PORTFOLIO

Staffroom
A web and mobile app for NHS hospitals to manage temporary workers and agencies.
Project Name

Staffroom

A web and mobile app for NHS hospitals to manage temporary workers and agencies.
My Role

Head of Product

Responsible for the design and development of a new product / service for healthcare staffing and workforce management. Provided leadership to a team of research, design and technical professionals. Delivered a working prototype of over 700 screens across web and mobile environments.
Including the add-ons:
Problem Statement
The temporary healthcare recruitment market has been changing rabidly due to the financial pressures of NHS and the increased demand for healthcare professionals at lower profit margins. Staffing and HR departments are having to engage with several agencies to supply staff, most often at a short notice, in a industry where over 70% of roles are lasting between 1-2 days. They will also maintain their own pool of candidates (bank model) to reduce agency spend and achieve efficiencies, but bear the responsibility of keeping these candidates compliant and ready to undertake last minute shifts.
My Approach
By the time I designed Staffroom, I had already over four years of experience in the sector and built numerous products. I had spent thousands of hours researching and understanding the needs of each stakeholder; the agencies, the NHS, and healthcare professionals. However, although I started with a solid product idea and I could already visualise what a solution may look like, I needed to carry out market and user research to verify my assumptions and complete my vision before we move into prototyping.

1. Market Research

The first thing I had to do was to research the market and find out the viability of the product and how it is different than any other digital solution for NHS workforce management systems. There were three business models that I had to review.

  • The bank model – Hospitals maintain their own pool of candidates and engage directly for seasonal or ad-hoc employment.
  • The agency model – Agencies can be awarded to supply to hospitals.
  • Tech start ups – Direct to NHS supply and workforce management start ups.

The bank model relies on a constant flow of new candidates and on online systems for the compliance and management of workforce. However, often systems are inadequate and offer a terrible user experience. Candidates need to sign up and go through the compliance process for each NHS hospital individually. NHS hospitals invest to increase their bank of candidates and reduce agency costs. This is where the very few tech start ups come in. They are in direct competition with the agency model. They are are well funded and their digital offering is advanced and user friendly, however they still amount for a very small percentage of the supply of the NHS. It is estimated that the agency model still amounts for 90% of the supply.

2. User Research

There were two types of users that we had to research. The user, in this case the healthcare professionals, and the customer, the NHS.

User Research

I set up interviews with ten temporary healthcare professionals from different specialities, grades, seniority, region who where either working through an agency or directly for the NHS.

Key findings

  • Most temporary healthcare professionals work with 2-5 hospitals
  • Many have signed up for a NHS hospital bank before, but continued to work through an agency.
  • They are signed up and receive work from 2-3 agencies to access a wider choice of opportunities
  • 50% are happy to travel distances greater to work in other parts of the UK, and 50% tends to work locally (within 30 miles)

Customer Research

One of the areas that I needed to learn more to complete my vision was the NHS needs and requirements. Thanks to the kind contribution of two NHS trusts I was able to arrange interviews with HR and staffing departments to find out more from the people who manage temporary and permanent NHS recruitment. While I got to find out more about the on-boarding, compliance and hiring processes of NHS, I also had the chance to review NHS legacy systems used to manage bank staff.

Key findings

  • On boarding and compliance processes defer from hospital to hospital
  • NHS systems for the management of temporary workers are inadequate and offer a terrible user experience.
  • Many professionals sign up to a NHS hospital bank but never get compliant or work for the hospital
  • They use at least 10-20 agencies to find healthcare staff of all specialities

3. Define Product Goals

With a deep knowledge of the sector I started defining product goals. The aim was to deliver a innovative service that would address the pain points of all stakeholders and provide a new relationship between NHS, agencies and healthcare professionals.

NHS deliverables

  • Access to a large pool of compliant healthcare professionals
  • Easy management of approved agencies
  • Powerful custom on-boarding processes
  • Sophisticated compliance tools for new and existing agency and bank staff
  • Advanced workforce and spend analytics

User deliverables

  • Easy access to join the NHS hospitals of their choice and receive all available shifts and short term opportunities.
  • User friendly compliance processes that can be completed on web and mobile
  • Apply and confirm bookings directly with the hospital
  • Online training and CPD points

Agency deliverables

  • Supply through the platform to existing and new hospitals
  • Advanced compliance tools that can reduce company costs of getting candidates compliant
  • Automatic invoicing and payments

4. Prototype and Test

I set out to design a solution with a team of one more designer. After the findings of the research I had a clear vision and ready to provide the first wireframes. I had to map the features between candidate and hospital accounts and showcase end to end user and customer journeys. I decided to start first with the candidate mobile experience and then scale it up to desktop. Our design evolved a lot since the initial mock ups and user journeys were refined again and again to provide the best possible user experience. The mobile dashboard for example changed several times, together with many other screens to reflect the feedback we gathered from user research.

Universal To-Do's

One of the first challenges we encountered was the plethora of compliance requirements needed from NHS Trusts and regulatory bodies. Users were required to submit, complete, sign, and read documents, take mandatory training exams every year, and complete on-boarding after approval by the hospital. In order to address this, I designed a universal to-do list that would show compliance requirements regardless of their type or source.

To-Do Loops

The introduction of the to-do list improved a lot of the user journeys. It allowed us to display to-do items anywhere. This can be seen in the user dashboard but can also be found in most confirmation / success screens around the app. Healthcare professionals need to provide roughly 20 documents to get compliant and my intention was to create user journey loops for consecutive submission of required documents.

Bulk Uploader

Although the to-do lists came with a lot of advantages, it also brought some challenges that we had to address, especially around the uploading of multiple documents. In order to make the to-do lists work effectively, we had to improve the current uploader and allow users to select the types of documents they are uploading so they can be removed as individual items from the to-do lists. We just had to find the most user friendly way to deliver, especially on mobile devices.

Training and Certifications

Beyond the documentation required, healthcare professionals are required to complete mandatory training and awarded a certificate every 12 months. The process in any online system would vary from one to two and a half hours. My goal was to reduce it down to fifteen minutes max. In order to achieve this I had to rethink the design of the service. First I dropped the theory part off the user journey, and I directed users straight to take the exam. By using the same principle of the To Do loops, users could keep on completing courses one by one but in fact all together at once. The user flow made it feel as if the questions of all courses were put together and for a healthcare professional it was extremely quick to go through them. Our user testing showed that qualified users can complete all courses, over 100 questions, in under 12 minutes.
Once we had each feature and screen laid out on mobile we moved onto the next stage of the design process; the client experience. Prototyping of the client environment started early but after feedback there were certain areas to improve.

Client Dashboard

The client dashboard had to be optimised based on further user testing. What I really wanted to find out at this stage, was how clients felt about the information displayed in the dashboard widgets. I set up interviews and showcased the product again to HR and staffing departments of NHS hospitals. After feedback, I improved each dashboard widget with only the relevant information displayed. Members availability added, members location removed, members updates optimised to display only notifications that have value to HR departments. The overall aesthetics were reworked to be consistent with the mobile interface.

Compliance

Making compliance easy for the NHS was a big selling point so I knew we had to get it right. It taken us several efforts and a lot of user testing to design an intuitive compliance manager. It was initially supposed to manage the compliance of two healthcare sectors but requirements increased and so the design had to follow. After user testing there were now three healthcare sectors, with the possibility of more being added, and the combine amount of compliance requirements risen to over 50 different documents, 30 training courses, with additional on-boarding requirements by the hospital.

Requirements

Another very important section was the part where HR and staffing departments would publish requirements to attract candidates. The requirements are seasonal and hospitals tend to be short-staffed in many disciplines, specialities and grades, and in different regions, and there’s a plethora of them. For doctors, for example, there are over 70 specialities in 6 different grades. We had to make it very user friendly to allow users to post several calls for professionals with ease. The final design does just that, and user testing showed that users were able to naturally go through the process of posting requirements without any guidance.

Interactions and Notifications

By now we had most user journeys completed and we could carry our actual user scenarios and interactions in order to identify improvements. We had to ensure that communications between users and hospitals are efficient and effective. During this process I identified opportunities that would be beneficial by all stakeholders. One of them was the introduction of Conditional Acceptance. Hospitals can conditionally accept candidates that are not fully compliant, but they will have to complete required to-dos to become members. This would give the NHS a wider pool of candidates and hospitals would encourage users to get compliant by offering work as soon as they do so. Once users were compliant, they could work in any NHS hospital, so that was a great strategy too.

5. Test and Optimise

Our first prototype was ready, showcasing all user and customer journeys end-to-end, on web and mobile. Thanks to the kind contribution of two NHS Trusts and several healthcare professionals, we were able to test every user journey and gather valuable feedback. Users now could get a real sense of how it feels to use the service through the prototype which allowed us to identify flaws and plan optimisations. One important goal that I had to test against, was whether the product can replace existing NHS systems for the compliance and management of temporary staff. This would allow the hospital to take advantage of all features and manage their current temporary workforce in a more efficient way. In this scenario there would be no recruitment fees but providing compliance and training would be chargeable on a yearly basis. This could become an extra stream of revenue that would also improve user and customer experience so I decided to make some further optimisations to accommodate for such scenario.

What We Delivered

After months of exploration, designing and testing we delivered a prototype of over 700 screens. Staffroom was designed with one thing in mind, to assist hospitals, agencies and candidates deal more efficiently with the hiring, compliance and other regulatory requirements of temporary or seasonal healthcare professionals. It challenges the current way of doing things by bringing everyone together through technology with advanced digital tools.

Rooms for every occasion

Hospitals create ‘rooms’ to populate with healthcare professionals for ad-hoc or temporary opportunities.

Hospitals can manage temporary workers

Hospitals can manage every aspect of their workforce and ensure they get compliant as soon as possible and stay compliant for future placements.

Agencies can supply candidates

Hospitals can choose agencies who they are wishing to supply through within the system, ensuring that they are ready to work.

Candidates can manage their whole career

Healthcare professionals can source their own work directly with hospitals of interest and stay up to date on all compliance requirements without the hassle.

Custom to-do lists

Hospitals, agencies and candidates have their own to-do list, which cover everything that’s needed for smooth runnings. Staffroom communicates for all sides, so that healthcare professionals can get on with their career and their patients.

Advance compliance tools

Hospitals can choose compliance requirements or ever create custom approval packages and the system takes cares of the rest and everything directly with the candidate.

Post jobs and fill shifts quick

Staffroom comes with its own job board so hospitals can post staffing requirements as they become available and receive applications from candidates who are ready to take the job. When shifts can be filled quickly, patients will ultimately receive better care.