In line with requirements of the NHS England Long Term Plan, we are reviewing job planning for clinical nurse specialists, education and corporate nurses across our hospitals. These roles include some of the organisation’s most experienced and senior staff and their expertise is highly valued.

This job planning will help to understand how we can further develop and support colleagues and service delivery, whilst improving productivity and reducing variation.

Experience and feedback from the pilot groups

Experience and feedback from the pilot groups taking part in the Nurse Job Planning will be shared during an online session hosted by Group Chief Nursing Officer, David Melia, and Deputy Chief Nurse, Colin Hont, on 17 March, between 3pm-4pm.

Click here to attend, or add the link to your calendar. This meeting will be recorded and shared for colleagues unable to attend.

Allocate drop-in sessions

For any queries please contact; NurseJobPlanningSupport@liverpoolft.nhs.uk

The aim for the nurse job planning work

  • To support these clinical colleagues to have a job plan which aligns with NHSE requirements and will also enable us to provide equitable and consistent bands, responsibilities and development opportunities that colleagues have asked us to deliver
  • To ensure job plans align with service requirements and relevant financial tariffs are aligned to these roles
  • To help to make the best of our skill mix across the Trust and support future workforce planning.

There will involvement from representatives from clinical nurse specialists, education and corporate nursing throughout the process and they will help to shape the work.

Useful documents

As well as the attachments below, you can also access the Job Planning Policy for Nurses, Midwives and AHPs via the DMS.

Nurse Job Planning pilot feedback

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a job plan?

A: A job plan is an annual prospective agreement between employers and clinicians, it outlines the work the clinician does for the NHS organisation.

Q: Why are we being asked to submit a job plan?

A: This is aligned to the NHS England Long Term Plan commitment, which expects all the clinical workforce to have an e-job plan, except staff who work exclusively in one clinical area (eg purely ward-based staff). It is to have a better understanding of what services we have in place and how to support CNSs, education and corporate nurses in their development, ensuring a standardised approach.

Q: What are the benefits of a job plan?

  • Positive impact on patient outcomes. By aligning workforce resources to patient need, resources can be focused on the areas with the highest impact for patients.
  • Empower staff to shape services. Easy access to reliable data will enable staff to build stronger cases for service redesign.
  • Improve understanding of the multidisciplinary team’s contribution to the patient pathway. By providing easily accessible data, e-job planning can clearly document the input of each professional group to a patient’s care, improving board-level understanding of its role in care delivery as well as improving income recovery for its work.
  • Improve staff morale, health and wellbeing. More efficient staff deployment alongside improved expectations of the workforce’s capacity for service delivery should reduce understaffing, and its associated stress. Additionally, if implemented appropriately and collaboratively, the process is more transparent, consistent and fair.
  • Improved staff recruitment and retention.
  • Improve responsiveness of services to changing clinical demand. Routine, annual review of service delivery, alongside accurate and timely data, should enable identification of changing patterns of clinical demand. Service design can then be recalibrated to incorporate these changing service requirements.
  • Improve use of resources. Reporting of metrics such as planned versus delivered direct clinical care sessions ensures that agreed individual and team e-job plans are being delivered and subsequently provides an evidence base to inform organisational planning processes.
  • Increase visibility of workforce capacity to the board. Detailed reporting of key performance indicators (KPIs) and other e-job planning data enables improved board oversight of workforce planning.
  • Reduce bank and agency spend. For some workforce groups, early identification of a shortage in workforce resources enables forward-planning to manage this discrepancy in a way that avoids the excessive use of bank and agency.

Q: What are the four categories used for a job plan?

A: Direct Clinical Care (DCC), Supporting Professional Activities (SPA), Additional NHS Responsibilities (ANR), External Duties (ED).

Q: What counts as Direct Clinical Care (DCC)?

A: All clinical and clinically related activity such as MDT meetings, patient related administrative tasks, digital health activities (e.g. virtual clinics that use digital communication platforms, telehealth monitoring, etc.) and undertaking laboratory or other diagnostic work.

Q: What counts under the category for DCC for corporate and educational nurses?

A: Non-individual patient attributable, activity which indirectly impacts patients such as undertaking a LQA, providing clinical training.

Q: What counts as Supporting Professional Activities (SPA)?

A: Activities that support clinical care such as Appraisals, teaching, training, mandatory training, research, audit, CPD (Continuous Professional Development).

Q: What counts as Additional NHS Responsibilities (ANR)?

A: Appointed roles within the Trust or wider NHS such as  FTSU (Freedom to Speak Up) guardian, clinical governance lead, NHSE advisory committees, etc.

Q: What counts as External Duties (ED)?

A: External roles that bring benefit to the NHS but are not connected to agreed job plan outcomes (often externally funded) such as Academic posts, roles in professional bodies or Royal Colleges, consulting work, etc.

Q: Do I need to log everything I do across the year?

A: No just log your core activities; daily, weekly, monthly. The objective is NOT to overpopulate your job-plan but to capture the main activities that are being carried out over a specified time.

Q: Will I be asked to review my Job Plan?

A: Yes, job plans should be reviewed on a yearly basis.

Q: Do I need to change the job plans weekly?

A: No, this is planned activity for the year. Unless there is a significant change to the service or your job plan it will not need to be changed until the yearly review.

Q: How many weeks do I need to put in in allocate?

A: For staff who have over 10 years annual leave it is 44 weeks.

Q: Do I need to job plan annual leave?

A: No, this will be removed when you select the number of weeks that your job plan is to run over.

Q: Do I need to job plan my lunch break?

A: No,  you do not need to job plan your lunch break. If you have sessions leave your lunch break empty.

Q: Is there a way to replicate job plans if the team have similar job plans?

A: Yes, you can build a job plan for one member of staff and then the sign off member of staff (ADN/ Consultant practitioner) can allocate it to selected members of staff. Amendments can then be made in this discussion phase.

Q: Are there any training resources?

A: There are three training videos uploaded on ESR and there is guidance for access on the Nurse Job Planning intranet page;

  • Allocate demonstration
  • Manager training
  • Staff Training

Q: Are there any additional supportive documents?

A Resources have been added to the Nurse Job Planning intranet page including job plan examples.

Q: Is there a policy?

A: Yes there is a Nurse, Midwife and Allied Health Professional Job Planning policy that can be found on the document management system.

Q: I have a sign in but I can’t see a job plan to create

A: Your manager (sign off member of staff) will need to publish a job plan for you.

Q: Do our hours need to match with the total on allocate?

A: Yes, before asking for approval please check that your contracted hours match the hours on allocate.

Q: Who is the first sign off for the job plans?

A: The first sign off will be the Associate Director of Nursing or the Consultant Nurse/ AHP over your service.

Q: What additional support is being offered?

A: There will be a drop in teams meeting sessions with allocate every Thursday 1-2 running until April 13 the links for this are in the Liverpool News. There is also the Nurse Job planning support email for any queries.

Q: What do the different options for flexible activity mean?

A: Additional - This is any activities that are being worked on top of the other activities you have added on the job plan. 

Concurrent - Activities that are being completed at the same time e.g. You may be doing a clinic but also teaching new starters at the same time. 

Replaces - Any activities that occur throughout the year that replace a routine activity.

Q: What are the different types of activity?

A: Core - Your core activities are the activities that are included in your weekly schedule. 

APA - These are Additional Programmed Activities and this would be for anything that falls on top of the contracted hours. This might rarely be used for Agenda for Change. 

AtC -  Additional to Contract - so any activities that would be undertaken over the contracted activities. This might rarely be used for Agenda for Change.