Workforce plans should be developed alongside future service models and commissioning goals, because service design, financial planning and staffing are inseparable. The NHS spends nearly two-thirds of its operating budget on staff. Training the people you have and recruiting the people you need, while managing shortages, hiring pressures and retention, is the central management task in health and care.
The long-term outlook matters too: over half of today's health workforce is expected to still be working in the service in 2032. Developing them is not optional.
How we help
- Workforce planning: mapping the current workforce, modelling the one your service model needs, and costing the gap
- New roles: introducing and embedding roles such as care navigators, community health and wellbeing workers, pharmacists in practice, physician associates and advanced practitioners, with the supervision and governance to make them stick
- Career pathways: Level 2 to Level 7 routes that let people enter at the right point and progress, so the right skills are in the right roles at the right time
- Training needs analysis: for a practice, a Primary Care Network, a federation or a whole borough
- Apprenticeships: structured, employer-led programmes that let staff work towards a recognised qualification, delivered by our own Ofsted-inspected provision
What apprenticeships can do for an organisation
Apprenticeships are employer-led because organisations know best which skills and knowledge their services need. Used well, they:
- retrain and upskill existing staff to meet service demand;
- build career pathways, so the right people with the right skills are in the right roles at the right time;
- develop leadership capability across the organisation;
- strengthen recruitment and create a pipeline of future talent, particularly from the local community.
Because we are an apprenticeship training provider as well as a consultancy, we can design the pathway and then deliver it. Our programmes for employers are described at cmapprenticeships.co.uk.