredibly frustrating for staff who are already over-stretched. The ongoing talent shortage means existing healthcare staff across all departments are pushed to their limit each day. Equally, slow, manual onboarding processes makes recruiting for these roles a time-consuming process.
Resolving this issue to pave way for a happier workforce and better patient care requires investment in the right supporting tools and technologies. It’s about empowering staff to do more with less, while simultaneously appealing to new candidates and wider talent pools.
How organisations can get started
It’s not as simple as simply throwing money at a problem. Instead, it’s about making careful investments into bespoke technology solutions, ones that meet your staff where they are and add value for them at every stage of the process. What this looks like will vary from company to company, therefore it’s crucial to ask what your workforce needs, and actually listen to the answer.
Then, you can begin to implement solutions, whether it’s automated workflows that can relieve the administrative burden currently sat with team members, or simply boosting visibility with a single server platform that allows you to identify problem areas faster. These seemingly simple back-end improvements can have a knock-on effect that ultimately trickles all the way down to patient care.
To learn more about what healthcare employees value as part of a strong employee experience and kickstart solutions within your own organisation, read the full ServiceNow whitepaper.
