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Part of A Guide to the Staff Group, Job Role and Area of Work classifications used in ESR

Staff Group, Job Role and Area of Work definitions and relationships

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Current chapter – Staff Group, Job Role and Area of Work definitions and relationships


This section provides an introduction to the fields, their basic definition and structure and how they can be used effectively.  Further information and lists of values are available in the appendices


Staff Group

Staff Group is a defined grouping of related Job Roles:

Staff group Definition  Example job roles 

Additional Clinical Services

Staff directly supporting those in clinical roles.  Support to nursing, AHPs

Healthcare Scientists and other Scientific staff are included. Have significant patient contact as part of their role

Call operator, emergency care assistant, healthcare assistant nursery nurse 

Additional Professional Scientific and Technical 

Scientific staff, including registered Pharmacists, Psychologists, Social workers and other roles such as Technicians and Psychological Therapists 

Pharmacist, chaplain, social worker 

Administrative and Clerical

Non-clinical staff, including non-clinical managers, administration officers executive board members who do not have significant patient contact as part of their role 

Accountant, chief executive, clerical worker, receptionist

Allied Health Professionals

Registered clinical staff providing diagnostic, technical and therapeutic patient care, including dieticians, radiographers and physiotherapists. Includes qualified ambulance staff such as paramedics.  Dietician, physiotherapist, paramedic, dramatherapist 
Estates and Ancillary Non clinical support  Electrician housekeeper 
Healthcare Scientists  Registered qualified and other staff working in a defined healthcare scientist role, including clinical scientists and biomedical scientists and technicians working in healthcare science. Also includes public health scientific staff  Healthcare clinical scientist consultant clinical scientist healthcare science practitioner 
Medical and Dental  Registered doctors and dentists  Consultant, dental officer, foundation year 1, speciality doctor 
Nursing and Midwifery Registered Registered nurses and midwives  Staff nurse, midwife, community nurse, modern matron, nurse consultant 
Students  Directly employed staff undertaking formal education, including student nurses and midwives Student midwife, student dietician, student orthoptist 

 

Staff Group / Job Role appears as a segmented field when a position is created on ESR.  Users therefore need to ensure they select the correct Staff Group first.  By choosing the correct Staff Group for the position, the list of Job Roles available for selection is appropriately restricted.

Hints and tips
  • Medical and Dental Staff Group should only be used for Positions requiring registered medical or dental staff
  • Qualified (registered) Paramedic roles are found in the Allied Health Professionals Staff Group whereas Ambulance support roles such as Ambulance Care Assistant and Emergency Medical Dispatcher are found in Additional Clinical Services
  • The Student Staff Group should include only those directly employed and supernumerary students in Higher Education
  • Staff supporting those in clinical roles within Nursing and Midwifery Registered, Allied Health Professionals, Healthcare Scientists and Additional Professional Scientific and technical staff groups should be included in the Additional Clinical Services Staff Group.  This group should only be used for those support staff with patient contact forming a significant part of their role.
  • Clinical management or administration Job Roles, where a clinical registration is required to undertake the role, can be found within their related clinical Staff Group,  for example, Nurse Manager in Nursing and Midwifery Registered, Call Operator in Additional Clinical Services, Dietician Manager in Allied Health Professionals

Further information and the list of values can be found in the appendices


Job Role

Job Role is a generic description of the role associated with a position.  Each position record created on ESR has to be given a Job Role, chosen from the agreed national values. The list of values is intentionally quite generic to allow for consistent cross-organisation reporting and analysis. The list is not intended to capture every possible role within the health service. The list of values cannot be changed locally as it is a nationally defined standard. Position Titles cannot be used to achieve the desired outcome in reporting as they are too localised and would therefore be too inconsistent for reporting purposes.

It is very important that the correct Staff Group / Job Role is chosen when a Position is created as once it has been saved it cannot be locally amended. Staff Group / Job Role is a defining characteristic of a Position, and therefore, the database underpinning ESR is designed on the premise that any change must actually mean that a new Position is required. Users should therefore ensure that the documentation providing the authority to create new Positions includes the correct Staff Group / Job Role prior to entry upon ESR.

In circumstances where it is felt inappropriate to create a new Position, or where a significant number of historic errors need amending, then a solution has been put in place whereby the ESR NHS Central Team can run a process to amend incorrect Staff Group / Job Role values. The process has been enhanced and the interface team can now update a wide range of fields following a request from an authorised user to do so. More detail of the Mass Update process can be found through the ESR Hub

To find the relevant information, use the search function and search for Mass Updates.

Job Role names are only unique within their respective Staff Group.  It is possible to find the same Job Role value in more than one Staff Group; for example, Technician appears in four different Staff Groups.  It is this multiple use of Job Role that makes it so important that users identify the correct Staff Group before setting up the position on ESR.


Where the same Job Role value exists within different Staff Groups and it is not clear which is the appropriate choice, further information could be found within the recruitment paperwork such as the job description, advert, registration or qualifications required, or from the recruiting manager. The example of Technician is shown in the following table.


Staff group Job role Notes
Add professional scientific and technical  Technician 

Includes Pharmacy Technician, Dental Technician and Dispensing Optician.

Pharmacy technicians work as part of healthcare teams in hospital, primary care, community and GP practice.  May be involved in any part of the medicines supply chain or in the provision of medicines and healthcare advice.

Dispensing opticians give advice on vision care, and supply glasses and contact lenses to suit their customers needs.  Registered with General Optical Council (GOC).  Position Titles include Dispensing Optician, Specialist Dispensing Optician or Contact Lens Specialist. 
Additional Clinical Services Technician

Technicians providing support to Allied Health Professionals typically in Chiropody/Podiatry, Occupational Therapy or Orthoptics / Optics work on their own initiative undertaking a broad range of more complex interventions and problem-solving delegated tasks as prescribed by, and with appropriate supervision from, a registered practitioner.

Includes Ambulance Technicians who have completed the Institute of Healthcare and Development (IHCD) Ambulance Technician award (or equivalent) training.
Administrative and Clerical Technician ICT Helpdesk Technician, IT Technician, Technical Support Officer, Clinical Systems Support Officer, Network Engineer.
This Job Role does not include Estates and Facilities Technicians who must fulfil specific criteria and should be recorded with the Estates and Ancillary | Technician Job Role.
Estates and Ancillary

 
Technician Requires a Level 3 or above qualification in relevant subject area (engineering; plumbing; heating, ventilation and air conditioning) including BTEC, apprenticeship, A level, NVQ, Access diploma, T Level. Responsible for testing and maintaining equipment. May be called out to patient's home to test or repair vital medical devices.

 

Hints and tips
  • Job Roles associated with registered Ambulance Services staff are found in Allied Health Professionals Staff Group
  • There are a limited number of Job Roles included in the list of values; if an exact match cannot be found, the closest available match should be used
  • When selecting a closest available match, the position of the role within the hierarchy of the team should be considered.  For example, a person holding the job title Deputy Director should not be assigned to the Job Role of Director, but rather to Senior Manager

Further information and the list of values can be found in the appendices


Area of Work

Area of Work is the area, function or specialty where the work activity takes place.  As with Staff Group and Job Role, the list of values is intentionally generic, and cannot be changed locally, to allow for consistent reporting and analysis within and across organisations.

Staff Group, Job Role and Area of Work are complementary data items and when used together can enable more detailed, multi-disciplinary analysis of the NHS workforce composition.

Tertiary Area of Work (the most detailed group) is the only field visible to local ESR users.  Higher level groupings of Secondary and Primary Area of Work are automatically populated from this lower level and are available to Data Warehouse users for analysis at regional and national level.  Examples of Area of Work groupings are shown in the following table.

Primary  Secondary  Tertiary 
Medicine  General Medicine General Medicine
Medicine  General Medicine Acute Internal Medicine
Medicine  Paediatrics Paediatrics
Medicine Paediatrics Paediatric Community Child Health
Surgery Cardio-thoracic Surgery Cardio-thoracic Surgery
Surgery Cardio-thoracic Surgery Clinical Perfusion
Clinical Support Outpatients Outpatients
Clinical Support Chiropody/Podiatry Chiropody/Podiatry
Corporate Finance Payroll
Corporate Human Resources Human Resources
Corporate Human Resources Medical Staffing

 

In the full list every primary value is mirrored at the secondary level and every secondary value is mirrored at the tertiary level; this ensures that wherever a detailed area is not found in the list then a more generic value is available.


Area of Work is a key field for reporting purposes as it provides the only available generic field for comprehensive comparison of the area, function or specialty where the work activity takes place within and across organisations. Organisation structure (for example directorates, departments.) used internally are not available via the ESR Data Warehouse and therefore cannot be reported on regionally or nationally or used for local benchmarking as they vary between organisations.  It is therefore important that the Area of Work field is completed for accurate reporting outside of organisations.

Hints and tips
  • Medical and Dental staff should be given an Area of Work value relating to their specialty, for example Neurology, Pathology
  • Other clinical and non-clinical staff can also be assigned a medical specialty Area of Work value if they work in that area, function or specialty.  For example, a Cardiac Nurse should be assigned an Area of Work of Cardiology; a Receptionist working in Endoscopy should be assigned to Endoscopy.  Administration staff working directly in a medical area, such as a Medical Secretary, should also be given the relevant medical Area of Work
  • The Administration Area of Work value should be used only to identify administration staff, working within a central administration team that works across an organisation. Admin and clerical staff are identified as such by their Staff Group and Job Role, so the Area of Work is designed to capture the team or area they work in. for example a clerical worker in cardiology would have the Area of Work value of cardiology and not Administration

Further information and the list of values can be found in the appendices.


Examples of Staff Group, Job Role and Area of Work

By using values from the three complementary data items, a fuller picture of the workforce, within an area or specialty, can be created at local, regional or national level.  The example below highlights three roles within a Paediatrics team.

Staff group  Nursing and midwifery registered
job role staff nurse
area of work  paediatrics

 

Staff group  Medical and dental
job role Consultant
area of work Paediatrics

 

Staff group  Administrative and clerical
job role Receptionist
area of work  Paediatrics

This information could be used to identify the staff mix of the paediatric workforce or for analysis by Staff Group or Job Role across different teams.


Last edited: 4 July 2024 3:50 pm