Midlands Finance Academy – Supporting our staff package

Supporting finance staff in times of widescale change and significant pressure.

As the NHS prepares for another round of widescale change, its finance staff will be facing significant pressures. Many organisations are navigating workforce reductions, mergers, or even closures, creating considerable uncertainty and challenges for all finance teams no matter where they work.

This support package focuses on the professional development of staff and sits within the Academy’s Professional Development workstream, but will naturally coordinate with other areas of the Academy programme such as health and wellbeing.

Coaching through change

The Academy has pivoted its current coaching offer to include a focus on coaching for finance staff in at-risk roles and any staff wanting support through professional or personal change.

The offer will still be six hours of online coaching through the HFMA professional coaching team.

Interview preparation sessions

The existing interview preparation sessions have been adapted to allow Midlands finance staff access to this support even if the role they are interviewing for is outside of the Midlands region, or is outside of the NHS.

It has also been opened up to individuals currently working in a different region as long as they are applying for a role in the Midlands, thereby encouraging finance talent into our region.

Lastly, the sessions have been made available to anyone wanting to practice general interview techniques, rather than just for those who have applied for a role and have an interview booked.

Honouring training placements

In order to further support staff who may have to seek employment outside of the NHS, the Midlands Finance Academy has agreed to honour training placements for anyone leaving the NHS whilst they are in the middle of any Academy supported training and development programmes.

This will only apply to multi-session programmes where an individual moves to a non-NHS role part way through the programme. It will not apply to any stand-alone training.

System-wide talent management

The Midlands Finance Academy will continue to provide support for the roll-out of the NHS Finance Inclusive Talent Management Strategy, which will be a critical approach for organisations to take throughout the restructure in order to manage workforce reductions and retain NHS finance talent.

One system in the Midlands will be selected to receive hands-on support from the Academy in order to move from organisational level pipelines to a system-wide view which allows them to coordinate staff movement across an ICS and discuss senior, at-risk and critical roles across organisational boundaries.

Academy resource and external facilitation will be offered as part of this pilot, and the hope is to create a blueprint which other systems in the Midlands can then use.

Day in the Life Exchange programme

Inspired by the UK 4 Nations Exchange programme, the Midlands Finance Academy will be running a Day in the Life Exchange programme for NHS finance staff in the Midlands region.

The exchange will take place over one week with matched participants spending four days shadowing each other, and with the final day bringing all participants across the region together for an event in Birmingham to share their learnings and feedback.

The initiative aims to enhance skills and foster networking within the finance community. It also gives individuals the opportunity to better understand different roles in a finance department outside of their own experience, and how different types of NHS organisations work.

The exchange wrap-up event will include a motivational speaker session on ‘tackling transformational change’ to inspire the Day in the Life participants to take positive steps forward in their careers.

Supporting our staff webinar series

The Academy will run a webinar series under the theme of supporting our staff in professional development, aiming to cover topics such as:

  • Commercial and private sector skills
  • Finance business partnering
  • Change management
  • How to approach NHS job applications
  • Building your network
  • Secondments as a stepping stone
  • Navigating complex workplace environments

In order to access support in areas such as building resilience and dealing with stress, finance staff are encouraged to join the Midlands Health and Wellbeing Network, where they can attend quarterly online events which will be dedicated to this kind of content.

Closed conversation coffee mornings

The Academy will run a monthly ‘closed conversation coffee morning’. This will be a 30-minute Teams call with no agenda, but facilitated by one of the HFMA professional coaches. The purpose is to allow a safe space for finance staff to share their experiences, worries, advice and support with each other through the upcoming changes.

Signposting support

Similar support packages for NHS staff are available in other regions and nationally through One NHS Finance and HFMA: