Re-inspiring workforce requires leadership skills

Presenting in the opening morning keynote session under the conference theme, Estates & Facilities Services, on the second day of Healthcare Estates 2024 were three speakers representing large organisations – NHS England, multinational professional services partnership, EY, and the healthcare division of Siemens AG. Their focus was some of the major workforce challenges and opportunities today – for employers and employees generally, and more specifically for healthcare engineering and healthcare EFM personnel and the suppliers and technology providers that work with them – in an increasingly digitally-driven world. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

The three speakers, the Director of Sustainability and Workforce, and National Deputy Director of Estates at NHS England, Fiona Daly; EY Partner and UK People Consulting Leader — Financial Services, Katherine Savage, and Tina Johne, of Siemens AG Healthcare, Vertical, Innovation and Digital Business Management, were introduced by the session chair, Nigel Keery OBE, who had officially taken over as IHEEM President from Alison Ryan at the Institute’s 2024 AGM the previous day (HEJ — November 2024, and pages 8-9 of this issue).

Katherine Savage, the first to speak, explained that her role at EY entails ‘supporting organisations on their people agenda’. She told delegates: “My plan is to share some broad perspectives on how the world of work is evolving, focusing particularly on how — as leaders and people managers — you will need to evolve your skills to lead in a more complex future work ecosystem of work.” She explained that ‘with access to many organisations, employers, and employees globally’, EY had, since the pandemic, been surveying both employers and employees as part of its Work Reimagined survey, and continues to do so.

An annual survey and results

EY now conducts the survey annually, and Katherine Savage explained that — against this backdrop — she wanted to discuss ‘what had been evolving since the pandemic’ around the need for leaders to lead effectively, and how they intend to ‘motivate, engage, and inspire’, new entrants to the world of work with very different expectations to previous generations. She said: “In many of our client conversations we’ve been focusing on how to ‘re-inspire’ the workforce after a period of significant disruption, as well as discussing how they can embrace Gen (Generative) AI — and the significant value it can bring to the human experience at work.”

She continued: “We know the talent agenda has been significantly disrupted. From an employer’s perspective, there has been continued economic slowdown and high inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty, and while there are now fewer job vacancies, securing the right staff remains challenging. Equally, underutilised office space is an issue, and hybrid working is probably sub-optimal for most of the organisations EY speaks to. We also have real disruption from emerging technologies. Similarly, structural elements like demographic shifts and the cost of living are impacting employees. The latter remains very important, particularly to newer entrants to work — forcing them to make quicker decisions and move between employers more frequently than we’ve previously seen.”

Flexible and remote working

Some organisations were now using flexible and remote working as part of their ’employee value’ proposition, but others were encouraging staff to return to ‘on-site’ working. Katherine Savage added: “We know too that Gen AI is significantly disrupting task activity, and that it will require new skills, both at a leadership level, and from a technical perspective, to address that more complex ecosystem of human and machine.”

Showing ‘a very busy slide’, she said: “There’s been a shift in the power balance between employees and employers. It’s pretty mixed in the labour market; top talent can secure new roles, probably for higher pay, but skills gaps still mean a significant premium for some roles. Employers have underestimated employees’ desire to quit. I’m sure you’ve read about the ‘quiet quitters’ — the disengaged, demotivated, or others who — while they haven’t yet made the leap to a new employer — are probably not as productive, engaged, or incentivised as they were. So, there is a productivity impact from disengaged employees. We know pay remains important, so how competitively do you pay? And are you differentiating for top talent — not just in total compensation terms, but in the opportunities you afford those that make the greatest contribution?”

Katherine Savage believed there was ‘a real tension emerging between hybrid and fully remote’. She said: “There’s a diversity lens to this, because more flexible working often enables you to attract a more diverse workforce. However, very few of my clients have really cracked their hybrid working policies; there’s still the perception that staff that are not visible are less productive. We do see benefits, however, if that flexibility is productive, with a shift to bringing teams back together to share knowledge, develop, and put back what we’ve lost from some of the Teams and Zoom interaction.”

The EY speaker’s view was that there was ‘largely optimism around Gen AI,’ with many business leaders ‘very excited’ about the associated opportunities to be more productive. However, there was also some nervousness, — particularly among employees — over whether it would replace their job. Katherine Savage said: “Will growing AI use require upskilling to ensure that the workforce can adapt? I believe it will require leaders to be testing and learning about AI themselves, and using the technology as it evolves, to demonstrate to the wider workforce that human and machine can combine pretty productively in a work setting.”

She continued: “There’s definitely been an employer / employee power shift. While the labour market is starting to pick up, securing top talent can be very market-competitive. Recently we have seen a real trend in a return to office — with 2-3 days on site becoming the norm. Understanding your approaches to flexibility — in workplace location and type, how you as a people manager lead, and what is and isn’t acceptable within your operation, will be key in engaging and motivating top talent.”

Gen AI

Returning to ‘Gen AI’, Katherine Savage said there were many tested iterations and pilot use cases where the technology had been shown to increase productivity, remove effort, and generate more capacity. She said: “Our survey suggests that employees are generally pretty positive about AI’s potential. However, both employers and employees recognise the need for significant investment in associated learning and skills development.” Businesses looking at increasing their AI use would, she said, need to determine where to focus the most attention and money to develop the skills needed for a new scenario where part tasks could be automated, ‘handed off’ to a human, and then reviewed by somebody more senior, and what this would mean in their particular field.

With ‘an ever more complex work ecosystem’, EY advises clients to think about ‘segmenting’ their workforce, with a ‘one size fits all’ approach to talent, initiatives, development, learning, and ‘hybrid’ working potentially no longer appropriate, and with a series of clear indicators of success. She elaborated: “We know, for example, that organisations that thrive through disruption usually have staff that trust their leaders, feel they can speak up, know their views will be listened to, and that associated action will be taken. Indeed, if we look at future leaders’ top priority skills, empathy is key. That doesn’t mean soft leadership — but rather understanding the complexities outside and within work, and empathetically leading your people to motivate and engage.

“We know,” she added, “that if employees feel less connected to their team, their leader, and / or their business unit, they are less likely to be engaged, and more likely to think about moving. Similarly, we always support our clients in developing communication strategies. Newer entrants to work are often hungry for information, and more frequent access to data; thus how you communicate and ensure transparency will be critical as your workforce demographics change.”

Katherine Savage said that, ‘like other sectors’, engineering would be striving for a more diverse workforce — requiring differing leadership, ways of working, and ‘talent interventions’. She said: “But how do you avoid that ‘group think’ where you’re all pulling from the same talent pool? Organisations will be more successful if they’re really thinking about future skills now.”

Culture and ways of working

The EY speaker’s message was that to attract the best staff, organisations would need to think carefully about ways and patterns of working. She said: “For example, ‘How do you balance that workload, and create time to innovate and collaborate?’ “A lot of the work I do currently around organisational re-restructuring and driving fungibility requires multidisciplinary teams to collaborate, but how do you break down some of the silos in your practices today, and prioritise culture?” Culture here wasn’t, she emphasised, ‘just a strapline and a series of values posted on your internet site’, but rather ‘what it feels like day to day to be in your teams’.

Katherine Savage said: “Provide clarity around your values and purpose — so staff can then understand how their day-today contribution aligns with the broader purpose and vision, and you’re more likely to motivate and engage. Similarly, how do you remain nimble — continually evolving roles and responsibilities, which is more likely to retain talent?”

As she neared her presentation’s close, Katherine Savage highlighted another recently undertaken EY survey — in partnership with Oxford Saïd Business School — around Humans@Centre. She said: “This global cross-sector survey focuses on why some transformations are successful, and others fail. As an HR practitioner, I’d always argue that placing humans at the centre is critical, and shouldn’t be an afterthought when planning transformational milestones. This thinking has now been endorsed by Oxford University research — which suggests that by prioritising the human agenda in transformation exercises, you’re 2.6 times more likely to succeed. The EY speaker explained that there are six ‘transformational levers’ that if performed on an above average basis would see the organisation in the 2.6 times more successful ‘bucket’.

She said: “If you take anything away from what I’ve said today, it should be the importance of clarity of vision. Your people and senior leaders need to translate that vision clearly and consistently in everything they do. As leaders, you’ll need to be adaptable, recognising that the skills you need today won’t necessarily be those you need in the future, and to foster teaming, collaboration, and innovation. Problems are becoming more complex, and will likely require multiple viewpoints to reach solutions, so create psychological safety — with an opportunity to actively listen, allow people to speak up, take action, and create a culture of trust. You need to foster autonomy and experimentation, considering how you can exhibit some ‘disciplined freedom’.”

Katherine Savage also emphasised the need to ‘use tech’, and to ensure that user experience recognises ‘that you can make communication instant, and can use technology in quite an innovative way to do your day job’. She told delegates: “You must make people feel comfortable with the technology you are going to require them to use, and create ‘radical independence’, so do foster the connectivity and collaboration between teams that may historically have been quite siloed. If as a leader, you prioritise each of those six levers, you will — I believe — be more successful in what you’re trying to transform.”

A view from the Director of Sustainability and Workforce

Katherine Savage having now concluded, NHS England’s Fiona Daly, began her address. She explained: “I’m the Director of Sustainability and Workforce, and the National Deputy Director of Estates, at NHS England. My team and I lead the workforce agenda for 120,000 estates and facilities personnel. Looking back, and it’s been two and a half years since we published our NHS estates workforce action plan. As a snapshot, we said we would focus on four areas — ‘Equality and Diversity’ is really important, as is ‘Developing our people’. Also vital are ‘Improving the health and wellbeing of our people’ — something we need to focus a bit more on in the EFM community, and ‘Building the next generation’.” Fiona Daly added here that it had been especially pleasing the night before, at the Healthcare Estates 2024 IHEEM Awards Dinner, to see all the apprenticeships, and the support that they enjoy from their colleagues.

She went on to explain that the NHS estates workforce action plan aligns to all the national strategies, including the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. She told delegates: “There is some clear stuff in the latest Lord Darzi report (the Independent investigation of the NHS in England) about the importance of the NHS workforce.” Recommending all to read it, Fiona Daly said it contained some ‘really good information, presented in very positive way for Estates and Facilities’. She added: “There are obviously also our ICS infrastructure strategies — the cornerstone of what we will be doing across the ICSs over the next decade.”

Continuing her presentation, she said: “We were asked to talk about the challenges, and I’ve got four for you — the first being about around building the next generation of our people, and how we can attract people into the estates and facilities profession. We are attracting more people than ever before; we have launched our NHS Estates and Facilities Workforce: Apprenticeship Challenge, and doubled the number of apprentices in Estates and Facilities. However, they still only represent just 0.5% of the workforce, and we want to see that massively increase.”

Encouragement to ‘get involved’

To support this, Fiona Daly encouraged estates and facilities personnel to ‘get involved in the programmes’ — for example by identifying roles they could utilise for apprenticeships, and looking at the mentoring capabilities within their teams. She said: “We launched the first cohort of Junior Energy Manager Apprenticeships, and — wanting to lead by example — have had two in our team. Both have gone on to get really successful jobs. However,” she added, “that is just two within a vast array we can influence, and we really want to drive this forward — thus a personal plea to you all to take on apprentices, and really focus on training them up.” Fiona Daly said her team had also ‘done a huge amount’ around encouraging people into T levels. She said: “We’re really encouraging people to take on technical expertise, technical skills, and qualifications, as they go into higher education.”

Early career pilot in the ‘soft FM space’

She and her team had also worked with Teen Tech (an award-winning charity, founded in 2008 by Maggie Philbin and Chris Dodson to help students see the wide range of STEM career possibilities), but there remined ‘a lot more to do’. She explained: “We will be launching an early careers pilot in the soft FM space, supporting people in our lowest bands. About 70% of our bands are in Band 2. We will start by looking at domestic cleaners, but if the pilot is successful — we have really made the case for estates and facilities to be front and centre — we think we can move this into some of the technical roles. If you are keen to participate, there’ll be a bidding process. I think it will be quite highly sought after, but if we can prove this works, and, equally, identify the sticking points, we can hopefully expand the pilot to other, more technical roles.”

Fiona Daly said the second challenge was around ‘Developing our people’. She explained: “We’ve done the Edward Jenner trial (an NHS programme for those ‘looking to build a strong foundation of leadership skills that can help enhance their confidence and competence’), in which 92 people participated. It’s about giving first-time managers and new managers more leadership skills. We have really listened to what you’ve said — that we need a graduate and chartership route for our engineering staff.” The speaker said the NHS Estates & Facilities team had already done two things specifically on this. She explained: “The first is to link up the Graduate Management Training Scheme — which creates and pumps out all the CEOs and Execs pretty much at every NHS Trust. Estates and Facilities are, however, not currently represented there.

“With very few — perhaps a handful — of such professionals going through in the past five years — we’ve been working with the central EFM team to get a rolling programme of GMT estates and facilities graduate trainees through. Long term we hope that when people are on the Board, they will understand infrastructure, estates and facilities, and the importance of our work.”

Fiona Daly said the team had also launched a national graduate programme for engineers — the Engineering Leadership Programme. She explained: “The first entrants will either start in September 2025 or January 2026. We have just gone out to tender for a partner, and should have further news soon. We will be working with the universities on a Level 7 graduate degree programme, to give people the skills they need to lead in those roles. We will probably go out in February 2025 to get the cohorts on board, so your support in encouraging people, and spreading the word, would be appreciated.”

Initial pre-commitments

She continued: “We’ve already had initial pre-commitments from 10 NHS organisations, and want to ensure this is successful long term. We’re hoping to work with IHEEM and the Engineering Council on this — as a route to Chartership. We want people to see they can come in, do their T levels, their apprenticeship, and come in and be an intern. They can get experience, and then move up. They can do a graduate programme in estates and facilities; this is a really robust career — progress, and become IEng, CEng, or maybe a PEng.

“The third challenge is equality and diversity,” Fiona Daly explained. “I know Simon (Corben) touched on this yesterday, but we are really lagging behind our peers. Just 11% of our workforce come from a BAME background, and we’re way behind with females. In fact, females overrepresent our workforce, but tend often to be in lower bands. Aware that we’ve got some ceilings, and that some of them are around things we can influence, we will really focus on these — especially in our upcoming ED&I goals document. We also need to encourage under-25s into our workforce, and to stay with us once part of it.”

Fiona Daly noted that the previous day’s conference had included ‘some really good talks about how we can think about encouraging people into careers — and not always through the most traditional routes’. She said: “There were presentations about registration, and ensuring that its value is properly understood. Some people will take that on, and feel it’s key to them, while others want a more ‘practical’ career — such as an apprenticeship degree where they can apply practically what they’re learning. Others want to go through an academic route, and we’ve been doing a lot of work in schools.” This had included working with ‘Inspiring the future’ (‘the flagship service’ of the Education and Employers charity, which ‘connects workplace volunteers with schools and colleges to broaden children and young people’s horizons, raise their aspirations, and increase their motivation to learn’.)

People with disabilities

Fiona Daly added: “The most petrifying thing I do is stand up in front of 16-year-olds and say: ‘Come and work in estates and facilities in the NHS, it is brilliant.’ ” She also acknowledged the need to increase the number of people with disabilities, and people declaring disabilities, and those of varying sexual orientation, within the NHS Estates & Facilities workforce. Finishing her address on ‘the fourth challenge’ — around pay, she said: “Having heard you loud and clear from the beginning, we’ve been doing a lot of work around pay, for example submitting written evidence to the Pay Review Body for the first time ever — which we are really hoping will have a positive outcome.”

The NHSE speaker said some of the hardest staff to retain when it came to competitive pay levels were those in chef and cleaning operative roles. She added: “Another area where we have really extensive pay disparity between the NHS and the private sector is in our engineering roles, so we’re focusing on these three role types to begin with. We’ll be formally putting our evidence to the Pay Review Body in December.” Here, Fiona Daly concluded her presentation, and Nigel Keery thanked her, before introducing the session’s third speaker, Tina Johne, of Siemens AG Healthcare.

She began: “Perhaps I can share some insight into how a technology company is responding to these workforce challenges, and give you a little inspiration.” Tina Johne said healthcare was ‘at the centre of a perfect storm’. She elaborated: “We’ve already heard about the ageing healthcare engineering workforce, but a similar trend applies with patients. On reaching 60, people begin creating more pressure on the healthcare system — and one can only imagine — looking at the figures, what impact the ageing demographic will have on future healthcare provision. Nor is there any obvious plan on how we address this. For instance, where will we get all the healthcare workers we need to provide care to these individuals?”

She continued: “Sustainability is something near and dear to both Siemens and the wider healthcare sector, which generates nearly 5% of global CO2 emissions. Alongside workforce challenges and providing care to more patients, there is considerable pressure on the healthcare sector to help achieve our Net Zero targets.”

Tina Johne said there was widespread hope that growing digitalisation would help achieve this goal — both workforce-wise and when it came to sustainability. “Siemens serves the healthcare sector from several different angles — one key one being ‘smart infrastructure’. — the area I’m representing here today,” she told delegates. “Siemens Healthineers, meanwhile, delivers medical equipment for diagnosis and therapy support, while Siemens Financial Services and Advanta offer consulting and financial services to the sector. Siemens Healthineers alone employs 70,000, while on the Siemens AG side — of which smart infrastructure, SFS, and Advanta are part, the business employs 320,000 staff globally.”

Serving healthcare ‘on various levels’

Tina Johne said this ‘very large organisation’ serves and supports healthcare provision on various levels — including clinical and hospital operation, and building technology — ‘helping healthcare providers digitise their operations, and consequently become more productive and achieve the required sustainability goals’. She said: “The ageing population and workforce are impacting us across the business, like everybody else. Given the need to digitise our operations to overcome some of these obstacles and address demand for greater sustainability, there is considerable pressure to equip the workforce globally with greater ‘green skills’.”

Growing digitisation in healthcare would, she believed, require significant reskilling and upskilling of the workforce, but this must not mean solely relying on the ‘more digitally savvy’ younger generation. Regardless of employees’ age, it was important that all felt comfortable utilising new digital tools — meaning ‘quite a disruption’ to how we work today. She said: “When you digitise, you change how you work; some of your existing tasks disappear, but you also take on new ones. Everybody’s work will change, and we need to ensure we accompany colleagues on this journey.”

Within Siemens, there was currently considerable thought on how such a ‘disruptive’ change could be best be managed and implemented, which has seen the business develop ‘four strategic pillars’ to help achieve this.

Tina Johne elaborated: “For one — as a technology company, we want to really drive value for our customers. To do this we must understand what skills we will need in the future, given that the environment our customers and markets operate in are changing so fundamentally. Innovation is dear to our heart — so we are also looking to the new generation for their ideas, and to integrate them into our innovation processes. We need to give young potential employees some insight into how a technology company operates, and what types of career it offers. This needs to start early.”

The speaker explained that Siemens already regularly engages with schools to foster interest in STEM careers. She said: “Much of attracting and retaining the best people will be about empowering staff, which means determining what kind of leadership we need. For a technology company to succeed, continuous innovation is key. We believe though, that this will increasingly require giving employees the freedom to be creative and develop their own ideas, which relies on a very trusting working environment — precisely the type of leadership cultivated within Siemens.”

A ‘growth mindset’

Touching next on what she dubbed ‘a growth mindset’, Tina Johne said: “I think that we all agree that adapting to digitalisation will require continuous learning. Irrespective of your age, it’s a lifelong effort. The question is how you facilitate this in a global company? So, I brought some concrete examples — one bring the ‘Future of work’ framework developed within our own organisation by our HR community. A sub-segment of this is our NextWork approach — looking at the current market trends, where the technology is going, where businesses are going, and anticipating what type of future job profiles we’ll need. Our goal is to go out there, try to build those profiles over time, and attract the talent that brings the profiles and skills into the organisation.”

Tina Johne said the business was also looking to ‘engage with talent’ by offering purposeful jobs. She said: “Many young people — and it doesn’t just apply to the young — want to have a clear purpose in what they do. We spend so many hours at work — and if we can see a positive purpose, we are that much more motivated.”

In 2023 Siemens launched a major campaign around its ‘mission’ as a technology company to help customers with their sustainability goals. It was now pushing this goal into the talent pipelines ‘at every age level’. The speaker said: “This work has afforded us some clear recognition on LinkedIn, and, globally, has helped us recruit around 40,000 new staff last year, plus some 6000 new apprentices.”

In the UK there was a ‘specific consortium’ that a number of UK Siemens staff had joined — the North West Tech Talent consortium, where a number of companies had come together to attract, retain, and build young talent from professionals in this region, help them feel comfortable in their work environment, and build a more diverse workforce.

More ‘mobile’ and flexible working

Tina Johne continued: “We are all aware of the growth in more ‘mobile’ and flexible working — which, again, requires trustful leadership. You have to trust people to find their best way of working. So within Siemens globally, we’re allowing 2-3 ‘mobile’ working days per week — depending on the role.”

Focusing on ‘reskilling and upskilling’, the Siemens speaker said there was ‘quite a broad array of activities and platforms’ via which the business’s staff can can engage and foster their lifelong learning. She explained: “My Learning World (described as a ‘cloud-first and mobile-first solution that enables organisations to focus on training their talent of today, to be ready for tomorrow’) is a very individualised learning space every employee has access to — through which they can identify their specific and personalised learning patterns.” In the UK, the business has set a goal of 50 learning hours per year for full-time employees, of which 25 should ideally be digital — during which the goal is to for them to identify and engage with particular topics they are interested in. Tina Johne said: “This digital learning is currently strongly focused on Generative AI, sustainability, and cybersecurity.”

She continued: “As I’ve said, we’re all on this transition to digitalisation together, and all need to build the associated expertise in our workforce, and align our staff’s skills and capabilities with the available technology. You can see an example here,” she said — pointing to a slide showing Siemens’ own Building (digital) Lifecycle Twin, which had been developed to help support sustainability initiatives in the building space.

Nearing the end of the presentation, Tina Johne asked rhetorically: “So, what are the key learnings for your organisation from all of this? Key is to ‘anticipate and lead’. Don’t be hesitant about considering the key skillsets your team will need to address some of the future challenges — and think about how you can build the required expertise. Equally, re-define expertise. ‘Digital’ and ‘green’ will be key for us all, so put a strong emphasis on them. I’d also recommend empowering staff for impact in a trustful environment. We heard earlier from Katherine how important it is that employees feel both motivated and comfortable within their working environment — which is also key to retaining talent. Equally, ensure you invest in continuous learning. ‘Never stop learning’ is the mantra I think we all need to embrace.”

This concluded the Siemens’ speaker’s presentation, 
and an interesting session on key workforce challenges.