Vacancy surveys

Review

On 7 March 2023, we announced our intention to review the vacancy data for medical and dental consultants, nursing and midwifery, and allied health professions. You can read more about the review in events impacting data and reporting.

Data source

NES collects vacancies by survey for medical and dental consultants, nursing and midwifery, and allied health professions job families. Data are provided by NHS Boards for the number of vacant posts at a census (31 March, 30 June, 30 September, 31 December).

There is a survey specific to each staff group, and the survey items may vary slightly depending on the target staff group.

A separate survey is used to collect data on both employment and vacancies for the NHS Scotland pharmacy workforce.

The primary source for NHS Boards when completing the vacancy survey is Job Train, the national recruitment system for NHS Scotland.

Medical and dental consultants

Vacancy data are collected from each NHS Board for the number of vacant medical and dental consultant posts by the medical specialty and vacancy length (less than 6 months and 6 months or more). The list of medical specialties used to collect vacancy data are identical to those published for staff in post in the Variables Guide.

Data are collected by whole time equivalent and headcount.

Nursing and midwifery

Vacancy data are collected from each NHS Board for the number of vacant nursing and midwifery posts by the sub job family, agenda for change band, location of service delivery and vacancy length (less than 3 months, 3 - 6 months, and 6 months or more).

Data in the survey are collected for a reduced number of sub job families compared with the sub job families reported in the staff in post data. The following staff in post sub job families are collected and reported under a grouping of “other” in the vacancy survey: bank, blood transfusion service, community children’s nursing, sexual and reproductive health nursing, neonatal, NHS 24, specialist nursing, practice nursing, staff nursery, training and administration, and treatment room nursing. A full mapping is available in the Variables Guide.

Data are provided by whole time equivalent.

Allied health professionals

Vacancy data are collected from each NHS Board for the number of vacant posts for staff working in the allied health profession (AHP) staff group by the following variables: sub job family, agenda for change band group (e.g. support or qualified) and vacancy length (less than 3 months, 3 months or more and unknown).

The list of AHP sub job families used to collect vacancy data are identical to those published for staff in post (Variables Guide). However, vacant posts for multi-skilled and arts therapy are only collected for support staff (AfC Band 1-4). Similarly, vacant posts for paramedics are only collected for qualified staff (AfC Band 5-9).

Data are provided by whole time equivalent.

Methods

The definition of a vacancy in the NHS Scotland Workforce Statistics is

“a post which has been cleared for advert after being through the redeployment process (internal or external advert) and remains a vacancy until an individual starts in the post”

This definition is similar to the definition used in the ONS Vacancy Survey, “How many job vacancies a business has, for which they are actively seeking recruits from outside the organisation.”

We do not differentiate between seeking recruits from inside or outside the organisation (NHS) as the NHS is the only public sector healthcare delivering organisation in Scotland, restricting it to this would not be an accurate measure of the current demand for NHS staff.

These can be thought of ‘vacancies actively being recruited’.

Vacancy surveys are completed, signed off and returned to NES by each NHS Board. These data are the quality assured and loaded into the Data Warehouse.

The Establishment is: the number (or WTE) of staff employed plus the number (or WTE) of vacant posts.

The Vacancy rate is: The number of vacancies divided by the establishment and then multiplied by 100.

Definition limitations

A definition that is sometimes used, for example in the NHS England vacancy publication, is the difference between funded establishment, that is the total staff that the NHS budget allows for staff, and the number of staff employed. These are sometime described as ‘notional vacancies’.

Most of the vacancies that form the difference between current number of employed staff, will be in a process which will result in actively recruited. Some maybe being filled using a locum or temporary member of staff.

Some of these ‘notional vacancies’ may never transition in to actively recruited as budgets are amended.

What data are published?

Medical and dental consultants, nursing and midwifery and allied health professions are reported quarterly in the NHS Scotland Workforce official statistics publication.

The key information released in each publication is:

• Number of posts vacant at the census by NHS Board and length of vacancy.
• Vacancy rate at the census date by NHS Board.

Further breakdowns are available depending on the data collected, for example vacancies by specialty for medical and dental consultants.

Data quality

We continue to work with suppliers to improve the way we collect vacancy data, with the aim to extract this directly from Job Train, the NHS Scotland recruitment system. Currently NHS Boards extract data from Job Train, apply local knowledge of their data to complete NES vacancy surveys according to the definition and then submit.

Whilst investigating the use of Job Train we became aware of some minor differences in the way NHS Boards interpret the data. The largest variation between NHS Boards is in determining the start and end date of a vacancy. For this reason we do not recommend comparing vacancy data by length between NHS Boards.

We continue to review Job Train as a source of vacancy data with data suppliers and will provide an update to all stakeholders on our progress each quarter.

We review each survey received by assessing data completeness and accuracy compared with previous checks. We work closely with our data suppliers to understand any large changes in trends and whether any changes in their internal processes may affect the data a range of checks and quality assurance, checking for large changes and querying.

Occasionally, small errors are found by NHS Boards when running the following quarter’s data and revisions are required to the data. These are marked on the quarter where that update is made.

Quality assurance

A number of steps are in place to ensure that these data are reported accurately.

1. Excel survey templates are provided to NHS Boards two weeks before the census date to complete for the relevant staff group, along with standard guidance for completing each survey. Surveys are completed by staff employed directly within the relevant service and/or by staff in Workforce/HR directorates. For the Pharmacy staff group, the data are signed off by the Director of Pharmacy each Board.
   
   
2. There is some variation between and within Boards in how the surveys are completed. Some of the variation is accounted for in terms of the target staff groups, and some in terms of the Boards' own views on their most reliable source data. For example, CAMHS and Psychology surveys are completed by staff working directly in the service. For the surveys on consultants, nursing and midwifery and allied health professions, some Boards use reports from the national recruitment system (Job Train) to compile their returns, others will source data from staff working directly in the relevant services.
   
   
3. Once these data have been returned to NES, each survey is checked for any completion errors or missing information, and compared with previous figures for evidence of unusual trends/outliers and anything that may require further explanation for publication users. When required, NES will clarify any potential issues directly with the data providers.
   
   
4. These data are then used to refresh our PowerBI publication report. The report is then checked to ensure the values are shown accurately and any additional points of clarity are noted in notes pages or interactive tooltips.
   
   

The above quality assurance processes result in trustworthy information being released as part of the NHSScotland Workforce publication and reduce the likelihood of any issues arising after publication. In the event that we are made of any major data inaccuracies we will update any outputs in line with our revision protocol. 

Limitations

These surveys collect aggregate data which means that it is not possible to track the progression of vacant posts over time, nor link posts to vacancies.

There are some gaps in the data collected. The surveys do not cover all NHS staff groups and grades / bands.

For the staff groups that are in scope, the survey items do not include all possible breakdowns. For example, only a subset of nursing and midwifery sub job families are captured.

CAMHS and Psychology vacancy surveys occasionally have incomplete submissions, so the number of vacant posts may be under-reported. In these instances any large data quality concerns are noted.

ISD (now PHS) refined the vacancy definition in 2014 in collaboration with NHS Boards and the Scottish Government. Users of the data should be aware of the following:

• Adding the staff in post and total vacancies together will likely over-count the establishment. For example, if a member of staff is working their notice period, but their post is being advertised, then the post would be counted twice (one staff in post plus one vacancy).
  
  
• Posts are counted as vacant until someone starts. This means that some vacant posts reported may have already been filled (but the person hasn't started yet).