Building a Sustainable Healthcare Workforce Strategy: A Unified Approach to Staffing

Summary

As waiting lists lengthen and care delivery grows more complex, traditional, siloed staffing approaches are becoming increasingly ineffective. Piecemeal recruitment—separate processes for locums, permanent hires, and support teams—leads to inefficiencies, compliance hurdles, and unpredictable costs.

By adopting a holistic healthcare workforce strategy that treats temporary and permanent roles as part of one integrated ecosystem—spanning clinical wards, IT, and administration—NHS trusts can achieve agility, consistency, and long-term staffing resilience.

In this article, we explore:

• How integrated workforce models can anticipate peaks and bridge temp-to-perm pathways to stabilise staffing and control costs.
• Why sourcing all roles (from nursing and allied health to IT and administration) through a single partner streamlines operations, including onboarding and compliance.
• How ongoing collaboration, including performance reviews and service analysis, keeps the workforce resilient and future-ready.

­

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Workforce Challenge in NHS Trusts
3. Bridging Temporary and Permanent Talent
4. ID Medical’s Sustainable Workforce Solutions
5. In Action: Holistic Partnerships with ID Medical
6. Building Sustainable Workforce Strategies for the Future

­

Introduction

­

Imagine a scenario where there is capacity to always anticipate and successfully manage staffing challenges, rather than having to inefficiently react to them—where a clinician finishing a shift hands over seamlessly to a colleague from the very same talent pool, and the vital non-clinical teams—IT support, administration—are woven into the same operational rhythm.

That level of cohesion requires more than ad hoc hiring; it demands a sustainable healthcare workforce strategy that aligns temporary and permanent roles.

At ID Medical, we turn that vision into reality by pairing data-driven demand forecasting with a unified talent network—spanning in-house staff banks, locum frameworks, overseas recruitment and specialist non-clinical pools—backed by our Clarity workforce platform, managed vendor services, RPO and built-in compliance checks.

Together with clear temp-to-perm pathways, flexible engagement models and real-time analytics dashboards, this end-to-end solution ensures trusts can predict, deploy and optimise every role seamlessly.

­

The Workforce Challenge in NHS Trusts

There is a perfect storm facing NHS trusts today. An ageing population, evolving care standards and the push to recover elective backlogs have combined to create peaks of demand that stretch every department to its limits.

At the same time, trusts are often juggling multiple recruitment streams—each with its own processes, costs and compliance checks—making it difficult to deploy the right people, in the right roles, at the right time.

Often, the result is a patchwork resourcing model that struggles to keep pace with patient needs, and places undue strain on both clinical and support teams.

­

­

To recover, maintain, and thrive, a cohesive. robust strategy is needed – one that aligns temporary and permanent pipelines and brings forward-thinking, data-driven support into the fold.

­

Synthesising Temporary and Permanent Healthcare Requirements

Before staffing levels can be can stabilised, fluid connections between short-term and long-term talent pools must be created.

By treating temporary and permanent roles not as separate silos but as parts of a single continuum, organisations can unlock flexibility, improve retention, and reduce costly gaps in care delivery.

1. Flexible workforce planning, including data-driven forecasting to predict and prepare for demand surges, optimising staff allocation ahead of peak periods.
2. Pathways from temp to perm, to facilitate contracted locum roles with clear routes into permanent positions.
3. Cost-efficient resource management, including combining neutral vendor services and RPO to centralise agency bookings and permanent hires, reducing duplication and margins.

By weaving such elements together, trusts can move from reactive hiring to proactive talent management—securing the right people, in the right roles, at the right time, every time.

­

­

ID Medical’s Sustainable Workforce Solutions

To meet the evolving needs of NHS trusts, ID Medical delivers an end-to-end suite of services that unifies every stage of workforce planning, sourcing, and management—across clinical and non-clinical roles, temporary and permanent contracts, and technology integration.

Our sustainable healthcare solutions are designed to reduce costs, improve fill rates, and give trusts a single partner they can rely on for complete staffing resilience:

1. Staffing Solutions

• Full-time, part-time, temporary-to-perm and permanent recruitment — all managed harmoniously.
• Specialist divisions for nursing, medical, allied health professions, and non-clinical disciplines.

2. Managed Services & Hybrid Vendor Models

• Master, Neutral, and Hybrid Vendor Services to centralise supplier management and drive cost savings with real-time data insights.
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) to scale permanent recruitment campaigns.

3. Workforce Technology

• Clarity-powered platform offering end-to-end visibility: requisitions, compliance, timesheets, and spend analytics.
• Seamless integration with NHS systems and frameworks.

This integrated approach empowers NHS trusts to anticipate demand, optimise resources, and deliver consistent, high-quality care—no matter how complex the challenge.

­

­

In Action: Holistic Partnerships with ID Medical

Trusts throughout the UK partner with ID Medical to move from reactive staffing to proactive, integrated workforce management.

­

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust

Faced with rapid growth and rising agency costs, Frimley implemented a fully managed, vendor-neutral service with ID Medical. Over 20 months, the Trust achieved:

• £9.9 million in agency rate savings
• £780,000 avoided off-framework fees
• £655,000 from improved workforce planning
• Debtor days cut from 200+ to 30, freeing up administrative capacity

“700k in savings delivered in a month has  demonstrated how a more focused and planned approach to requests results in more meaningful supply, by providing better quality workers at a more advantageous price point.We are really seeing the benefits of this agreement.”

—Faye Ward, Associate Director of Workforce Collaborations for South East Temporary Staffing Programme

[Read the full Frimley case study]

­

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Struggling with fill-rates and high off-framework usage, Gloucestershire rolled out our multi-disciplinary managed service. In three months, they:

• Increased nursing fill-rates to 85%+, eliminating off-framework supply
• Reduced agency spend per unit by 25% without compromising quality
• Achieved 95% direct engagement throughput for locum doctors
• Filled 276+ permanent nurse roles from overseas, cutting agency reliance by 35% and forecasting £15.5 million savings

[Read the full Gloucestershire case study]

­

Medway Community Healthcare

To unify complex shift patterns and policies across community sites, Medway adopted our 24/7 managed service desk and cloud-based workforce software. Within three months, they saw:

• A 15% uplift in overall fill-rates (to 85%+)
• A 70% drop in short-notice requests
• Streamlined compliance, finance workflows, and faster time-to-hire
• Greater visibility with bespoke reporting and e-timesheets

[Read the full Medway case study]

­

These case studies demonstrate how ID Medical’s unified, end-to-end approach—spanning temporary, permanent, clinical, and non-clinical roles—delivers measurable savings, improved fill-rates, and lasting workforce resilience.

­

­

Building Sustainable Workforce Strategies for the Future

Creating a truly sustainable workforce isn’t about ticking off a one-time project—it’s about nurturing a dynamic, long-term collaboration that evolves alongside the NHS landscape.

ID Medical’s end-to-end approach delivers:

• Continuous partnership: Our dedicated teams work side by side with trust leadership teams to revisit priorities, refine forecasts and adapt resource models as service demands shift.
• Scalable solutions: From small-scale pilots of emerging roles to large-scale managed services, we flex capacity up or down—ensuring you only ever pay for what you need.
• Holistic insights: Integrated analytics inform everything from bank staff utilisation to long-term recruitment pipelines, helping you stay ahead of tomorrow’s challenges.

By embedding these capabilities into your everyday operations, ID Medical becomes an extension of your workforce planning function—providing the agility, transparency and resilience you need to deliver exceptional patient care today and build stronger services for years to come.

­

Ready to transform your healthcare workforce strategy?

Contact our team today to discover how we can help build a more resilient, future-proof workforce for your Trust.

Call: +44 (0) 1908 324752

Email: clientsolutions@id-medical.com

Visit: https://www.id-medical.com/healthcare-organisations/

­

­

Would you like to receive a free bespoke report showing forecasted savings for your Trust? Simply request one and we can arrange this for you. An example of the report is here.