To mark Human Resources Day, we thought we’d delve into the world of HR here at DHU to find out a bit more about who they are and what they do.
HR have teams based at Fosse House in Leicester, Johnson Building in Derby and an expanding team supporting our 111 services based at Orbis. There are around 30 people across the different teams, including admin support, coordinators, recruitment teams and HR partners, all playing a vital role in ensuring our colleagues have access to the right advice, help and encouragement to do their jobs effectively.
April Francis is DHU’s Senior HR Business Partner, she says : “We’re here to support DHU and everyone who works here; I would go so far as to say that our involvement begins before they even know they want to join us. HR does get involved with Employee Relations to ensure grievances are heard, and policies and procedures continue to be adhered to and followed and support line managers to be able to manage their teams effectively, but its about the employee journey.
“Recruitment is a big part of HR remit and this includes liaising with departments to assess their needs in terms of who they need to bring in, where to post job adverts and helping to create job descriptions. This means working with pretty much every single department and team across DHU, clinical, non-clinical and everything in between. Ensuring that new starters once recruited are onboarded as soon as is possible, including sessional GP’s and Agency staff.
Helping those who start their career with us
Kim Robinson is Senior HR Partner for Recruitment, she said: “Our work involves collating interest in jobs on Trac, Miracle and iTrent when it is rolled out. We will help to facilitate the shortlisting, interview and offer of contract when an appointment is made, including onboarding for new starters, references, compliance checks and induction arrangements. We will also issue and arrange for smart cards, name badges and the associated access needed for those starting out their career with us.
“We are heavily involved in the appraisal process which is a positive piece of work. It’s about developing and involving our colleagues, ensuring that those conversations around career, experience and how a person feels valued as part of DHU take place regularly. Without an appraisal process, conversations surrounding opportunities to develop, progress and move forward don’t happen and we want our colleagues to feel valued and respected in their role, with a sense of belonging belong.
Health and Wellbeing (HWB) also falls under HR with HWB lead Sonia Gale and Tracie Wood, HR Project Lead currently doing great work focussing on implementing the new HR & Payroll System iTrent. Sonia said, “We’ve been doing some fantastic work with the Wellbeing focus very much on promoting opportunities for people to improve their mental and physical health. This includes making sure everyone has the right tools to do their job, access to the right support and clear channels to raise any concerns.
“Our People Pledge is influenced by the wider NHS People Promise, we want to make a difference in the work that we do, without our staff we cannot provide the quality services to our patients and communities, so it is important that staff feel valued, that they are supported in their role and through engagement we can positively promote diversity and inclusivity making a difference to the working lives of the people who work here.”
“Strive to meet the needs of everyone”
Amy O’Connell is Senior HR Business Partner and said: “We’re sometimes asked, who supports HR! Well, we suppose we do!!! We do our best to get together to help us bond as a team, we meet monthly over Teams as we’re geographically quite spread out and we also train as a team, there will also be weekly meetings for each HR division. There can be pressures like in everyone’s role, but we know each other’s roles and support each other, with all HR teams coming together more now as one that has been a big positive change in the last year.
“We’re so proud to be a part of HR and the way we support colleagues from recruitment to leaving and everything in between. We always get the job done, sometimes under highly pressurised circumstances and we genuinely strive to meet the needs of everyone. We care about what we do and we are passionate about supporting our people to do the best job they can for the services we provide to patients.”