ESR Road Map Update
Release 33 was successfully deployed into ESR at the end of December 2016. With an improved design and user interface of ESR Self-Service and OLM functionality, Release 33 was the second stage of our ambitious Road Map plan to improve your ESR solution.
New branding and revised forms have given ESR a different look and feel, and whilst the fundamental processes and functions remain the same, some forms have significantly changed with new features added.
We are now working towards the next stage of the plan, with Release 34 scheduled for deployment at the end of March 2017. As with all releases into the ESR solution, Release 34 will be subject to successful testing and deployment.
ESR Portal is launched to our Beta Sites
On January 16th we began deploying the new ESR Portal to our Beta sites. This has been a very successful deployment across the eight sites with over 11,000 individual users accessing the Portal to date. This progress has enabled us to take on an additional three sites, from within our original Pilot cohort, in the last few days and they are also now progressing with their roll-out.
Our Functional Advisors are working closely with the sites, providing support and gathering their feedback on the new functionality and their experiences of interacting with the new Portal. This will enable us to ensure that all users will have the best possible experience of interacting with your new look ESR when we have completed the Beta phase of deployment.
“We are pleased to be going live with the new ESR Portal and confident that this will greatly enhance the user experience. Being involved in the development programme has been a great opportunity to help shape improvements to the system from a user’s perspective. We are an organisation that embraces the use of ESR for Employee, Supervisor and Manager Self Service and e-Learning and we welcome the developments. We are particularly looking forward to the simplification of eLearning to help increase our training compliance and the flexibility that the improved access will bring”. Amanda Rawlings, Director of People and Organisational Effectiveness, Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust
Provisioning and Roll-out
Following the beta phase we will begin a controlled roll-out to provision all user organisations with access to the new Portal. This will commence in May and will be complete by the autumn of 2017.
As part of our planning, we have assessed individual organisations against a number of criteria:
- IT compliance against our MM-0100 standard – currently Internet Explorer 11 and Java 1.8.0_74 for full support;
- Employee Self Service Usage;
- Evidence collected from our user facing teams through tools such as the ESR Assessments and other interactions.
We will be writing to NHS HR and Workforce Directors to advise which roll-out Wave their organisation has been allocated to. However, if in meantime your HR Director feels that your organisation is in a position to roll-out the new functionality without needing on-site support, and they are confident that your organisation can meet our IT standards, then please encourage your HR Director to register this interest with us, by emailing esr.communications@nhs.net as it may facilitate an earlier provisioning date for you. To date, twelve HR Directors have requested an early provisioning date on this basis and we will manage future requests on a first-come-first-served basis.
Whether you request an early provisioning date, or accept the scheduled date, we will be providing support materials to support you and your teams, including set-up checklists and example communications from our Beta sites. However, in advance we encourage you to read the recently published I.T. guidance – this is particularly important for I.T. Departments and Providers. You can access the I.T. guidance on our website
Education and User Readiness
During February and early March the NHS ESR Team ran a series of Road Map Release 34 webinars. Webinar 1 focused on further user interface (UI) optimisations that will be delivered in release 34 and Webinar 2 focused on the new ESR Portal, providing information on how the portal can be personalised for an organisation or an individual. With representatives from Beta pilot sites sharing their first hand feedback on their experiences, the webinars were very popular with 638 participants.
As with Release 33, the ESR Education Team published the following HTML captivate lessons and User Guide on ESR Infopoint.
Education Materials
- Auto Enrol process User Guide
- Employee & Manager e-Learning lessons
- Administrator Self Service lessons
Portal education material is being developed to help users familiarise with the new portal functionality. We will be making this material available in advance of organisations going live with the portal, and further communications about this will be shared in due course.
If you have any questions about the Road Map please contact your NHS ESR Functional Advisor or Account Manager.
Gender Pay Gap Reporting
A draft Order, The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017, is currently laid before Parliament and is expected to come into force on 31st March 2017. This regulation imposes obligations on public authorities to publish gender pay gap (GPG) information, relating to employees, to demonstrate compliance with the duty imposed by section 149(1) of the Act. The first publication must occur no later than 30th March 2018 and at intervals thereafter no greater than a year since the last publication.
GPG Reporting via ESR
Work is underway within the ESR Team to reproduce the specific calculation of Pay as defined in the draft Regulations. We will advise of the reporting solution and availability in due course. Note that the Regulations remain at the draft stage, so may be subject to change. When it is implemented the ESR solution will enable reporting for the year to March 2018 in order to meet the requirement.
ESR will enable reporting as set out in the draft Order:
“In particular, public authorities are required to publish the difference between the average hourly rate of pay paid to male and female employees; the difference between the average bonus paid to male and female employees; the proportions of male and of female employees who receive bonuses; and the relative proportions of male and female employees in each quartile pay band of the workforce.”
Organisations will be able to run the ESR reports for any chosen period, so that interim monitoring can be undertaken ahead of the annual publication.
Whilst the legislation focusses on Gender, it is intended that the ESR reporting solution will enable Pay Gap Analysis across a range of other protected characteristics including: age; disability; religion or belief and sexual orientation.
Please note that Gender Reassignment is not currently recordable on ESR. NHS England is leading a review of equality standards across the NHS and should Gender Reassignment be added to the standard applicable to Workforce, then it will be reflected in ESR.
Next steps
The specific calculation of pay required is being worked on and the Payroll NSIG will be engaged with regarding the inclusion of local elements.
A set of reports will be developed, with assistance from both the Human Resources and payroll NSIG’s, and these will be made available and publicised to users as soon as possible.
Further information regarding the GPG reporting requirements is available on the NHS Employers website
Change Event Log Availability in ESR BI
The Change Event Log report in Discoverer has always been a very popular report, allowing organisations to audit the changes made and is central to the best practice approach to reviewing changes to employees throughout the organisation. As part of the reporting strategy, ESR Release 33 included a number of changes to allow the data captured by the change event log to be reported using ESR BI. Building on the reporting format from Discoverer the BI version has the following benefits:
- Over 1,000 data items are tracked in the BI version compared to around 200 in Discoverer, including tracking a number of items made in Learning Administration;
- Changes made by Proxy Users can be audited;
- Report runtime is significantly reduced (although changes cannot be reported until the following day);
- A large number of supporting data items, including employee attributes and assignment attributes are available to give great flexibility in local ad-hoc reporting.
The changes introduced help organisations more easily report on changes made to all employees but also enable more analytical reporting over time, including identifying Self-Service utilisation.
Changes made by ESR Self Service
Understanding not only ‘what’ changes are being made but ‘how’ is an additional benefit of reporting on change using ESR BI. The ‘Self Service Analysis’ tab has been introduced enabling organisations to view the percentage of changes made via ESR Self Service, compared to those changes that could have been made via ESR Self Service. This allows organisations to measure and prove the benefits and efficiencies of using ESR Self Service. A monthly view is also provided to measure improvement over time:
How to access it
The Change Event Log Dashboard is available to the following responsibilities:
- Absence Administration
- BI Administration
- Employee Relations Administration
- Finance Reporting
- HR Administration
- HR Management
- Learning Administration
- Occupational Health Administration (for OH Changes Only)
- Payroll Administration
- Payroll Super Administration
- Pensions Administration
- Recruitment and Applicant Enrolment Administration