Te Whatu Ora looks to attract and retain data and digital staff

eHealthNews.nz: Workforce

Te Whatu Ora looks to attract and retain data and digital staff

Monday, 12 December 2022

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ Data and Digital has a workstream focused on He Tangata Our People to attract and retain its data and digital workforce, which is now the largest in the country.

The campaign aims to retain and attract permanent staff, connected to the vision of Te Whatu Ora, and highlights the ‘why’ of working in the health sector - “an equitable Te Tiriti based health ecosystem designed for and by our people, whānau and communities; delivering meaningful person-centered experiences, health and wellbeing outcomes.”

One of the four core workstreams focuses on ‘our people’ and is supported by an Employee Value Proposition, with the tagline ‘be the change’.

Another is about ‘empowered leadership’, which is looking to grow leadership capability and have national, regional and local change champions.

‘Challenge the status quo’ is about creating new ways of working, including the use of virtual teams.

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Also, developing career pathways using the internationally recognised SFIA framework, which focusses on the skills and competencies required by data and digital professionals.

‘Enabling partnerships’ is about developing and embedding optimal models of collaboration and engagement across the ecosystem.

Anne Speden, executive director digital enablement Te Matau a Māui Hawke’s Bay district, is leading the He Tangata Our People workstream and says Te Whatu Ora, data and digital, saw early the need to focus on this critical space.

“The employee value proposition aims to build a movement to capture the hearts and minds of our people and focus on new and different ways of working together” she says.

“As the team connects nationally there will be greater opportunities for development. One way that this will be achieved is through a career development framework and a learning platform. Adopting the SFIA framework in health will enable career development pathways supporting our people to be the best they can be.”

Speden says other public sector organisations use the SFIA career development framework and have seen opportunities to share resources and leverage key development and capability organisationally.

She says the first tranche of He Tangata, Our People focused on preparing data and digital people for day one of the transition and the reason for the change.

The next tranche focuses on embedding the Employee Value Proposition, modern career development across the motu and strengthened leadership capability.

“It is about harnessing the value of working across the motu and achieving economies of scale by sharing and learning from each other,” she says.

Speden says the new national cybersecurity governance structure is a great example of a new way of working, with local regional and national teams collaborating, with a unified purpose.

“It is about having a shared culture of how we do things and moving away from being a technology shop towards enabling measurable value for the people that we serve.”

James Allison, data and digital regional lead for Te Waiponamu, says “the thing that is different about Te Whatu Ora data and digital is that we offer a sense of purpose that other technology roles do not, and this must be harnessed to attract people into roles.

“There's a lot of personal goodwill in our data and digital teams: people have been patients or have a connection to the services we support, and this makes the work they do more meaningful,” he says.