GP Surgeries

INTRODUCTION

A medium sized General Practice surgery serving a community of 20,000 patients had no dedicated Human Resources Function and the responsibility for managing HR related tasks fell to the Practice Manager who was juggling their HR responsibilities alongside their primary role. This arrangement meant that the Practice Manager felt nervous about some HR and Management issues and wanted to ensure they were compliant despite their limited HR expertise.

CHALLENGE

The primary challenge facing the GP surgery was that it was a busy GP Practice with numerous different demands on their attention and when management and HR matters arose there was limited confidence that the right steps were being followed.

Time consuming advice - Managing employee matters was previously dealt with by contacting a dedicated HR consultant who would provide advice on an hourly basis. This meant that obtaining that advice was reliant on one individual’s availability and they weren’t always able to respond when required.

Difficulty maintaining compliance - Without a background in HR the Practice Manager was worried that the actions they would take would not be compliant with up-to-date employment legislation.

Lack of structured approach - The Practice Manager felt that when management issues were addressed, they weren’t always taking structured and consistent steps to resolve them and that could lead to inconsistency.

SOLUTION

The GP Surgery adopted the CleverGoose tool to give them in the moment advice and confidence in how they handle management and HR matters. They signed up for the monthly platform cost but also opted to take the service which includes an hour each month of a HR professionals time should they need it.

Key features they found beneficial were:

1. In the moment availability of advice; the Practice Manager is able to deal with nearly all of their issues themselves and directly rather than having to wait for a call back from a busy HR consultant.
2. Step by step guidance which allows the Practice manager to complete one action at a time to deal with the management issue
3. Availability of template letters and policies means they do not have to be constantly updating and worrying about whether their documents are compliant, and they know which letter to use and the moment they need to send it
4. Risk profiles allow the Practice Manager to understand what could be likely to crop up as they are managing something based on extensive experience from HR professionals. They do not need to worry about their lack of direct HR experience because the experience is built in.

IMPLEMENTATION

Getting the surgery up and running onto CleverGoose was simple, they paid for their licence by credit card and that automatically got them set up. The CleverGoose team were available for any questions as they onboarded, but they got cracking with a performance management situation the very first day.

Since then, there has been an occasion where a particularly difficult situation arose where the Practice Manager wanted to navigate some changes in the practice. They used CleverGoose for the simple planning of their approach and then walked through their thinking with the CleverGoose team who were able to provide a sounding board to them as they navigated the changes.

They even love it enough to have given us this amazing feedback;