EoE Academy Board Blog: James Rowe
Hi, my name is James Rowe and since 2020 I’ve been the Deputy Director of Finance (operational) at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust (ESNEFT). ESNEFT being formed from the merger of Colchester Hospitals, Ipswich Hospital, and Ipswich and East Suffolk Community Services in 2018, and with the addition of Anglia Community Enterprise CIC (North Essex Community Services) in 2021.
I started my career in the NHS as a Graduate Finance Trainee back in 1999 and since then have worked in Suffolk and Essex, predominantly in provider organisations. A real benefit I believe the NHS offers is the ability to move around different functions within the wider finance remit and whilst mainly working in operational finance / financial management, I’ve also spent significant periods of time working alongside colleagues in Commissioning, Contracting, Procurement, and Informatics. This has broadened my experience and been really enjoyable, showing me just how wide the skill set of the finance function and colleagues within is and demonstrating the contribution we all make to the delivery of patient care. This ability to move between roles is an opportunity we have in the NHS, unlike many other sectors, and demonstrates how training and development can play a vital role in helping us make the most of these opportunities through opening doors to new areas.
As well as doing what we do on a day-to-day basis, I believe one of the main parts and most enjoyable of our roles is developing our teams – looking to fix things (where we can), and helping each other progress. This links to sharing ideas and opportunities, which I believe we are good at doing in the East of England. This can be demonstrated by achieving Towards Excellence accreditation and by sharing examples through One NHS Finance networks and platforms such as the Innovation Forum. It’s difficult to make time when we’re focusing on supporting colleagues, financial positions, and productivity, but making the time I believe will truly lead to better use of resources as we enhance training, accreditation and information sharing – I was once told ideas are more often than not innovated than original, so ‘borrow’ as much as possible!
As the NHS moves forward in challenging times, with increasing demands and care needs, a pressured financial environment and with a requirement to enhance productivity, I believe it is crucial that we act as one and collaboratively. The quality of care and service we can enable and contribute to is underpinned by the current and future skills in our teams. A key element of this is the ability to develop skills in a co-ordinated way and this is why I was happy to join the Regional Finance Academy Board when it was established. Through the Academy Board, I think great strides have been made by co-ordinating areas of focus relating to talent management, developing apprenticeships and increasing awareness of training opportunities.
The Academy Board has recently added a new seventh objective in relation to Environmental sustainability and I was really happy to step in as chair to help co-ordinate this work for the East of England Finance Academy, building on all the great work that is already being undertaken in our organisations. We’ve set out our aim: ‘To assist our finance teams in relation to the understanding, identification of, and training opportunities to support the NHS environmental sustainability aims’ with an objective of ‘establishing a network/subgroup to share best practice on environmental sustainability, with a focus on (but not only on) financial impacts, within the finance community’. We are now looking to set up a group for any interested colleagues from all areas of the wider finance community (including finance, procurement, analytics/informatics, coding, and commissioning) who have an interest in discussing, learning more, sharing ideas, and helping to form information that we can distribute across the region. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact me or Jane Payling to register your interest – we won’t be rivalling David Attenborough’s achievements, but hopefully, we can do something by linking environmental and financial sustainability, and help meet the challenges we all face to deliver the NHS net zero strategy (Greener NHS » Delivering a net zero NHS (england.nhs.uk)) and financial use of resources.
Thank you for your time in reading this and I’d always be happy to discuss any of the above if you want to get in touch, or if I can help represent any views or development ideas at the Finance Academy Board. Please do get in touch if you’d like to be involved in the Environmental sustainability group or have any productivity ideas that you’d like to share.
Take care and all the best,
James
