NHS jobs website to save £24m recruitment costs
- Posted:
- 09:38 16 Sep 2003
The Department of Health expects to save at least
£24m over the next five years after investing £6m in a
project to develop a website to recruit NHS staff online.
The Oracle-based system will eliminate the need for expensive
recruitment advertising, cut administration costs and reduce the
need for temporary staff, NHS officials said.
Recruitment is a major cost for the NHS which, with more than one
million employees, is the UK's largest employer and one of the
largest public sector organisations in the world.
The one-stop job site, which will be up and running in early 2004,
will allow jobseekers to download online application forms and
receive daily e-mail job alerts.
Murray Bywater, managing director of health IT analyst at Silicon
Bridge Research, said the potential benefits of the service were
enormous, but warned that the NHS could miss out on local
intelligence from conventional recruitment agencies.
"There is no doubt the application of web technology offers the
potential for huge cost savings," he said. "It will be interesting
to see how quickly it replaces conventional recruitment
methods."
The new site will build on the existing NHS careers service and
link to local websites. It will eventually link up with the
electronic staff record project, which aims to replace all existing
payroll and human resources systems with a single system.
The contract has been awarded to IT consultancy Methods Application
in partnership with recruitment service Jobsite UK.
What's on the site
- Online job applications
- Downloadable candidate information packs
- Candidates will be able to link to local NHS job sites
- A job search with multiple criteria
- Employers will be able to view and manage online applications
- The site will carry information on electronic recruitment activity.
