Welcome to the November One NHS Finance blog. Here you will find all the highlights of our programmes and networks over the last month, and discover opportunities and everything else coming up in the month ahead.
Important Upcoming Dates That You Should Know
The National Finance Leaders Talent Pool applications open – deadline to apply: January 8th
Networks
Last month, we held 14 network meetings and events, including the launch of the National Rainbow Network, which gathered member feedback to shape priorities for 2027. If you would like to join the next meeting, please get in touch with the central team and we will send you the calendar invite: one.finance@nhs.net.
We would like to thank our Value Maker leads for supporting the shortlisting process for this year’s Value Maker awards. Massive congratulations to all the nominees and shortlisted finalists! See who made the shortlist here: Value Maker Awards 2026: Shortlist and Nominees Announced! 🏆
Last month we also held our FACE (Finance and Clinical Educators) Conference. A big thank you to Ak Maheswaran, Consultant Anaesthetist, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, for expertly chairing, to everyone who presented and to the 120+ NHS colleagues who joined us online. The event was packed with practical examples of how teams are working together to improve financial understanding and decision-making.
November is an exciting month for us as our flagship event, the Value Maker Annual Conference (VMAC), will be taking place in London and online on Wednesday, 18ᵗʰ November. Now in its ninth year, VMAC continues to bring together the NHS finance community to celebrate success, share best practice, and explore new ideas. It promises to be another fantastic event. We can’t wait to see many of you there, and if you can’t make it, register to watch the conference online here.
This month, we recognise Men’s Mental Health with ‘Movember ’. To coincide with this, we are running a dedicated health and wellbeing webinar on November 19th, 11:00 – 12:00: Breaking the Silence, Mental Health Awareness for Men.
Programmes
Last month, we delivered the First-in-Post Development Programme in London. This programme provides new leaders with the knowledge and skills required to become high-performing directors. If you are interested in attending this programme for the 2027 cohort, please register your interest here: First in-post CFO programme.
Our Empowering Women in Leadership ‘In conversation with a CFO’ session also took place with Jennifer Leah, Chief Financial Officer at Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust. Drawing on her leadership experience, Jen provided valuable insights into career development, building resilience, and overcoming barriers. Learn more about the Empowering Women in Leadership programme here.
If you missed our webinar all about finding out how your organisation and finance team can benefit from hosting a finance placement trainee, rewatch it here: Insights Placement Scheme Webinar for NHS Organisations.
Over the last few months, we’ve delivered a series of workshops to support Talent Management conversations across NHS finance. Each session was recorded, so you can watch them back at a time that suits you and share them with colleagues:
- Talent Management: Career Conversations That Count: A Managers Approach
- Talent Management: Effective Conversations About Your Career Development
- Talent Management: Taking Control of Your Career and Development
- Talent Management: Understanding and Developing a Talent Pipeline
The Finance Innovation Forum recently launched the NHS Finance Digital Frontier, and so far over 1680 of you have taken a software skills assessment to understand your current level of digital capability and identify opportunities to develop your skills. If you haven’t already, take yours today via the Digital Frontier web page.
Develop your knowledge and learn how to map your processes and use AI to redesign them to be more efficient, with the next ‘Process Redesign with AI’ workshop taking place on November 12th, 13:00 – 14:00. Book your place here.
Lastly, we are pleased to have published another 13 NHS Finance Innovations in the Innovation Library! Each innovation showcases the challenge faced, the solution implemented, and the measurable benefits achieved. Topics range from supporting effective rostering, income tracking and charity reporting to business case automation, KPI reporting, VAT reviews and Python-powered budget statements. Explore them all in the online Innovation Library here.
That’s a wrap for this month, please download our monthly presentation slides below. Thank you for reading.