NHS National Services Scotland – Case Study

April 2003-present

Challenges


Future Proof Learning have worked with this diverse and strategic public health body for several years and through a number of changes in leadership and approach.

National Services Scotland is the central co-ordinating and commissioning body for the National Health Service in Scotland. It runs a number of major services such as Finance, Facilities Management, Procurement and Counter Fraud on behalf of the entire public health system.

In addition, it undertakes a number of specialised functions including the payment of all prescription, eyecare, dental and pharmacy services. All of these are organised into Strategic Business Units to maintain their autonomy.

They approached us initially to provide some support for leaders following restructuring and change, which has proven to be a recurring theme in our work here.

Transformation of the way in which highly complex services are delivered has been a major challenge and there has been a major emphasis on service re-design as well as job content and re-skilling of managers and their teams.

Since the pandemic, there has been even greater pressure on NHS NSS with almost everyone working remotely and needing to maintain smooth and efficient operations at pace, whilst being unable to work in their own regular collaborative fashion. Certain departments and functions have also been merged to produce greater efficiencies and cost savings whereas others have also had expanded roles due to the need for maintaining public health safety and security.

Solutions:

Leadership Development, Individual Coaching, Team Coaching, Facilitation, Webinars, Podcasts and Change Management

Future Proof Learning have worked closely with the Leadership Team to reinforce the restructure and supported the change programme in many ways, including:

  • running a series of facilitated workshops on productivity, change management, resilience, motivation and communicating effectively;

  • providing coaching support for the Director and all team members.

We have successfully coached several team members to progress to more senior roles as well as enabling others to perform to higher standards in their existing posts.

We have also worked with aspiring senior managers to coach their capacity to lead their teams in more progressive ways as well as team coaching to equip them for more effective collaboration on cross-service challenges which are becoming much more common.

In addition, our coaches are facilitating a further number of team coaching sessions with the Senior Management Team so that the complex process of rebuilding their strategic planning for a post-Covid landscape can be robust and flexible.

Future Proof Learning have designed and delivered an innovative approach to providing learning via a series of webinars and related podcasts for a wide group of workers in the Facilities Management Division. This highly practical approach has enabled far more people to take part in learning at work than before, due to the method being highly accessible and the content being relevant and timely.

Feedback

We have been faced with significant change in the department and how we deliver services. To equip ourselves to deal better with this, we worked closely with Future Proof Learning. Willie and the team have been very helpful and take the time to listen and understand our challenges so that their service and support is tailored to our specific needs.

Andrew McLean

Associate Director, NHS National Services Finance

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