Leading the Way: Our Vision as the New Chair and Vice Chair of FFF

Blog written by Suzanne Robinson, Chief Finance Officer / Deputy Chief Executive, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and Richard Mills, Chief Finance Officer, Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

We are incredibly proud and excited to step into our new roles as Chair and Vice Chair of the NHS Future-Focused Finance (FFF) programme. FFF is dedicated to connecting, developing, and supporting the NHS finance community, and at a time when the NHS is facing some of its greatest challenges, this programme has a more important role than ever.

We are committed to creating an environment where our finance teams can thrive and build on the significant progress over the past few years. As we look ahead, we remain focused on 5 key themes:

1. We know that happy and well teams produce better results for patients and supporting the health and well-being of our finance teams remains a key focus for the programme, especially during these challenging times.
2. Networking and sharing good ideas is what FFF is all about and the Value Maker network remains at the heart of this.  They continue to share good practices from across the regions and support one another through the challenges we face.  We are proud of the strong network that exists within NHS Finance—one that many of our colleagues in other professional groups admire. 
3. Promoting the different finance careers across the NHS, attracting diverse talent into our function remains a key priority.  We want our NHS to be the employer of choice for a career in finance.
4. Accreditation has become a cornerstone of our efforts to create a workplace that attracts and develops the best talent. Not only does it signal a commitment to continuous improvement, but we’ve seen direct benefits, such as higher staff survey scores in accredited organisations.
5. Our demystifying NHS finance programme remains one of our most popular with 1000s of clinicians and non-finance staff engaging with our courses and resources, we remain committed to helping others to understand finance to create the best value for tax payers and patients.

Our commitment is to ensure that finance professionals are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and networks needed to meet the evolving demands of healthcare. Together, we will strengthen our finance community, building an NHS finance function that is recognised as a great place to work, whilst supporting the delivery of world-class healthcare.  Each year we review the resources we provide via ONF and are keen to make sure we are responding to the changing demands our finance teams face – we have some great ideas which we will share over the coming months.