BARNET AND CHASE FARM HOSPITALS NHS TRUST

The purpose of the report is to provide the Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Steering Committee with an overview of the leaver's data collected routinely by the Trust for the purpose of monitoring.

In order to achieve this, the leaver's data in the report has been accessed from the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) system to analyse the employees who left the Trust over the 24 month period from 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011. These have been checked against the 9 protected characteristics under the Equality Act of 2010. The 9 protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and marriage/civil partnerships. The report will also look at pay band, staff group, length of service and reasons for leaving. The total number of leavers for this period is 1005 and this sample is robust enough for statistical analysis.

Bank staff, students and Junior Doctors have been excluded form this report. By doing this the data and analysis will be more meaningful. After these exclusions, employees left the Trust at an average rate of 42 per month during 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011.

The Trust monitors leavers on an annual basis and captures outstanding equality information on the nine protected characteristics in line with the Equality Delivery System.

Where appropriate, conclusions are drawn throughout the report and associated actions are referred to in the final paragraph “Conclusion and Next Steps”.

The Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Steering Committee is asked to note the leavers data for the period 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011 for discussion and note the action plan recommended to address gaps identified.

This report demonstrates compliance with the public sector duty (PSED) by 31st January 2012, and it covers the end of staff's employment with the Trust to ensure trends are monitored and to ensure outcomes of their employment are positive.

As with previous leaver's reports, the percentage of staff leaving is highest amongst the oldest and youngest groups of staff (i.e. under 30s and over 60s) and is shown in table 3.1 and graph 3.2 below. The data for these age bands falls outside of the statistically expected values i.e. determining whether it is statistically significant or not. The vast majority of the over 60s who left the Trust were retiring, and the under 30s resigned for `other' reasons, or promotion. Over 45% of the under 29 year olds in the Trust left during the 24 months this report covers. Whilst this seems high, it is expected that this will happen due to career progression and promotion.

Due to changes in Age legislation in 2010 very large numbers of staff aged over 65 left the Trust during the period this report covers, giving a percentage of that age group who left as over 340%.

It is possible to have the percentage over 100 as this report has been run over a 2 year period in which more staff moved from the 60-64 years category into the over 65s. Furthermore, the percentages are based against the number of staff inpost at the end of the period which has been depleted due to the number of leavers. In future reports we would expect to see are more normal turnover rate within this age group.

The age groups with the lowest leaving rate are those between 40 and 60 years old. The statistical tests, seen in table 3.1 below, show that we would expect to see more leavers from these ages than the actual numbers who did leave. This means the workforce is quite stable for these age groups.

Though the areas identified as `high' in the statistical significance analysis, there are justifiable reasons:

Graph 3.2 : Percentage of Age Group who left the Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

As at the 31^st October 2011, disability information was recorded for 59% of the trust staff, which is an improvement of 14% on the same time last year. However, there are 1665 staff records without the disability status recorded.

From the data shown in table 4.1 below we can see that 19.70% of the staff who declared themselves disabled left the Trust within the 12 month period. This falls within the statistically expected range.

The percentages of those who left all the disability status groups are shown pictorially in Graph 4.2, also below.

The staff who for whom we have no disability information or have not chosen to declare whether they have a disability left in greater numbers than was statistically expected. They accounted for 468 of the leavers and this represented 28.11% of the `not declared/undefined' staff. However, as there are still a large number of staff records with no disability status declared we have to be mindful that the data could change and though there are areas identified below as statistically significant, until disability information is at least 80% theses need to be treated with caution.

Graph 4.2 : Percentage of Disability group who left Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

There is currently no data is available within the Trust's workforce information system (ESR) for this protected characteristic. This is not a question asked on new starter's application forms, and there is no field on ESR to record the data. The question of gender reassignment was asked on the recent Equality and Diversity questionnaire sent to all substantive staff. As of yet none of the returned forms has declared this, but we are still receiving completed forms in small numbers. It is also not within the remit of the Trust to change the fields in ESR as it is a national system. This issue will be escalated via appropriate leads to both McKesson and NHS Jobs.

The Trust is un-able to give analysis of those leavers that are pregnant as this data is not held in any central database. Therefore the following data is for those who left during their maternity leave. However, the HRAC is the first port of call for all staff who are pregnant and the review of the current database will enable the Trust to update the system to include this protected characteristic.

During the monitored period of Nov 09 to Oct 11, eleven members of Trust staff resigned whilst they were on maternity leave.

The leavers were from a range of staff groups, namely a Consultant, four admin staff, four qualified nurses, and two support workers with length of service between 7 months and over 11 years.

When looking at each of the ethnic groups, there appears to be variation with the percentage of each group who left the Trust, ranging from 17.17% with `Other Ethnic background' to 46.15% for `White & Asian' staff.

For this reason, a confidence interval test has been performed on the data to show us where the leavers fell outside of the statistically expected values. The results from this test are shown in Table 7.1 below, and this shows that there is only one ethnic background which have leavers in lower numbers than we would expect, namely `Other Ethnicity'. Due to the lack of any further detailed information no adverse inference can be drawn.

The expected number of leavers is the number of leavers each ethnic group should expect to have based on the overall percentage over leavers i.e.: it should be 24.88% of each ethnic group leaving.

When the ethnic groups are clustered together (depicted in Graph 7.2), it shows that almost identical proportion of BME staff left compared to White staff. The variation in this grouped category is too small to warrant further investigation.

Graph 7.2 : % of Ethnic group (summarised) who left the Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

When leavers were analysed by their religious belief, we can see that over 30% of Buddhists, and `Other religious belief' staff left the trust over the 24 month period. To eliminate any bias due to small staff numbers in these groups, statistical testing was undertaken and the results presented in table 8.1. They show that of these 2 groups, none of the staff are leaving in higher numbers than we would expect. The tests also showed that only staff of whose religious belief is undisclosed or undefined have left in greater numbers than we would anticipate.

However, it is worth mentioning that we have nearly 1800 staff with no religious belief recorded, and therefore results could change if these numbers were known. We hope this will be addressed by the equality and diversity questionnaire which is still being received into the HR department.

Table 8.1 : Religious Belief of Leavers - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

Of the 1005 staff who left the Trust between 1^st November 2009 and 31^st October 2011, 79.4% were female and 20.6% were male. This ratio is almost identical to that of the previous reported period.

From table 9.1 below, the statistical tests confirm that numbers and proportion of leavers are well within the expected ranges and therefore the data shows no cause for concern.

Analysis of the sexual orientation of leavers shows that lower numbers of heterosexual staff left the Trust than would be expected, shown in table 10.1 below.

However, high numbers of staff with `not defined/undisclosed' sexual orientation left during the monitored period. There has been an increase in the completeness of this data as a result of the equality questionnaire earlier this year; however there are still data gaps and greater completeness of these would help identify any issues with regard to these leavers.

Table 10.1 : Sexual Orientation of Leavers - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

Marital status was recorded for 95% of leavers during the 24 month monitored period. From the analysis in table 11.1 below, it shows that single staff and widowed staff left in greater numbers than we would have expected. 29% of all single staff and 49% of widowed left in the 24 months; however it is worth noting that the majority of the widowed staff who left were retiring.

In a change from previous leaver's reports, the length of service analysis shows that the highest group of leavers are those in those who have more than 5 years service. However, there is still a high percentage of new staff leaving before they complete a year's service. This change is probably due to the increased number of retirements seen over the past year, as most of the retirements in the Trust fall into this length of service group.

The above notwithstanding, there is still a demonstrated correlation between length of service and leavers, and shown in the table 12.1 and graph 12.2 below. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD, 2010) stated that the average cost of recruitment is £4,333 per new employee, therefore as many employees leave before they complete one year of service the Trust has not had a chance to recover it's recruitment costs from these employees.

Table 12.1: Length of Service of Leavers - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

Graph 12.2: % of Length of Service inpost who left the Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

As with the previous report on leavers, 29% of the leavers are from Band 5, whilst Band 5 staff are the largest group in the Trust (at 21% of all staff inpost), this number is still higher than we would expect. 41% of the leavers in this group have less than two years service with the Trust.

40% of the Career Grade doctor's inpost left during the 24 month monitored period, the majority of these staff left for `other/unknown' reasons. It would be worth monitoring this against future reports to see if there is a trend amongst this group of staff as they are Trust doctors post and are hard to recruit into.

Table 13.1 below shows the leavers by pay band in detail, and graph 13.2 shows the percentage of each pay band that left the Trust. At first glance, it appears that there is an issue with Band 8d, Band 9 and Directors/Executives; however, as the numbers of staff in these bands is small, just one person leaving can create a large percentage in terms of leavers.

Graph 13.2: % of Pay Band who left the Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

For the purposes of this report, all Junior Doctors on rotation have been excluded from the leavers numbers and the staff inpost numbers, therefore the Medical and Dental staff group only shows Consultants and career grade Doctors.

As with the previous report, there appears to be one staff group with leaving numbers of significance, this is the `Estates and Ancillary' with 46.15% of the group leaving (see Graph 14.2). As the staff numbers in this area are low and four leavers makes a bigger impact. No exit interviews have been completed for this group of staff, but looking at the reasons given for leaving on their termination forms, we can see that 3 of the 7 staff retired, and 4 resigned (2 of these with less than 1 year's service)

The Additional Clinical Services had the next highest proportion of their staff group leaving, with 29.32% of all these staff going in the two year period. The range of staff is spread throughout the pay bands, with `Other' noted as their reason for leaving.

Graph 14.2 : % of Staff Group who left the Trust - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

Of the 1005 leavers being analysed for this report, 500 (49.8%) resigned from the Trust for `Other/Not Known' reasons, which is the top category from previous reports as well.

When the leaving reasons are summarised into five categories (table 15.1), we can see that resignations account for 68% of the leavers which is what we would expect. There have also been a large number of retirements, 223 in total, which accounted for over 22% of the leavers.

The majority of the exit interviews during the 24 month period said the main reason they were leaving was due to personal circumstances, which ties in with the reasons given on the termination form - `other/not known'. Retirement was the next most stated reason on the exit interview forms, and again this was the second most stated reason on the termination forms. The third most stated reason was promotion and this was the third greatest reason for leaving.

Due to the low numbers of exit interviews and the sample collated, it would not be statistically prudent to use these to draw a conclusion.

Table 15.1 : Summary of Reasons for Leaving - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

Graph 15.2 : Leaving Reason Summary Graph - 1^st November 2009 to 31^st October 2011

The Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Steering Committee is asked to note the following conclusions and next steps: