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Operational Improvement Delivery

The core of the role is working directly in services to identify and deliver operational improvements. The postholder will:

•        Take direct ownership of a defined portfolio of improvement areas — primarily workforce efficiency, elective productivity and operational flow

•        Embed within care groups to understand what is driving cost pressures and inefficiency — not just from data, but from direct engagement with the people running services

•        Build credible, practical improvement plans with named owners and realistic timelines — grounded in what the service can actually deliver, not just theoretical benchmarks

•        Apply NHS benchmarking tools (GIRFT, Model Health System) to identify where performance lags peers and make the case for change with clinical and operational leaders

•        Challenge variation across care groups — why one area performs significantly differently from another, and what needs to change

•        Track improvement through to confirmed financial delivery — not just activity completed, but benefit landing in the position

Workforce and Pay Efficiency

Workforce costs are the Trust's largest area of expenditure and the primary lever for financial improvement. The postholder will:

•        Work with care group directors to understand the root causes of pay overspend — agency dependency, establishment overshoot, rostering inefficiency, vacancy management

•        Drive practical improvements in e-rostering compliance: understanding why roster publication is late, why internal fill rates are low in certain areas, and working with ward and divisional management to address this

•        Support development of the Trust's internal bank as an alternative to agency — working on the supply and process barriers that make bank less accessible than it should be

•        Work with the Chief People Officer on annual leave management — preventing the late-year surge that forces expensive agency cover

•        Support the medical job plan review — working with the Medical Director to identify where clinical time allocation does not reflect current service needs

Elective Productivity and Outpatient Efficiency

Improving how the Trust manages elective and outpatient activity is central to both financial improvement and waiting list recovery. The postholder will:

•        Work with the COO and care group directors to improve theatre utilisation — addressing late starts, under-booked sessions, cancelled lists and inefficient session scheduling

•        Lead improvement work on length of stay in priority specialties — using benchmarking data to identify outliers and working with clinical teams to implement discharge improvement

•        Support outpatient redesign — including patient-initiated follow-up, advice and guidance, and new-to-follow-up ratio reduction — working with clinical leads to redesign pathways practically

•        Work on same-day emergency care pathway improvement — helping services meet national standards and reduce unnecessary overnight admissions

•        Identify and address the causes of high DNA rates in priority specialties — working with operational teams on reminder processes, overbooking protocols and scheduling practices

Drugs Expenditure

The Trust has a significant drugs overspend, particularly in Networked Care specialties. The postholder will:

•        Support the Chief Pharmacist in understanding what is driving drugs expenditure — the split between demand-driven cost and controllable prescribing practice

•        Facilitate engagement between pharmacy, clinical leads and operational teams to translate agreed changes into confirmed savings

•        Help maintain momentum on formulary compliance and therapeutic substitution — ensuring that clinical agreements translate into sustained changes in practice

Stakeholder Engagement

Improvement at this scale cannot be driven from the centre. The postholder will:

•        Build effective working relationships with care group directors, general managers, clinical leads and consultants — earning credibility through practical knowledge and genuine helpfulness

•        Be visible in clinical and operational areas — not a presence only in meetings and on email

•        Communicate clearly and honestly with senior leaders — able to have a difficult conversation about underperformance constructively and without avoiding the point

•        Help clinical teams see improvement as a quality issue as well as a financial one — avoidable bed days, preventable complications and inefficient pathways matter to patients as well as to the bottom line

Reporting and Progress

The postholder will support the Financial Improvement Director in maintaining a clear, honest picture of progress across the programme:

•        Maintain a practical view of delivery status across their portfolio — knowing where things are on track and where they are not, before it appears in a formal report

•        Surface problems and risks early — with a proposed mitigation, not just an update

•        Contribute operational insight to programme reporting — providing the context behind the numbers

•        Work with finance colleagues to ensure that operational improvements are landing in the financial position, not just in activity data