Alisa Hall - Queensland Council of Social Service

Health and Community Services
Workforce Council
QCOSS Conference – Tuesday 9th August 2011
Collaborative workforce planning for health outcomes
Alisa Hall

Workforce Council –
Leading Workforce Innovation
• Undertake, promote and advocate for workforce planning
and development to ensure workforce quality and
sustainability
• Partnership and collaboration - more than forty regional
and state-wide industry networks across Queensland to
roll out workforce planning and management strategies
and actions underpinned by a grass roots capacity
building

Looking to the future
• The working-age population is falling as demand for health and
community services continues to grow
• In the last decade, employment in the Health Care and Social
Assistance industry increased by 51.5 % - the largest growth over
this period
• Health and Social Assistance employment is expected to grow at
4.5% pa until 2015/16. National average 2.1% pa
• This equates to 323,300 new jobs (almost one in four new jobs)
over the next five years.

11.5%

Community Services –
Major Drivers / Workforce Issues
• Remuneration disparity between public and non government sector
• Attracting sufficient skills and labour.
• Increased competition for labour and skills.
• High turnover of staff.
• Increased service demand, increased workloads and increased stress at all levels
within organisations.
• Limited resources and capacity to invest in training and workforce planning &
development.
• Management and leadership capacity.
• Instability of workforce – casual and part-time nature of many roles.
• Limited availability of workforce to deliver care which is aligned to a culturally diverse
population
• New service models requiring new skills and role redesign.
• Role redesign and engagement models required to attract and retain a changing
volunteer profile.
• Requirement for higher level skills, in particular mental health, housing and
homelessness.
• Poor reputation of VET and VET qualifications in some sectors.

Question
Are there others?

Health Reforms - the
Queensland breakdown
‣ Local Health and Hospital Networks (LHHN)
17 in total for Qld, 1 July 2012 start
Statutory Authorities
Bill taken to Parliament 16 June 2011 – consultation closed 31 July
‣ Medicare Locals (ML)
11 in total → 5 announced for 1 July 2011 start
Next phases - 1 January 2012 and 1 July 2012
Largely organisation based membership
Companies Limited by Guarantee
‣ Alignment between boundaries (largely) – Some ML have multiple
LHHN’s in area

Medicare Locals – the basics
‣ New organisations with broader roles
‣ Strengthen and integrate the primary health care
(PHC) system – coordinate; access; connection
‣ Focus on the health needs and primary care services
of local community
‣ Governance – Skills-based boards; planning and
engagement mechanisms
‣ Different models in different regions
‣ Population Health Planning; after-hours Primary
Medical Care

What does it all mean –
considerations and concerns
‣ Who is the PHC workforce ?
‣ How will LHHN and ML’s
interface ?
‣ What about ‘non clinical’ staff ?
‣ What happens in the future ?
→ will ML be the fund holder
‣ How do peaks, organisations link
in and engage ?
‣ Will existing infrastructure (i.e. services) be harnessed and
strengthened ?
‣ Where does private sector fit ?
‣ What about clinical training networks, lead clinician
groups, compact

Workforce implications
‣ We will need a workforce who can:
Collaborate and engage across a range of disciplines and
domains to ensure integrated delivery
Equip themselves to proactively identify and pursue
improved models of service delivery and patient-centred
care
‣ Different development needed for different workforce
components
‣ Training and skill development will be needed – but that’s not
all… relationship management, knowledge management and
transfer systems, clinical and systems leadership; governance
(layers); appropriate org/regional policies and protocols….

Question
Do you think health reform affects you / your
organisation

We can roll the dice and see what
happens… or we can…
• Step back
• Take a look at where we’re at
• Take a look at where we want to be
• Make a plan for how to get there
• And build our capacity together to walk down that road….
A CAPACITY BUILDING APPROACH TO WORKFORCE PLANNING

The right
number of
people
Interacting
in the right
ways
With the
right skills &
capabilities
Organised
in the right
ways

Workforce Planning and Development
Responding to Issues at various levels to achieve change
Broader
Systems
&
Structures
Regional & Sector
Community
Systems
&
Structures
Organisational
Systems
&
Structures
Individual

Why Strategic Workforce
Planning?
There must be alignment
across a range of
Industries and sectors that
form part of the systems
that impact on health
outcomes for the
community.
Achieving alignment at
systems and regional
levels requires alignment
between organisations
and the individuals who
make up those
organisations
Org
Industry / Sector
Org Org Org Org Org Org

Workforce Planning

Continuous Cycles
‣ Workforce planning should be conducted in
continuous cycles
‣ Each cycle ensures that:
the evidence-base is improved over time
the currency of the plan is maintained
discrete workforce issues can be explored and
addressed in greater depth
new stakeholders are continuously engaged in
the process providing potential for greater impact

The possibilities
• Shared regional workforce vision - regional whole of system
workforce planning
• More accurate whole of system workforce data for PHC –
powerful to inform planning
• Joint recruitment (productivity)
• Supervision models which harness regional workforce
• Workforce better distributed to meet need
• Joint skilling and training
• Pooled resources to gain efficiencies
• Job design that allows mobility across the region
• Identification of workforce measures beyond job and vacancy
numbers, years of service etc
And much much more …..

How can we support your workforce
planning and development ?
www.workforce.org.au
Contact:
Alisa Hall
ahall@workforce.org.au