Fixing the Foundations: Trust, Integration, and Workforce Systems

You've got to make sure the technology works for the business. Change management is key to any organization beyond the people function. But the minute people start not believing in the technology, it has a knock on effect on other things as well. You can't just bring in a piece of technology and expect everyone to automatically be able to use it. Understand what the benefits are for them as an end user as well. Hello and welcome to the Connexion, where RL Datakus Chief Customer Officer Liz Jones and Medical Director Darren Kilroy are joined by leaders and colleagues, colleagues from within the healthcare industry. In the connection, we explore how people and technology in healthcare can come together to create great experiences and support patient safety. We hope you enjoy listening. Welcome to the Connexion podcast. My name is Liz Jones and we're joined today by my colleague Darren Kilroy. Good to see you. And we're also joined by Kevin Freeley, who is Kevin. What's your actual job title at Ramsey? Yeah, it's a bit of a long one actually. It's head of Talent acquisition and people digital experience. Incredible. And that is with Ramsay Health? Yeah, that's correct. So Ramsey Healthcare uk. So we're a private healthcare organization. We have a national footprint across the UK with about 30 odd sites and we have around 7,000 colleagues in the organisation. So it's a big organization. It's a very big organisation. We're also part of a larger organization, so we've got a global footprint as well. So there's Ramsey in Australia, there's also Ramsay Sante which is in France and the Nordics and we've got Elysium, which is our company in the UK as well. Interesting. So your job title, if we can just initially hone in on that, because it is an interesting. It's long. You're right, it is long, yeah. It's almost the whole podcast. I know. I love a long look at all my team. They've all got very long job titles as well. It is actually a tradition in health and care, isn't it? It is one of our ambitions in this podcast. We haven't yet met. It is. Have someone with the title so long. That's the entire podcast. Yeah. Well, next time I come back I'll try my job title a little bit longer, if that works. But in all seriousness, your job title is interesting because it indicates this kind of view of the future, because you're talking about the technology and workforce experience and talent in one. So where did that start? Are you a talent person that became a tech Person or vice versa. Oh yeah, no, definitely a talent person that become a tech person and my age would show that as well, I think. But now my job title actually changed in my time at Ramsey as well. So I was originally just the head of talent acquisition but around 18 months ago we started looking at systems more and our people systems. So that's why we've changed my remit in terms of what I do. And ultimately, ultimately my role is about how we make sure our people technologies are enablers, I think rather than blockers for the organization. So I look after obviously a product, the Optima product through our daytechs also look after workday as our people technology. But I also support our other colleagues around our reward platforms and so forth as well. So I have quite a broad remit. My role isn't to control those, my role is to support them to make sure that we're again, as I said, not making life a little bit more difficult for the end users, which is our managers, but also our colleagues. Colleagues at sites as well. Yeah. So you are literally starting with the people first and then the products have to serve whatever your ambition is for your people experience. Correct. And we don't always get that right. And it needs to be clear on that. So we introduced Workday about four years ago just before I joined out there and we probably didn't introduce it as well as we would like to have and we've rode back quite a lot from that and we've taken some real key learnings from that. Whenever we do people initiatives is making sure that the end user understands what we're trying to achieve, get them involved quite early in the process as well. But I think we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. But to me that's what's key and that's. I think my role isn't. I wouldn't say we have a similar role out there in the industry elsewhere, but I do think it's a key role going forward. You've got to make sure the technology works for the business, not you're just bringing in technology for the sake of technologies. We've explored this so many times over the podcast years. Hunt really is so important about when you get that wrong. It really has an effect, doesn't it? Absolutely. Change management is key to any organization beyond the people function. But the minute people start not believing in the technology, it has a knock on effect on other things as well. And I referenced the workday piece and that was a real learning, I think for the organization that you can't just bring in a piece of technology and expect everyone to automatically be able to use it, understand what the benefits are for them as an end user as well. And again, I talk about managers, but I also talk about all of our colleagues. So that could be a staff nurse at one of our hospitals or one of our housekeepers at one of our hospitals as well. We need to make sure the technology works for them and they're supporting their usage of it as well. Yeah, yeah. Now we always go right back to the roots of these things. Okay, so we'll come back to all those things in different ways through the course of the conversation. So take us back to the little you and the person behind the enigma. Where did it all begin? Yeah, so let's be clear here. I had no background in healthcare, none of my parents or family are in healthcare. But I fell into healthcare recruitment. I did a degree at London University a long time ago, let's say that. And there was an option for a sandwich placement which I did at my local hospital at Whipped Cross Hospitals and I still live just around the corner. We had our second child in, so going back to my roots massively. So I started there on a 12 month placement, was supposed to move around all the departments. So started in the HR operations team for a month, then moved into the recruitment team and stayed in the recruitment teams. And this is in the days of paper application form. I can imagine this was a seriously admin heavy process, Very admin heavy process. You'd walk in at 8 o' clock in the morning and people were listening to the voicemails from the day before. And interestingly enough I very quickly. And this is maybe where, where I've fallen into this world and where I've developed my roles over the years is my bit was why, why do you do that? And is there a different way of doing that that's maybe a bit more efficient? And I think that's why they kept me in the department. So I was meant to go and through a fax machine. There was potentially still fax machines still around in certain organizations. I won't say which ones that I've worked for since. But yeah, very quickly and this is me as a 19, 20 year old kid at the time and I was asking the questions around, well why do we do that? And is there not potentially a different way? So they actually left me in there. I was meant to rotate around the other departments, they left me in there. And that probably then gave me that passion and passion, is that a word you can use around recruitment but I think it is a passion around process and recruitment. So that was my year's placement. They actually kept me on longer than I was meant to stay on as well. Which was good for the 20 year old Kevin in terms of his social life which was very good. Went back to uni and came out of uni and then ended up back in the NHS again. So worked for UCLH for about five years and work my way up in the same sort of. So recruitment started in recruitment onboarding and worked my way up to a project manager role around midwifery and pediatric recruitment and that was a really good learning curve for me. Very similar to the WIPS experience around it being quite a. And at the time that was the norm. I wouldn't say we were out of sync with the industry but very paper driven. People would send in their application forms. Time to recruit now is one of our key metrics and I would say that you're looking at months even before you get to interviews potentially. So that was a really good learning curve for me in that world and it's where I've stayed. I've stayed in healthcare recruitment and I think from those early roles I've always thought me and also the teams that I've ended up managing you might not be directly impacting on the patient but you have an indirect impact on the patient and it's probably what's kept me in healthcare industry for the last 20 odd years is that feeling that you are maybe making a difference. You know you could work in other industries and maybe not make such a difference. Packed up my bags and then went traveling for two years. So I lived in. Well I went around Americ and lived in Australia for 18 months as well. Obviously worked in recruitment when I was in Australia and that was the natural thing to do, not in healthcare. So that was great for me. Then came back to the UK and worked for staying in healthcare which was a really interesting one actually. Cause I worked for a company that was a pathology organization which was a joint venture between Serco at the time and guys in St. Thomas's and that was quite. To me that was when things became a little bit more corporate I'd say in terms of my roles. So I was the recruitment manager and it was very much a startup. So it was very new processes, new ways of working which was really interesting for me. It was probably what I liked the most and I was there for a couple of years and then the opportunity came to move to Nuffield Health which culturally was a really good fit for me as an individual at the time. Started there as a recruitment business partner on a maternity cover. I think it was seven years later was talent acquisition manager. So really liked my time there. I think it was a growing organization at the time and the good thing is my manager at the time was really invested around how we work. So it wasn't traditional recruitment, it wasn't stick to what we know and that's the way to do it. She was pushing the boundaries around how we use technology, how do we change our processes to. And again, it isn't the key bit and this is probably the learnings I've kept for myself is it's not just introducing technology, it's making sure there's a reason why you're introducing the technology and also getting people engaged really early in that process as well. So during my time at Nuffield we introduced Workday which keeps following me everywhere I go, but that's okay. So we introduced work then. I was a big part of that in terms of the recruitment and onboarding elements of that. Then I moved on just before COVID moved to HCA Healthcare. So I was there for three years and they just introduced Workday as well. So got that product and my role there is looking after both the onboarding recruitment teams. They're quite commercial organizations. So again that commerciality was very much driven into me there that maybe Nuffield did have but maybe didn't have as much as the guys at hca. So it was a really good time, interesting time because obviously Covid hit and everything was so different. Very, very different. Although recruitment was still there and it was the right. We were recruiting differently but again it got us thinking about technology. When you say you were recruiting differently was that in terms of you were technically recruiting differently or the needs had changed? Both, I would say the needs had changed. So it became a little bit more strategic in terms of workforce planning and in terms of the roles we need. I'd say there was a bit more focus on costs as well ultimately, but absolutely on technology. So we went from, I would say healthcare recruitment before pre Covid would have been very much face to face and very much driven by that cultural fit aside. And during the COVID years it was very much around utilizing teams and that was a big change that. Weirdly enough, that wasn't a big change for me and my team but it was a massive change for some of our managers. Huge. I mean people prior to that may never have been on video and had to get a point and now people Were being interviewed for jobs on interview and it's easy to forget it now, isn't it? Five, six years on. We did a lot of support for the candidate at the time as well about that journey for them because you're right, they'd have been so used to coming into the hospital, getting a feel for the hospital and we were moving it all onto online, even the induction. We used to run a corporate induction. I think it was every two weeks or every week. Yeah, I remember those. I was still in the NHS on the corporate induction. Virtual corporate induction is surreal. Yeah. So we moved to a virtual induction and again it's just the logistics have changed some of this stuff. Honestly, we've got so much to cover with you and I definitely want to talk about values based recruitment and how you've had so much experience across different types of organization. Be great to explore how you immerse yourselves in those organizations and then reflect that in recruitment before we do that on the tech side because obviously, you know, that's part of your remit now and always it's been there from the get go from what you said from when you were 19, really. But as we get into a world now where AI is going to do so much of the sifting and even if I think about the amount of times people have said to me, oh, how does it work now when AI is involved in. Yeah, works out whether or not I'm even worth going to stage one these days, like stage zero now is AI. How are you changing what you do as an organization with that? Let me be clear, I would say healthcare isn't always at the forefront of some of these changes. Right. It shouldn't necessarily be. Yeah, and I actually completely agree with that. So there's a lot of AI in screening in the process now and actually probably around 12, 18 months ago we were looking at that technology through our providers and actually it wasn't right. It didn't actually sit that right for me and me as an individual, but also for the exec at the time. So we didn't go with it. And let me be clear, we still haven't gone with it as well. So we still have screening done by the recruitment team. So we have with you realize you've literally got a load of people listening to this who are now applying for jobs because people are terrified of the screening thing, I think. Yeah, and I get it completely. And like even I was talking to someone last week and they were talking about their child going for a university placement and it's screening through Technology as well, which is interesting. And what he was telling me was his child's actually picked the university that doesn't do the screening through that and through the AI. So no, for us it was a moral and a value led decision about 18 months ago. Look, in 18 months, two years time we'll revisit, we'll keep an eye on it and see where that's going. But I think that maybe not being at the forefront of technology but interesting in technology is key. You should still understand what's happening around you. It doesn't mean you need to jump headfirst into action. And probably there's a few cases out there at the moment. I won't go into the detail, but to me that decision not to have jumped in is probably the wise one at the moment because I think there's going to be a lot of case law in the next couple of years around some of this stuff that I don't know where it's going to land, if I'm being honest. And you can see that across so many domains, can't you? Where AI is intruded into a process quite quickly. And as you say, healthcare is not that environment. We necessarily want to explore that right at the start. Because the consequences are so significant. No. And also I'm not sure our candidates want that either. So the individuals that are applying for a job, I actually think they like to speak to that human on the end of the ticklish teams now, but on the end of the phone now, don't get me wrong, I think there's elements where we potentially could put AI in to automate some of the process behind the scenes. But to me that isn't front facing right. That isn't the impact on again I mentioned earlier on the end user, you want to make sure the end user doesn't feel the AI almost taken over. Like we're always looking at our careers. Website, right. And chat boxes have been around for a long time, but they've definitely developed. The AI around them have definitely developed in the last couple of years. To me that's where you'd use AI in the right way because then you're surfacing the right information at the right time. We talk a lot about it in the industry around personalizing the journey for that individual. I can see that that would make sense to me. Screening candidates. Probably not. Probably not. For me it's interesting. Is it? Because AI even now can be beneficial in some respects about amalgamating lots of data and guiding you in certain ways. But yeah, it's all about the judgment, isn't it, of where you deploy it? And all of the big companies are looking at AI. Right. We went to workday in a few months ago. Even the guys at RS Data are talking about how we can embed AI. But the good news I think these companies are talking about is almost that back office. How are you going to AI and introduce it there? Exactly. I mean, for us, certainly it's the first frontier, is that there's so much automation that is genuine admin that doesn't change experience directly, but changes the time it takes to get something done. So I think, well, we'll talk about our partnership because that's important. Important part of the conversation is how do you align? So this point about how you immerse yourself in the organizations. And maybe not Ramsey at the moment, but how do you do that? How do you get out and get to know what makes an organization and the people tick? Yeah, yeah, I suppose that's your onboarding, right. Into any new organization. It's about understanding what's happening at a site level, making sure you get out to the sites, understanding their pain points as well. And that doesn't need to just be you, I don't think. I think that's your team as well. So I've got recruitment partners, I've got talent acquisition specialists in my team and part of their role is to feed into me because they know better than me what's happening on the shop floor or what's happening in some of our processes. But I think it's key for anyone new to go into an organization. And not just when you're new, actually, probably also, as you are in the organization, to make sure you've got those key touch points. You understand. The sentiment around the organization is also key. Not always to be guided by that sometimes as well, because. Because I would say sometimes the technology or the processes you introduce isn't always universally popular. We talk about our partnership where we're piloting, went live on Monday. So really in real time, we piloted clocking in and clocking out on the loop on loop. You're looping in. You're not clocking in. No. You're looping in. Correct. Which is. You're right. I'm calling it clocking in. And that won't be universally popular at the beginning, but it is about the change management on that and explaining to people why we're doing that. And also you talked about how do I maybe get embedded into your organization. We've got an ongoing project around workforce evolution. And the way we work it is we have a working group where there's people in the organization at certain levels that give us their voice about some of the stuff that we're planning to introduce. It then goes to a steering committee. So that's probably more senior people. So almost we're feeding in. This was the feedback, this is our suggestions on where we go. We loop it back into that original group and then we go up to a board to make the final decision. So we're really good. We've got a really good project manager who supports us. But it's about structure. Taking people with you. Absolutely. Because the lessons learned when I joined the organization was we did not take people with us. We introduced a new bit of tech and expected people to understand it from day one without the relevant training and understand what it could do for them as well. And I'll talk about our partnership in a moment. But that was a key bit about having two first class technologies in Workday and Optuma and not utilizing them both correctly at that moment in time when I joined and together. Right. So they've got to integrate. Yeah. Well, this is. I'll go into it now, but this is. Is when I joined, I joined to look at a recruitment team. Right. And sort out some of our issues around vacancy rates. We were a new team, new ways of working work. There was a new product for the team to use as well. And I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know if it's good or bad, but every six months, 12 months, they give me another area to look after. I think that's always been a sign of success sometimes. Sometimes. So the success or other people while leaving. I agree. Or other people just trying to pass stuff over to you. So about 18 months ago, I say it was passed over to me, but I probably saw it as an opportune moment because at that stage I was looking after agencies spend as well. And I could see that no matter what we did here on the agency and the permanent recruitment, it didn't really matter if we weren't rostering correctly, we weren't utilizing our workforce correctly. So I made a play. I'd call it that symptom, not cause. Absolutely. So I made a play for looking after our rostering platform. Again, do I regret that decision? No, of course not. But there's a lot to it though. We're pleased you made that decision too. And when I inherited it, it was looking into it and thinking you're right. So when Workday was introduced, there was a conversation with you guys around integrating Workday and Optuma got pushed away to the side because we had issues in introducing Workday. So it was just pushed to the side, I would say, at the time. And this is where I am quite frank about things. We'd been with you guys for about 10 years and a long relationship. And I would say within the business, there wasn't the competence in the product at that moment in time. And personally, I think that's both sides. It was a little bit of maybe we weren't driving you guys in terms of what we needed. And I think it was an element of you guys maybe thinking, order, okay, it's fine. But the relationship's going on. Right. Because probably what you needed 10 years ago was different to what you needed then next year. Absolutely. So, very quickly, and I'll tell this in terms of where we are at that moment in time, is I came in and the first conversation, I said, well, why don't we use Workday? Like, why are we using this Optima product? I wasn't a Rostrim background. I touched on it a little bit when I was in the nhs, but it wasn't my forte, it wasn't my bag. So my first bit was, well, let's just use Workday. Like, there's an element here. We then started a. We did go for a procurement exercise at that moment in time and very quickly worked. They and honestly came to the table and said, look, it's not right for us. This isn't where we see ourselves going in the next couple of years. So very quickly there was a. Let's put them to one side at the moment. Let's go out and find if our data is harder. Right. Provider for us. The good news is I'm sat here today, so it was very clear. But I think it's so healthy to go through those processes. Agree. Because you realign what you need. And also, maybe more importantly, we realigned what we were missing because there was. You mentioned, Luke, we hadn't gone live with Loop, so Lube was still sat there as a product that was live for a good few years in several organizations and we weren't utilizing it. So. And there was other products around. You know, we were kind of using Activity Manager. We had bank staff being paid retrospectively six weeks afterwards. Wow. Which go back to the experience. Absolutely. And nothing unique to you. I mean, that was just the way often that was playing out, wasn't it? In different areas. Correct. And there was no integration between Workday and Optimus so it was a really refreshing. And I think it's always talked to Johnny about this and is relationships. It's all about relationships. So you be honest around. So the way I work with all of our providers, this is Workday and other companies is I kind of tell you guys what I think we need and what the business is telling me we need. And it might not be the right thing, but it's still that open conversation about this is what I think we need. And then you guys playing back to us around, well, this is what we think you need and this is how we can support you to get to your goals. But also telling us about, about the, I'm going to say the cool technology that's coming down the line because actually we might want to be at the forefront of this technologies. So that to me is where in the last 18 months that's changed. Our relationships changed a lot. That's incredible. But I think there's something there for our listeners in terms of how you build that relationship thing is so important and at a point where the technology is evolving so quickly, you know, which I've been 30 years in technology now in health technology, and the rate of innovation is and is only set to get faster and therefore that collaboration, in terms of the roadmaps, you use the word goals and you sort of went over it quickly. But even instead of saying, you know, what we need is a widget on the whatsit with a XYZ to be able to say, actually, Johnny, Liz, R.L. daytex, what we need is this outcome and for us to share that outcome with you is the key. So how does that happen? You obviously went through a procurement process and you've got it with Workday, you've got that relationship with us. How does it happen? Is it the people? It's a bit of the people. I definitely think it's the people, because if you can, with your account manager or account lead, have those honest conversations about this is what we're trying to achieve. Is it something you guys can work with us on? Look, we started foundations, honestly, we started a workforce evolution project about 15, 18 months ago and we just had to get our foundations right. It wasn't, oh, my God, let's go and do the really interesting stuff over here. It was, let's get our basics right. Let's get that integration between Workday and Optima that's up and running. So joiners leave us Movers is up and running. Went live late last year. We're in. Which is a massive change in terms of us being able to have one source of truth. Does that make a difference to your team, to the people that report into you? How do they feel? My rostering team might think it's more work, but that's okay. That's a good thing because they're dealing with the. When the integration has a few glitches which naturally will have. It's actually an improvement for the HRAs which don't report into me. But previously it was dual entry. Right. We'd have a new starter in workday and they will manually have to put them into Optima and vice versa, take them off. So massive change for those individuals. We're going live in the next couple of months with sickness and annual leave between the two systems which will. That's the integration for me, that's sickness is massive. So I would say we don't utilize our HRA population enough and I think it will save us. I'll put. I won't put a percentage on it, but it will be a massive saving for those individuals because everything's done manually between the two systems. So again that's a. Due to go live I think around quarter calendar quarter two this year. Really confusing for me. We're an Australian company so we work July to June. It gets very confused in a rapid quarter. It's actually. This is. We're recording this in Febr and this is your summer presumably, even though we're in London. That's correct. Correct, correct. So we're due to go live with that. So the integration was massive and that was a real partnership between the organizers and workday as well. By the way, they very much came to the table on that as well, that they're really good partners and again, as I said, I've kind of followed workday around but to me that's a positive because then I understand the product and how the product can and work and they're always innovating as well, so. Which is always really interesting in seeing what's on their roadmap. But there was a foundations but it was very much around then. But what's coming next. So let's not just stand still there. So we're looking at the bank utilization literally. The project kicks off next week and meet with a couple of your guys next week on that. And we've also got in the roadmap loops obviously the pilots which I've mentioned previously. Yeah. So talk to me a bit about that. So you're going to get people like doing the looping in rather than the clocking in. What's the driver. What is the goal to do that ultimately for the end user is we can record their time correctly. So we have a lot of. Well, there's a bit of manual intervention in that process at the moment. But ultimately it's about the individual owning their time. Right. So there's no confusion. There's at the end of the month. No, I did these hours. No, I did these hours. It takes away that confusion. There's a benefit for the organization ultimately, is we're able to record and actually record in real time. So I haven't even touched on data. But data is key in the new world. So productivity and how we use our workforce is key. And data drives that, so that will give us that. But ultimately for the end user, it's all about recording your time correctly. So you don't need to drop a workday case into the payroll team at the end of the day month. And you talked about user experience. To me, that's an improvement is you can see it in the app and they're already using the app. I was just gonna, I was gonna pick up now I was gonna pick up on the data thing actually. So you just nicely segued into that. So there's such a lot of data we can yield now from every system that's been procured. Too much data. Yeah, so that was my exact point. So how do you rationalize, reconcile all that available data to something meaningful? I scratch my head a lot, but yes, we do try. Well, we've actually got databricks as well as a product. So we do feed data from both Optuma workday day. We've got a third party retinue that we work with on agency as well. And we feed all of our data into databricks and we create dashboards for managers and dashboards for me and the senior leadership team as well, which are presumably are evolutionary dashboards. You're always trying to improve them. No, absolutely. To me, there's a next evolution on the. And let me be clear, that's not my world, that's the digital team's world. But I think there's a next evolution on a dashboard as a dashboard. But actually, and this is where I think AI will definitely play into it, is how does the almost the AI tell you what you should be really looking at and focusing on? Because I do feel sometimes for our end users on these dashboards, which is probably your hospital directors or your heads of departments, is what am I looking at? And actually where's the trends coming to? And they might learn that over a period of time. But AI should be able to focus them in terms of what they need to look at. Yeah, because this is my lived experience of using data for board when I was on board in the nhs there's this huge amounts of info, there's loads of data. But until you train and school and support people who you assume or wrongly assume can make sense of it, it's so complicated. Unless you give them that support, it just passes you, it can pass you by. To index, you shouldn't make assumptions that that person understands. They might look at and say something that they feel like they understand it, but you shouldn't make assumptions that they truly understand what the end goal of what you're trying to achieve in a day. So we're on a bit of a journey on that as well at the moment. But we went live, that's a project that's been going live for the last 18 months or so. So it's an evolving project as well going forward. Absolutely. So in your day to day role now you've got all these inputs and you try to make sense of that. So how do you balance all off looking at dashboards and interpreting data? We're still communicating with all the people. How do you. That's your team. Right, let me be clear there. I think it's about having the right people around you as well. So I've got one person in my team who's become a bit of an expert on himself on Power bi, which is great and he's the one who then feeds into me what I need to see as well. So that's key. But I think communication is also important. So. And that's again, I go back to one of our learnings is you need to make sure people understand the changes that are coming. So clocking in is a perfect example example of it that went live this week, but we've been working on that for six months and speaking to the sites that are piloting, building up that rapport, going to those sites, getting them to understand the change that's coming downstream as well and regularly. Over this week we're already regularly, you know, there's been a few glitches as with any go live regularly, giving them updates in terms of where we are as well. So you've got to communicate out with the business, but that's communicating out with the sites, but also you've got to communicate app as well. Right. So we went live with the workforce evolution project 15 months, 18 months ago and we had to get the buy in from the exec. And that was key. We've got two key sponsors on that, my manager, the CPO and the Chief Operating officer. And they're key. You don't have their buy in. No matter how good the idea is, how good the return on investment at the end of the project will be. If you don't have their buy in early and throughout the project, it's doomed to fail, unfortunately. So it's been key to keep them updated. As talked about the board, we meet on a monthly basis and we give them the headlines, right? We give them what's working and, and what's where some of the glitches have been as well. So we are 18 months on from when you kind of did the reset in terms of your relationship with RLD and the way in which you're using the technology. And I think we've all got a sense that the relationship's working well. If we were to meet some of the people you've recruited or some of the people who work within the organization, what do you think their experience has been of what we've done together, you mean in my team, do you think? Well, outside of it, you know, ultimately this is about that person going on shift tonight or, you know, I think the end user ultimately has benefited over the last 18 months around loop. So I think Loop, when we were renegotiating the contract I was like, well, why aren't we live with Loop? That was one of my big questions. This seems like illogical that we're not using an app. People are using mobile phones, a small percentage that still potentially don't like to use a mobile app for work related tasks. But the majority of people are used to it and lots of people join us from other healthcare providers, from the nhs, so they'll be using these products elsewhere. So to me that's, that's. The end users have definitely improved their experience and once we move into using the bank element, our bank staff will massively gain from that in terms of being able to book on shifts. But definitely our end users have improved. From a Loop perspective. I talked about the weekly bank pay. That's a massive improvement for our bank staff and that wasn't possible. We literally had to. And this is why I talked about foundations. The first few months of the project was we need to take away what we've built in terms of the integration between workday and Optima and re repurpose it so we can do some of the good stuff later on. So that's been a massive change. Clocking in clocking out is going to impact them as well. And I would say the integration between Workday and Optimus massively helped that person who didn't get paid correctly. If there was a new star or the person who we incorrectly did their annual leave or we incorrectly did their sickness. And don't be wrong, like that wasn't happening on purpose. That was just admin errors between systems due to dual entry to the individual. It's huge. That's it. And it resonates as you're saying these things. I couldn't think of all the years I've been involved on the receiving end of some of those issues as well as a clinician. And you're right because you mentioned right at the start about the Touchpoint, the patient level benefit in a way of all this technology and it absolutely manifests there because if you can relieve a little bit of stress on one member of staff by doing something better, by the processes being more automated or integrated, they'll provide better care because they feel more psychologically secure. And so it just leads to those benefits. Difficult to capture them, but it's there. It is very difficult to capture them. But retention's a key one. Our retention's reducing. So I think there is a direct impact there. You know, one of the key things I saw when I'm looking at this project a couple of years ago was just that new starter experience. It's the shop window of what's going to happen next, isn't it? Yeah. You should be on the rostering platform before your start day. You should be able to have access on to loop workday on your first day of employment. So to me they were just small wins. But I do think we do track. I'm big on returning investment. We do track some of the benefits and like through this relationship through. I mentioned Retinue earlier and one of the projects we are working on right now, which I didn't mention, is an integration between Retinue and no Optuma, which to me will make and this is key for the managers, a frictionless journey for the managers because at the moment they log everything here and then they go into when I'm say here and they log everything in Optuma and then they have to then book it through Bridge, which is their system. When we introduced that 18 months ago, that would go away. So the integration will take that away. And that to me is a massive game changer for our managers. And our MI will get better. So our management information will get better because we can pulled it out of one system rather than different systems. And again, that's something we're hoping to get live in the next couple of months. You talked about working innovatively together. It's not a trick question. What are you excited about? That's coming down the way that we're talking about. And again, that is interesting. Smart rostering. Right. So it's a bit of a buzzword I think in this industry at the moment or our industry at the moment. So smart rostering for me is the key one. Right. So we've spoken to Barbara a few times about this and it's the one that I, I think will be a massive game changer for us. My difficulty at the moment is do I trust my data at the moment? You know, not sure. But I think that's what we're doing with some of the foundation stuff that will get there. And also, do I want to be the guinea pig? Do I want to be the first one? Yeah, maybe, but maybe not. So that's the exciting bit for me and to me that will make us much more efficient around and then we talked about AI behind the scenes, not front facing. That's the one for me is it will make sure that we're able to feel shifts quicker and more efficiently. It will also help us around data around predictive workforce planning. So we are definitely still in the mindset of looking back, not looking forward. That's not unique. We are not unique in that. I think there's pretty much every organization around healthcare at the moment and that will give us a competitive edge. All that you say that I think is so important because as a vendor of solutions, you need inquisitive partners to develop things in the field. Because unless you do that and you've got enthusiastic collaborators, you can't properly test out the true value. And the smart, smart bit here is by working in partnership like we are on new innovative things. And you know, you talked about your governance and check and balance process with your teams. You also help communicate, I think out to your workforce that you're a forward thinking organization. You know, there is, you're not stopping it continues. Right? Correct. And that is key. Right. Because you want to be that healthcare company that isn't standing still, is being more efficient around what they do. But there's definitely a balance around making sure it's right in the right moment for the organization as well. Because it's the safety industry. Last question. Because we're, we're at time, we could carry on. We always press for a part two. Yeah, we do. We'll never mention that till we start the podcast. I get it. I get. I'll be back again. Will I? Yeah, please. Yeah. But if you were making a pitch, one of the things we're really passionate about on the podcast is sharing experiences, learning about people's journeys. We genuinely think health and care jobs are literally the best in the world. Right. Why would you. You not want to make a difference? And so if you were talking now to, I don't know, a group of A level students who are thinking, do I go into this sector? What would your pitch be? Why would you say do it? Yeah, that's a good question. I suppose that's going back to me when I was back in my day. To me, it's about. It was a caring industry. Right. So actually you've got those values. I think that's going to lean into it. But it's also an industry that's changing a lot and I think also an industry that has technology at forefront, not just in the world that I'm talking about, in other areas, you can see that there's a lot of change going on. So it's probably an area where you can make a big impact, is what I would say. And I go back to the values. It's also something that you can probably go home at night and actually feel good about yourself to. Actually, you know, you might not be that. You might not be impacting directly on the patient, but the stuff you're doing is impacting on the patient journey at a certain stage. So that'd be my cell. And it is interesting as well. Right. And worth knowing. It is all about the clinical staff, but there is lots of other roles out there as well. We reflect this every time. You're so right. But the spectrum of roles available is so interesting and varied. The mobility as well, isn't it? Immense. And we know, again, we are at the end now. But you've worked in Australia with work, the. The mobility, the ability to say, actually I want to go try a different part of sector. Healthcare is different in every country. Right. That you guys will know that better than me. But it is also an industry where, particularly around the people element, there is change afoot. Right. So definitely there's transferable skills that you can go and work elsewhere in the world as well. So, you know, I've been over to Australia a of couple of times with work in terms of some leadership course as well. And that's exciting, right? Australia's far, but it is still exciting to go over there as well. So we ought to, at the end of the podcast. When this gets published, make sure that we've got a link through to the talent and recruitment site for Ramsay. So, great, great, great conversation. Yeah, it's been fascinating. It's been lovely to meet you and chat and we always run out of time, as Liz says. But thanks so much for being with us. Not at all. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Connexion. We hope this episode has provided you with valuable insights on the role that both technology and people play within the healthcare landscape. For more information and resources, visit rldatix.com don't forget to subscribe to the connection on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform you use. Join us next time as we continue to explore how healthcare is impacted by connecting people and technology. On behalf of the RL Dataix team, thanks for listening.