For our latest HTN Now panel discussion, we were joined by a group of experts to discuss digital workforce education and training. This included sharing examples of educational programmes to support digital programmes, as well as best practices for engaging the workforce in digital education and tech.
To form our panel, we welcomed George Anibaba, senior innovation manager at Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, as well as Geoff Petrie, digital training manager and David Holland, deputy CCIO for Allied Health Professionals, both from Leeds Teaching Hospitals.
Our panel began by highlighting how their education programmes are a core part of their digital programmes. Geoff shared how the implementation of a new video-first system has provided a “transformational approach” to training for his team. He went onto explain how “it has been extremely well received both by the stakeholders and the learners, providing a happy medium between e-learning and classroom-based learning. It’s convenient and flexible, as you don’t have to be onsite to benefit from it”.
David discussed his work on MS365 optimisation with the clinical team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, which was aimed at “educating, orientating and aligning usage of the toolkit across the organisation, working with a huge range of abilities and expertise”. For David, this included focusing on more holistic training for staff when using MS Teams, Outlook and setting up email signatures, while establishing a MS365 viva engage group to facilitate conversation.
George offered a unique take on digital workforce education and training. His aim within Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex was to “effectively and safely adopt digital innovations within integrated care systems and constituent organisations”. One of the ways George achieved this was with digital fellowships, which were created “to help build digital capability and capacity for staff to support integrated care and ensuring that services are sustainable in the long term”.
George went on to highlight how one of the first digital fellowships was where a “respiratory consultant who led the introduction of a digital monitoring system for asthma patients, used tailored workshops to better understand data dashboards and effectively train her team”.
Identifying challenges of digital workforce education
As we moved further into our discussion, we delved deeper into the challenges of implementing digital workforce training. For Leeds Teaching Hospitals one of the main challenges is the sheer size of the workforce, with a footprint of just over 22,000 staff members. “Reaching everyone for general IT skills training and specific implementations is quite challenging,” Geoff explained.
There was also the added learning curve that came with shifting to a video-first space for more effective and accessible learning. Geoff went on to say, “we knew we would have to adopt new technical skills ourselves, in terms of working with editing software and getting used to skill requirements that come along with producing great video, like being able to produce voiceovers and animation”.
From David’s point of view, the challenge came in the form of tailoring the learning in a way that suits everyone’s individual skillset and understanding. “One of the challenges we’ve had is aiming this at the right level. We want to make sure we deliver at a level that supports everyone”, David explained, creating an engaging discussion about skill levels and tailoring training based on this.
Understanding the digital literacy skills and needs of a workforce
Leading on from David’s point about a tailored approach, the conversation moved on to ways in which the panellists have tried to understand the digital literacy and needs of their team.
While acknowledging this can be a tricky task, George discussed the importance of quantitive and qualitative insights. For him, having staff undertaking baseline self-assessments and surveys was key to this as it “created a psychological safe space for participants to tell us what level they think they’re on. Using that intel to probe further helps to tailor our response to those needs, to make sure what we’re delivering doesn’t go over people’s head”.
George echoed this sentiment, explaining, “it’s not just an assessment of their digital capability but their learning preferences too, enabling us to adapt our approach”. For Leeds Teaching Hospitals, this meant adopting a learning needs assessment approach, that was based on the NHS Digital Capability Learning Assessment, to determine the specific needs within their organisation. “We developed our own, going out to specific areas of our trust to get engagement from smaller teams who are going through digital change. This meant we were able to baseline their skills as they went through that change.”
This proved successful for the team at Leeds, so much so that they have plans to implement a wider rollout in the coming months.
Best practices to engage the workforce
Once we’d established the challenges of implementing digital workforce training and how to overcome those challenges, we moved onto discussing some best practices to help engage staff. The panel emphasised how this was especially tricky for a workforce that might not be as interested in digital learning.
David outlined this sentiment perfectly when he stated, “we don’t always know what people want to learn. We’ve established a digital forum with 450 members, but the people who engage with that forum are likely people who are interested in digital. We want to get beyond that conversation to people who might not be as engaged.”
Knowing how to do this is often easier said than done, but David kindly detailed some of the ways they’ve tried to engage the workforce in Leeds. “We spend a significant proportion of time in clinical and admin settings to understand opportunities and challenges. What’s working for them and more importantly, what isn’t working for them, so that we can direct them towards the right training. Our digital advocate programme has been set up to enable, empower and engage our staff when it comes to making the most of digital opportunities. And we’re also engaging with the workforce of the future, ensuring students are aware of the systems that we use and in which digital context.”
Adding to the discussion of engaging with the workforce, George explained how “embedding real-world application and linking training to practical projects can help to identify opportunities to maximise and pitfalls to avoid. Engineering or facilitating peer-learning opportunities helps. A lot of teams work in isolation and as a result, the energy, enthusiasm and capacity wanes. Having someone to talk to and share their own perspective is key to development.”
George went onto talk about how incentives and recognising milestones, serve as a spring board to increase the likelihood of more valuable engagement when it comes to learning, which is essential in the digital education sphere.
Preparing users for upcoming changes
One of the key aspects of implementing digital learning and new systems, our panellists said, is preparation. Our panel discussed how important it is for teams to work together to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible, limiting those previously discussed challenges. As Geoff pointed out, “we can’t be siloed. We need to work closely with our sister disciplines within the organisation and support one another with our aims.”
He went on to outline the structuring at Leeds, to further demonstrate how essential teamwork is, “the Digital Capability and Training team sits within our Project and Programs team, which means I can attend project meeting and review boards to find out what’s coming down the pipeline. That means I can be closely involved at a very early stage and anticipate our training provisions to ensure they match with the communication rollout strategy.”
This demonstrated the importance of working together to create a cohesive training structure. With Geoff’s example, the right people are always involved at the right time and they can better implement a strategy that is embraces and adopted by all.
David echoed this point, “having a clear strategy and roadmap allows people to see what’s coming, so they’re more likely to get on board with that vision. With any rollout, you ultimately get one chance to get things right and if you don’t, it’s much harder the second time around.” Being clear and having open communication is what helps the team at Leeds get things right the first time, so they can properly prepare their team.
Measuring success
We began this discussion highlighting the ways in which each panellist has seen the benefits and success of digital education within their own workspaces, but it was important to outline how they all measured that success.
George started us off by explaining that “it can be hard to see the rewards immediately” and for a project that can take some time, it’s easy to see why. He then went on to emphasise the importance of “using metrics to complement the story you’re trying to tell, specifically metrics taken from qualitative feedback as that’s usually the biggest indicator of whether the training has been successful.”
Some of the key metrics George looked at included the level of improved efficiency within clinical workflows and the productivity of staff since the training took place, indicating “not to underestimate the stories we hear from our staff”. He also emphasised looking at metrics on the individual level and then organisational level, in order to measure success across the board.
When discussing the way Leeds Teaching Hospitals have measured success, Geoff outlined “a lot of measurement tools are already in place such as quantitive assessment at the end of every e-learning or video package, in which we catch the standard experience of an individual’. However, on a more personal note, he then agreed with George’s sentiments about qualitative data and embarking on a more proactive approach by reaching out to the different teams directly. “It’s one thing for our learners to say they had a good experience, but it’s another thing to see the true impact of that training through operational outcomes.” George noted.
Final thoughts and opportunities
As our discussion came to a close, there were a few final insights from everyone within our panel. Mainly, we looked at the future of digital education and learning, to discover what opportunities may lie ahead.
David went first, stating, “the obvious answer has to be AI. However, with great opportunity comes great risk. Within Leeds, we’re looking to build a new digital hospital with the right systems in place to support the patient journey from admission to discharge. The use of AI is going to be really important for informing the way forward in terms of patterns of treatment, integrating pathways and making sure we work smarter and more effectively to secure patient outcomes.”
Looking at things from a more operational point of view, Geoff suggested that the “the big challenge we’ve got is an enormous disparity of skills and interest across the workforce with requirements from different groups varying”. For Geoff, the opportunity lies in “breaking out of silos and working closely with like-minded colleagues and organisations that can help reach those different audiences. We need to do more to meet learners where they are”.
Outside of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals sphere, George still echoed the need for addressing the individual learner, but also went on to express an affinity for Lord Darzi’s report and “moving from reactive treatment to preventing ill health with predictive analytics and then of course moving from analog to digital to improve the patient experience”.
And that brings us to the end of this discussion. Thank you for joining us and many thanks to George, David and Geoff for their key insights into this area.
