Head of Human Resources, HR Function, (Higher Duties) Office of RDOP, HSE South West

Please note this campaign is confined to staff currently employed in a senior management role in the Office of the Regional Director of People HSE South West.

Title of Post:

Head of Human Resources HR Function Office of the Regional Director of People HSE South West Health Region (Higher Duties)

Details of Service:

Human Resources (HR) provides strategic and operational support direction advice and interventions to all areas of the health service recognising that all staff throughout the system are key to the delivery of excellent people capability and ultimately patient and service user outcomes.

The implementation of the Health Services People Strategy 2019 - 2024 supports the development of current and future health and social care leaders. Our shared purpose is to deliver safer better healthcare and staff and public value and collectively support the significant reform and change agenda in Ireland particularly in light of the objectives of Slaintecare.

Slintecare signals a new direction for the delivery of health and social care services in Ireland with the potential to create a far more sustainable equitable cost-effective system and one that delivers better value for patients and service users. At its core the strategy focuses on establishing programmes of work to move to a community-led model providing local populations with access to a comprehensive range of services at every stage of their lives. This will enable our healthcare system to provide care closer to home for patients and service users to be more responsive to needs and deliver better outcomes with a strong focus on prevention and population health improvement. To achieve this new ways of working including change culture will be required in the strive to deliver enhanced patient-centered and integrated care.

HR is committed to building capacity for change and addressing the people and culture priorities that impact the organisation on an integrated basis

Health Regions Implementation

The Health Regions Implementation involves the internal reorganisation of the HSE into six operational regions with responsibility for the planning and coordinated delivery of health and social care services within their respective defined geographies. While the full implementation will be a multi-year journey the Health Region approach was stood up in March 2024 and will continue to progress throughout 2024 and 2025. These new arrangements aim to improve the health services ability to deliver timely integrated care to patients and service users care that is planned and funded in line with their needs at regional and local level.

The primary objective of this reform is to help deliver universal and integrated care for people providing them with timely access to the care they need when they need it. This will help to ensure that the needs of people are prioritised by promoting a culture that seeks to continuously improve the access to and quality of health and social care services. This will be achieved by refining processes and minimising structural barriers to integrated care thereby increasing productivity and the consistency effectiveness and efficiency of services.

The changes in healthcare governance arrangements are being designed to make our services easier to navigate for people and to facilitate more integrated care stronger accountability and greater transparency across the sector. This in turn aims to foster change and innovation at a local level to deliver high-quality services to populations based on their needs making our service a better place to work for our staff.

The move to a regionalised approach represents a major shift in the approach to the planning funding and delivery of health and social care line with international best practice the new arrangements will support a population-based approach to the planning and resourcing of the geographic delivery of services to improve health outcomes people in Ireland.

National HR/People Function

The National HR function will maintain responsibility for engaging with the Department of Health DCEDIY and Department of Finance in relation to Government policy. It will work will Health Regions to determine future workforce needs and develop a resourcing strategy to support Health Regions to address those needs.

National HR will develop national standards policies and frameworks to provide guidance on best practice and ensure consistency across the HSE workforce. To drive administrative efficiencies it will provide a suite of transactional HR services including National Recruitment Personnel Administration Garda Vetting Agency Management and Pensions.

National HR will be responsible for strategic and operational organisational management including the design maintenance and management of the HR organisational structure (supported by SAP) to ensure services in the revised HSE Centre and Health Regions are supported It will support regional leaders including IHA Leads and managers by conducting people analytics for the HSE giving Health Regions the information they need to better manage and develop their workforces and staff.

National HR will manage matters relating to national employee and industrial relations collaborating closely with DOH and Unions to maintain partnerships through open engagement and dialogue.

National HR will develop leadership content and training on behalf of the entire system working with the Regional Directors of People to drive HR excellence across the HSE by planning building and supporting a health and social care workforce that can deliver high-quality services and care for service users and patients.

Finally National HR will manage the deployment of NiSRP across the HSE system providing nationally defined guidance and support to the Health Regions.

Regional HR/People Function

Regional HR will be empowered to have overall responsibility for their regional workforce (in line with nationally agreed standards frameworks and policies). Regional and National HR will work closely together to co-develop solutions to resourcing needs ensuring focus on priority areas to maximise impact on services having regard for the HSEs Recruitment Operating Model (August 2022). Regional HR will be responsible for the recruitment of the regional workforce and will engage with National HR to provide input to proposed changes in the organisation structure. Regional HR will support IHA Managers in developing their regional workforce by delivering nationally designed training and development initiatives. If the needs of the regional workforce are not met by the nationally designed training modules Health Regions will have the flexibility to develop and deliver their own region-specific content.

Regional employee and industrial relations will be managed locally supported by nationally defined policies procedures guides and standards.

With the support of National HR and the national NiSRP Programme Health Regions will be responsible forensuring that SAP is operational (including s38 organisations) in line with national guidance and processes.

Regional HR will be responsible for ensuring local compliance with all applicable people-related legislation regulations rules and ethical standards by adhering to nationally developed procedures and internal controls to prevent and detect anomalies driving HR excellence regionally.

Finally Regional HR will support IHA Managers on the production oversight and delivery of performance metrics and work with them to improve workforce performance.

Informal Enquiries:

Deborah Harrington Regional Director of People HSE South West

Email: People HSE Southwest -