Academy gives Avoca room to grow

Award-winning training helps to solve skill shortage

UK provider of information-management systems for the health-care sector has set up its own training academy to help it to overcome the shortage of qualied staff to run the systems.

Avoca Systems Ltd created the largest ever national online analysis service for the National Health Service and has been chosen to provide solutions for what is believed to be the worlds largest civil IT project, the NHS National Program for IT. However, staff with the depth and breadth of specic knowledge needed to run the systems are hard to nd because of years of under-investment by the NHS in informatics, which covers information processing and the engineering of information systems. Avocas Health Informatics Training Academy, set up in 2005, takes trainees with the right aptitude but no prior experience of the industry. They are trained at a fast pace to take on leading roles in health-care informatics projects for the NHS. Typically these trainees are university graduates, but the academy now appeals to a much wider audience. The academy has grown annually. Three trainees graduated from its year-long course in 2005. In November 2007 Avoca signed a contract with a major new client to deliver 21 trainees from the academy who could take leading roles in health-informatics projects. The measure of success in this case is the deployment of 21 suitably skilled people on to our customers projects, said Avoca director Shaun Regan. We achieved this number on a staggered-deployment schedule as agreed with the customer. The quality of the training undertaken was measured by customer feedback and the progression of the project deliverables to agreed deadlines and standards. This contract was delivered in 2008 with excellent feedback for the staff concerned and resulted in the highest sales turnover in the history of the company. The demand for this provision of highly skilled people continued to grow throughout 2009 and 2010 and we have ambitious business-growth plans to meet this demand. We have already doubled the size of our company and expanded our training provision. Staff feedback demonstrates that trainees can analyze their journey through the academy and are amazed how quickly they can become competent working with complex data and apply their learning to work streams directly beneting NHS patient data quality. Customer feedback tells us that trainees understanding of the complex patient journey through the plethora of NHS organizations and the ability to translate this into practical solutions are where real value is added.

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VOL. 19 NO. 1 2011, pp. 20-22, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0967-0734

DOI 10.1108/09670731111101561

Design and development

The academy was designed and developed from scratch by Avocas operations manager, Julie Waters. The program achieves an integrated approach to performance and learning by ensuring that workshops and exercises are focused on the real-life work issues. Delivery takes place through a mixture of workshops delivered by in-house experts, tailored personal development, one-to-one coaching, practical exercises, shadowing of highly skilled personnel and self-driven learning. Workshops have a maximum 6:1 trainee/trainer ratio, which ensures the correct degree of coaching and tailored learning is achieved. Four successive training modules build the trainees skills and experience at a pace that is right for them. At the start of each module, trainees are set performance objectives, which are discussed with their coach/line manager and mutually agreed. Objectives are based on the strengths and development needs of the trainee, which are identied through performance across the workshops, exercises, management reviews and continual assessment. Objectives are also quality checked to ensure that they are conducive to short and long-term business objectives, said Shaun Regan. Training is a mixture of technical skills, NHS-specic data knowledge and interpersonal skills. Julie Waters and two other trainers work closely to monitor trainee progress informally and through a formal performance-management process. Each module of the scheme lasts around three months and module end coincides with each performance review.

The progress of trainees

Trainees have been able to demonstrate their progress through discussion and submission of supporting evidence at performance reviews, Shaun Regan explained. This has enabled the business to have greater transparency of trainee progress and to match project assignments to particular trainee strengths so we can more closely align project deployments with specic customer requirements. The rst three trainees to enter the academy now play a signicant role in running it. Other academy graduates have undertaken leading roles in major health-informatics projects at Royal Free, St Georges and St Marys Hospital, London, with much success. Increased revenue generated by the academy in 2008 resulted in total business revenue being 15 percent higher than forecast. The total cost of the training in 2009 was 79,230, while the income it generated was 1.97 million 79 percent of Avocas total business revenue. Trainee feedback has been valuable in directing ongoing continuous improvement, particularly in Avocas bid for national accreditation of its training package. In March 2009 the company gained approval from the national awarding body, NCFE, as an accredited center to deliver training. Course material is expected to be accredited to the qualications and credit framework. Avoca anticipates that its customized advanced diploma will be accredited at level 4. The academy also encourages continued professional development after completion of the training and module progression is designed to facilitate development of necessary skills to sustain this as self-driven learning.

Customer feedback tells us that trainees understanding of the complex patient journey through the plethora of NHS organizations and the ability to translate this into practical solutions are where real value is added.

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 Initially identied as a solution to meet our internal recruitment needs, the academy has grown vastly to allow us to provide a capacity service of specialist skills for our customers, which is now the largest proportion of our business.

Plans for the future

The initial concept of the training academy has grown beyond our highest expectations, said Shaun Regan. Initially identied as a solution to meet our internal recruitment needs, it has grown vastly to allow us to provide a capacity service of specialist skills for our customers, which is now the largest proportion of our business. For the future, we intend to develop this into an additional revenue stream for the external sale of training to our partner organizations. The unique strength of our training lies in its contextualization into our everyday work and industry sector, delivering immediate benets and underpinning our emphasis on quality, linking organization culture to our training style and service delivery. Our work directly affects the lives of people in our community. Taking our reputation for quality extremely seriously, we fully appreciate the effect our attention to detail can have on the lives of patients whose data we take care of. This belief is at the heart of our training provision. The academy won a small-employer prize in the latest National Training Awards.

Keywords: Skills shortages, Information systems, National Health Service

Note
David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest Editor, wrote this article.

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