United Surrey Talent Strategy — Phase 1 evaluation

Building a resilient, skilled and collaborative workforce in Surrey to meet the future demands of the health and care sectors.

July 2025

Our vision for the United Surrey Talent Strategy

To unite Surrey talent across health, care and voluntary, community and social enterprise, which is enabled, mobile and skilled to serve others during fulfilled careers.

Our levers for change

We have six levers for change that are vital to achieve our vision.

  1. Modernise and integrate recruitment.
  2. Build new capabilities
  3. Develop fulfilling careers
  4. Establish a Surrey Offer
  5. Enable the United Surrey team
  6. Build our expertise

Our progress so far...

Better outcomes for patients, improved staff retention, excellent training opportunities and notable reductions in temporary staffing numbers are just four of the many benefits of Surrey Heartlands’ United Surrey Talent Strategy.

The Strategy launched in 2022 to modernise recruitment, develop fulfilling carers and create a more integrated, diverse, and sustainable workforce across Surrey’s health, social care, and voluntary sectors.

The first phase has been evaluated and revealed some remarkable results.

Improved education and training

Over 1,700 training opportunities were delivered to health and care staff, including leadership programmes, frailty awareness, and digital literacy initiatives.

The development of a Surrey Heartlands system-wide events platform brought together all learning and development offers, which made it easy for staff to see what was available.

One of the bespoke programmes created was Professional Skills in Practice, designed to meet locally identified workforce learning needs such as professionalism, resilience, and inclusion.

The workshops have been so useful in developing my knowledge around time management, project management, diversity, effective communication and wellbeing.

 

It’s been an amazing session, truly empowering.

Reduction in reliance on temporary staffing

A more stable workforce has been created, saving more than £26.4 million in temporary staffing costs, while improving retention, morale and productivity.

This has been achieved by removing trust-to-trust competition, bringing transparency to pay, and improving processes to reduce usage of the contingent workforce.

I learned strategies that will help me overcome challenges in the future, what it means to be resilient and how I can ensure I have the tools to do so.

Enhanced career pathways

Work undertaken to enhance career pathway opportunities for staff included:

  • Creating some structured development programmes offering clear career progression and increased workforce mobility.
  • Creating Apprenticeships for all roles.
  • New roles such as Community Pharmacist and Trainee Nursing Associates (TNA) in the community were created.

The TNA role helps bridge the gap between Healthcare Assistants and Registered Nurses, contributing to core nursing work and freeing up Registered Nurses to focus on more complex clinical care. So far, 34 people have started the TNA programme, with seven more joining this autumn.

  • 108 opportunities were created for people with learning disabilities and autism in both volunteer and paid roles, and some have been supported into management training.
  • 75 people joined the Surrey Accredited Care Certificate programme - designed for those new to social care roles in Surrey Heartlands to gain an accredited level two qualification. Many students then progressed to higher level courses or were promoted.

I have found this course to be highly valuable and informative and am eager to explore similar programmes in the future.

 

I recently completed the programme and was honoured to be awarded Top Achiever. This accomplishment has further encouraged me to enhance my knowledge and practical skills in providing high-quality care.

 

The positive feedback was such a morale booster. I felt with each lesson it was another piece of the puzzle added to my knowledge of health and social care. I noted that I have improved the way I execute tasks and understand how to be a better carer.

Improved retention and workforce stability

The strategy has contributed to a significant decrease in turnover rates across health and care sectors – 5% in health and 10% in care – and this is ensuring long-term workforce resilience.

This was achieved by cross-sector collaboration and more willingness from staff to collaborate across organisation boundaries.

More than 1,570 substantive vacancies were filled, using a range of recruitment tools. These included:

  • Partner organisations sharing cross sector recruitment opportunities.
  • Proactive candidate sourcing by using platforms like Indeed CV search and LinkedIn Recruiter to directly engage with potential applicants.
  • Holding community-based recruitment events as well working in partnership with the Department of Work and Pensions at local venues to meet local candidates.
  • Targeted advertising campaigns using bus stop and bus rear ads, social media, and local media to raise awareness of key vacancies.
  • Employer branding support which includes staff stories, videos and spotlight campaigns to help our partners stand out in a competitive market.

One of our goals has been to establish new career paths that allow for role flexibility. This helps us retain staff while building an inclusive workforce that values contributions from everyone.

 

One of the things at the heart of United Surrey Talent Strategy is strengthening that sense of shared purpose, seeing that bigger picture around what we’re doing in our different organisations to really understand how we can come together to make a tangible difference.

Collaborative working

Shared decision making across all health, care and VCSE partners was a key component for the strategy and accounted for the successful bid for funds for the strategy’s work. In addition, Surrey Heartlands is the only ICS to publish a joint workforce plan.

This work has demonstrated that, through the United Surrey Talent Strategy, Surrey Heartlands’ partners are building a resilient, skilled, and collaborative workforce that is ready to meet the future demands of Surrey’s health and care sectors.

Diversity and inclusion

The Strategy has promoted a more inclusive workforce by actively supporting neurodiverse and under-represented groups.

Impact on patient care and service delivery

Increased workforce stability has led to reduced Accident and Emergency visits by patients, fewer delays in transfers of care, and a proactive approach to care delivery.

This has been achieved by having a consistency of staff who are educated and trained, collaborative working, and also a focus on bringing care closer to home, so that care is delivered in the right place, at the right time, with the right staff.

For those interested in the full mixed-method evaluation please contact: