The Opportunity
Why Should You Apply?
In this post you will enjoy a significant challenge of influencing, shaping and developing how heath and care related services are delivered to more than 400,000 people and across the whole health care system throughout Ayrshire.
You will inherit well established and developed teams across human resources, training and development and organisation development functions. As a strategic leader, you will need to ensure these functions become firmly embedded and integral parts of the organisation to ensure swift responses and support can be provided to each clinical and service area across the health economy. You will therefore need to have a very clear grasp of both internal service priorities and change requirements. Alongside this, you will need to develop strong relationships with NHS Scotland and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that you can anticipate and interpret how the organisation and individual service lines need to respond. In short, this position requires the clear ability to spot opportunities and how these impact on the needs of the organisation. Naturally, you will therefore need to demonstrate obvious strategic thinking and influencing skills, together with the ability to turn plans into deliverable actions on the ground.
You can also see that not only will this role be responsible for providing the professional OD & HR leadership and advice to the board and senior management team; you will also be expected to contribute to the wider decision making of the organisation. In the immediate future, the organisation faces new challenges, which presents the opportunity to redesign service provision to improve efficiency and care standards. NHS Ayrshire has a sound reputation in clinical and financial performance levels already, though has clear ambitions to become a truly world class provider of health services. You have the opportunity to make a visible impact on this.
Another key and important dimension to this role is to work with the executive and non-executive board to enhance and invigorate the corporate leadership of the organisation. As a leader, this will involve a range of activities from informal coaching to designing and delivering a structured approach to continued professional and personal development. Linked to this is of course the establishment of recruitment, retention and development strategies across the wider workforce, to ensure the best people are attracted to and developed by the organisation. In so doing, NHS Ayrshire has to become a clear employer of choice.
The region has a great deal to offer as a location. With close proximity to Glasgow and easy connection to rail, motorway and airport networks, the centres of Ayr, Irvine and Kilmarnock are easily accessible and without the congestion experienced in other parts of the United Kingdom! There are a huge range of tourist attractions and recreational facilities available along with some of Scotland’s most picturesque landscapes. There are also excellent primary, secondary and tertiary education facilities that make re-location a very attractive proposition.
The board is very interested in receiving applications from candidates able to demonstrate the requisite skills. The board has a strong desire to make a step change in organisational performance and so prior working experience of the health care sector is not an essential criteria. Given the nature and position within the organisation, you will need to demonstrate proven experience at either Deputy/Director level or equivalent in a large and complex business.
As a candidate therefore, you may be seeking to consolidate your experience and be attracted by the nature of this role, or, be seeking to take on a broader role within a larger organisation. The nature of this role also lends itself perhaps to candidates who may have chosen to move into a consulting role over recent times and be seeking a return to a permanent position. Skills developed whilst consulting at a strategic level could be extremely interesting.
