Workforce Development is about getting the right people with the right skills to be in the right places at the right time. It is crucial to securing the workforce for NHSScotland in the short, medium and long-term. It is integral to the successful reform of health services in Scotland and to the improvement of patient care.

A central part of the workforce development agenda is better workforce planning, at local, national and regional levels, but the agenda is not simply numbers-driven, in a rapidly changing health service, it has to be more expansive and dynamic than that. Workforce development interacts with service planning and redesign, linking with the future shape of services, employment markets and the changing supply and demand.
It looks at all staff groups in an integrated way, and also takes account of:

Changing roles and skill mixes
New ways of working and job redesign - partly driven by working times considerations
Education and training of staff
Recruitment and retention
Career packages and pathways

Newsletter - Autumn 2002 NEW