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Job Planning Guide

Introduction

A system of joint Job Planning and annual review (supported by a joint appraisal system) has been being introduced by universities and their partner NHS Trusts, as part of the implementation of the national Clinical Consultant Academic Contract (2003) and the new Senior Academic General Practitioner contract (2005). Job Plans, reviewed annually, will set out an individual’s duties, responsibilities and objectives as agreed with both her/his relevant UCL manager and a representative of the NHS partner Trust, at which the member of staff will hold their honorary clinical contract. The aim of the Job Planning Guidance is to provide information and advice to support the job planning process at UCL and to assist Clinical Academics and their managers, to undertake job planning successfully.

Scope

This guidance applies to Clinical Academic staff appointed on the terms of either (i) the Consultant Clinical Academic contract or (ii) the Senior Academic General Practiotioner contract. Such staff will hold a substantive contract of employment with UCL and an honorary NHS contract. This guidance is also applicable to substantively employed NHS staff holding honorary academic contracts with UCL. Clinical Academics hold honorary NHS contracts for reasons of clinical governance and to protect their interests by making clear the nature of their relationship with the NHS organisation(s) under whose aegis they work with NHS patients. Job planning is a joint activity with the NHS and consideration is given to the substantive and honorary contracts together and their interface with each other.

What is Job Planning?

The purpose of job planning is to review the range of work activities of Clinical Academics and record the balance of academic and clinical duties undertaken in order that workloads can be better planned and appropriately rewarded. The review of the integrated Job Plans will be an annual process through which the Clinical Academic and their Head of Department (or his/her nominee) will agree individual programmes of work that contribute to the achievement of departmental objectives and the elements of NHS service provision in which they are involved. The plan should contain reference to the resources that are required to achieve agreed objectives and the review of integrated Job Plans informs decisions regarding eligibility for pay progression.

UCL’s position in terms of Job Planning

·  UCL supports the full process of integrated, joint job planning to ensure that integrated Job Plans take account of both UCL and NHS commitments setting out main duties, responsibilities and objectives – both academic and clinical - in qualititative and quantitative terms.

·  There will be clear delineation regarding when a Clinical Academic is working for which employer and clear accountability for academic and clinical duties, with staff aware to whom they are accountable for the separate facets of their job.

·  Commitments regarding service requirements, attendance, activity and workload will be agreed and recorded for future reference and planning purposes.

·  Those involved will be treated fairly and reasonably throughout the process.

·  The annual integrated Job Plan review will be supported by the joint appraisal system.

·  UCL and its NHS partner Trusts will ensure that Clinical Academics have the facilities, training, development and support needed to deliver agreed commitments.

·  Job Plans will reflect current duties, responsibilities and objectives with an interim Job Plan review if these need to change significantly during the year.

The Job Plan will reflect

·  Job content

·  Time and service commitments

·  Appropriate personal objectives

The Job Planning process

Objectives

Objectives will set out a mutual understanding of what the Clinical Academic will be seeking to achieve over the coming 12 months – based on past experience and reasonable expectations of what might be achievable. Objectives must be appropriate and can be qualitative or quantitative.

Objectives will be an integral part of the integrated Job Plan, although not contractually binding in themselves. Clinical Academics will be expected to work towards the delivery of the objectives set out in the Job Plan, recognising the impact of local circumstances and resources on delivery. Progress against objectives and factors affecting their delivery, will be considered at the annual Job Plan review.

Agreeing a Job Plan

Job Plans must be the result of a 3-way discussion between the Clinical Academic, his/her UCL Head of Department (or nominee) and the Medical Director/Clinical Director/ lead clinician (or nominee), as nominated by the Medical Director of the NHS Trust at which the Clinical Academic holds their honorary clinical contract. In instances where a member of Clinical Academic staff is required to hold more than one honorary clinical contract (as a term of their UCL appointment), a lead honorary NHS Trust will be nominated by the UCL Head of Department. For the purpose of the annual integrated Job Plan review process, the lead NHS Trust will represent and act on behalf of all the honorary NHS employers.

The Clinical Academic should prepare for the integrated Job Plan meeting by maintaining a record of how they have carried out their existing Job Plan (see Clinical Academic checklist). Job planning is separate from (but is closely linked to) the process of Clinical Academic appraisal and agreement of personal development plans. Job planning may help provide a record of the Clinical Academics practice that could form part of the evidence for such processes as appraisal, revalidation, Clinical Excellence Award applications etc.

Agreeing duties and responsibilities

The special nature of a Clinical Academic job derives from its academic and clinical components, which are of equal importance and together make up the integrated workload. The integrated Job Plan should set out the main duties and responsibilities of the post and the service to be provided, for which the Clinical Academic, or group of Clinical Academic’s, will be accountable. A checklist for managers agreeing Job Plans is available to assit in this process as is a Job Plan template. Clinical Academic staff should be directed to one of the following Dept/Institute specific Job Plans

·  Eastman Dental Institute

·  Institute of Child Health

·  Institute of Neurology

·  Institute of Ophthalmology

·  Royal Free and University College Medical School

The working week

Work undertaken by Clinical Academics is expressed in Programmed Activities (PAs). The working week will be expressed in terms of timetabled PA’s and each could involve a combination of duties.

The basic working week for full-time UCL Clinical Academic will normally be 10 PA’s per week, plus one Additional PA (APA), each with a notional value of 4 hours, based on the ability of the individual to justify this in the Job Plan. In certain instances one or more APA’s may be offered by the NHS Trust for service to the NHS, in which case inclusion of these would be subject to approval by the Dean, on the principle that they should not compromise academic activity. The timetabled PA’s and / or APA’s may be programmed as blocks of four hours or in half-units of two hours each.

Clinical Academic staff working part-time will agree with both their UCL and honorary NHS line managers the number of PA’s which will make up their core working week. During the hours of 8am to 10pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm Saturday and Sunday all PA’s will be paid at plain-time rates. Where clinical duties are required to be undertaken in Premium Time (outside 0700 – 1900 Monday to Friday), one PA will constitute 3 hours’ work.

The working week for Clinical Academics

·  A minimum of 5 PAs must be attributed to academic related work.

·  The NHS related PAs should be split in a ratio of 3:l between Direct Clinical Care (DCC) and Supporting Professional Activities (SPA).

·  It may be advisable in some areas to agree service level agreements between academic departments and the partner NHS Trust to take account of the variable responsibilities of academics and to develop a 'team' approach to service delivery.

A. Programmed activities for the University could include for example:

Activity / Code
Research / U1
Teaching preparation, delivery, assessment and examining of undergraduates / U2
Teaching preparation, delivery, assessment and examining of postgraduates / U3
Departmental research seminars, journal clubs, etc / U4
Conferences or work at other centres for academic purposes / U5
Academic departmental, faculty or UCL administration or management activity / U6
Preparation, and delivery of lectures, including travel time / U7
UCL/Medical School committees / U8
Other Department/Faculty/UCL wide roles / U9
Preparation of research grant applications / U10
Staff development activity / U11
Other academic related duties, specify in Job Plan / U12

It is important to note that undergraduate medical student teaching is regarded as a University PA for Clinical Academic staff, but is an NHS PA for substantively NHS employed consultants holding an honorary academic contract at UCL.

B. Programmed activities for the NHS could include:

Direct Clinical Care

Activity / Code
Emergency attendance / C1
Out-patient or other clinic / C2
Operating session (including anaesthetists) / C3
Ward round / C4
Other patient treatment or relative consultation / C5
Telephone advice to hospital / C6
Multidisciplinary meeting about direct patient care / C7
Investigative, diagnostic or laboratory work / C8
Public health duties / C9
Travelling time between sites, not to usual place of work / C10
Patient administration / C11

Supporting professional activities

Undertaking Training / S1
Continuous Professional Development / S2
Teaching / S3
Audit/Clinical Governance / S4
Job Planning/Appraisal / S5
Research / S6
Clinical management / S7

Additional responsibilities

Duties as a Caldicott guardian / A1
Audit lead or clinical governance lead / A2
Clinical tutor / A3
Medical/clinical directors' and lead clinicians' PAs by substitution or additional remuneration / A4
Other additional responsibilities / A5

Other duties

BMA duties / D1
AAC external member / D2
NCAA, GMC CHAI / D3
Work for Royal Colleges / D4
Undertaking inspections for the Commission for Health Improvement / D5
Specified work for the General Medical Council / D6
Other, specify in Job Plan / D7

Additionally remunerated work

Private practice / P1
Category 2 work / P2
Other additionally remunerated work, specify on Job Plan / P3

Non work activity

Absent from work (annual or sickness leave) / N1
Other (i.e. time spent not working) / N2

On-call status

Predictable on-call / 1
Unpredictable on-call / 2

Annualisation of work activities

Job Plans may cover a week or where a weekly cycle is not appropriate, a month or a year, where such a period is agreed by all parties as appropriate.

Signing off Job Plans

Job Plans for UCL staff are subject to approval by Department Heads who hold the authority to agree an integrated Job Plan containing up to 11 Pas per week. Heads may however, assign this role to a senior Clinical colleague who is more closely allied to a particular clinical area, but in that case a clear line of reporting back to the Head of Department will be established. In the event that UCL is only able to meet the costs of a 10 PA week where an 11 PA Job Plan has been agreed, UCL has the right to limit its salary commitment to 10 PAs. The additional PA(s) will remain detailed in the integrated Job Plan so that if additional resources become available these can be applied at a later stage. Job Plans will be ‘signed off’ by the Dean of the Clinical Faculty or the Directors of the Postgraduate Institutes who will approve any proposed additional PAs.

Following the annual integrated Job Plan review, the Head of Department (or his/her nominee) and the appropariate representative of the honorary NHS employer will submit a report confirming whether Job Plan commitments have been met and jointly recommend a decision about pay progression to the Dean of the Clinical Faculty or Director of a Postgraduate Institute. This will be copied to the individual and the NHS partner Trust where the honorary contract is held. The completed Job Plan must be forwarded (via your local representative) to the Dean/Director no later than two months prior to the date it is due to become effective, in order that (where applicable and approved) pay progression may be implemented in a timely manner.

The Dean of the Faculty of Clinical Science and the Directors of the PGIs, will make the final decision on pay progression, having consulted with NHS partner Trust(s). Where one, or more, of the criteria for pay progression is not achieved in any year, UCL will have the discretion to decide, where appropriate (for example because of ill health), that the individual should nonetheless be regarded as having met the Job Plan commitments for that year.

There will be a right of appeal against a decision that an individual has not met his/her Job Plan commitments in any given year. In the event of an appeal, it will be UCL’s responsibility to show why this decision was taken, drawing as necessary on the views of the relevant NHS Trust.

Job Plan reviews

The appraisal process and Job Plan review produce the information on the quality and quantity of the Clinical Academic’s work over the previous year. Both processes involve

·  discussion of achievement against service and personal objectives

·  consideration of whether factors outside the control of the individuals’ control have affected delivery of objectives

·  reviewing current workload

·  agreeing any changes to the Clinical Academic’s duties and responsibilities,

·  agreeing a plan for achieving a Clinical Academic’s personal objectives

·  agreeing what support the Clinical Academic will need from UCL and the NHS and from colleagues, to help achieve these objectives.

·  reviewing the relationship between academic duties, NHS duties and any private practice (in line with the Code of Conduct for Private Practice).

Appraisal is designed to facilitate review of a Clinical Academic’s work and performance, to enable consolidation of good performance and identification of development needs which will be reflected in the personal development plan for the coming year. Job Plan review will take into account the outcome of appraisal discussion on working practices, including the role of the individual in the clinical team, clinical governance responsibilities and completion of continuing professional development activity as set out in the agreed personal development plan.