NHS Digital continues to lead the digital revolution with recruitment

NHS Digital is the national data and technology partner for the NHS and social care system. They are at the forefront of the drive to transform the health and care system using digital technology. NHS Digital design, build, deploy and operate national products, platforms and data services for patients, clinicians, those who manage the system and clinical researchers in the NHS, academia and the life sciences sector.

As the digitisation agenda for the health and care system accelerates over the coming months and years, so does the need for strong new talent. NHS Digital wanted to strengthen their recruitment and talent platform with additional technical capabilities that would enable them to engage with candidates to join them and be a part of making a difference. They chose Eploy as their Cloud recruitment technology partner, through the G-Cloud Digital Marketplace.

NHS Digital had several objectives to achieve in transforming its recruitment capabilities:

• To source and implement a highly effective and streamlined applicant tracking system that was the best fit for purpose using a commercially aware procurement process, seeking stakeholder engagement and business user forums for consultation and collaboration.
• To improve candidate engagement and the recruitment journey with an intuitive user experience in line with their digital principles, stringent data protection and access control. This included anonymising the candidate shortlisting process and creating an accessible approach to recruitment with a fully accessible platform using assistive technologies to meet level AA of the Web Accessibility Guidelines.
• It was critical to NHS Digital to gain full control over recruitment processes with integrated reporting and analytical capabilities to present and report data from Eploy, using both out of the box and custom capabilities.

Lydia Whiteoak, Technical Services Project Manager at NHS Digital, said, “We embrace change with a rigorous focus on excellence and believe in improving lives through data and technology. This project has been no different and has gone through a robust testing process and user experience testing to deliver an improved approach to recruitment.”

Kimberley Parkes, Recruitment Business Partner at NHS Digital, added, “The past year has shown how important data and technology is to the NHS, from setting up the Shielded Patient List to running the systems that have enabled millions of people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We need to be able to recruit the best people possible for our roles at NHS Digital, and our new recruitment system ensures we can do that fairly, quickly and easily. We will continue to work with Eploy to develop and enhance how their system can support us in an ever-changing environment.”

Chris Bogh, CTO at Eploy commented, “NHS Digital had a clear brief of what they wanted to achieve to get the best from Eploy aligned to their business needs. The Eploy Implementation Methodology is both scalable and flexible, making it ideal for complex and simple implementations of any size. Eploy gives customers the freedom to configure new processes and adapt existing workflows through our smart customer configuration tools like Eploy Discover and Flows. NHS Digital now has a system built, configured, and personalised to their way of working. We are very much looking forward to our continued partnership together.”