Fifty trusts across England have been asked to host mass vaccination centres to roll out approved vaccines to the general population. Planning for the programme has been done at speed to facilitate the recruitment of staff and to ensure the NHS has the capacity to achieve rapid roll out. NHS England and Improvement have developed a suite of generic vaccination role job descriptions to support the workforce model in the mass vaccination centres.
JEG has issued advice for employers who are utilising generic job descriptions developed by another organisation. The advice outlines that the employer must, in partnership, match the roles locally, ensure that the outcomes are consistent with other jobs within the employer and have an audit trail demonstrating that the pay band can be justified. In line with the NHS job evaluation handbook any new roles that are put out to advert should contain an indicative banding pending the role going to a job matching or evaluation panel.
Find out more here: Advice for using template job descriptions
Last week NHS Employers asked the NHS Job Evaluation Group (JEG) to map the generic vaccination programme job descriptions to the NHS job evaluation scheme. JEG identified that the NHSE indicative banding (band 4) for the vaccinator role is not reflective of the likely matching outcome when the role is matched by panels at a local level. The mapping work done by JEG suggests that the vaccinator role is more likely to match at a band 3.
NHS Employers have issued advice to trusts on the next steps in dealing with this issue and have outlined that failure to act on the advice may expose an organisation to the risk of equal pay legal action. The advice includes how to deal with any current job advertisements and job offers that have already been made using the indicative banding.
Finally, any new roles that are being developed to deliver the vaccine outside of the public mass vaccination programme must also be matched in partnership locally and checked for consistency. These may be roles which are delivering the vaccination programme for NHS staff.
Actions for branches
- Speak to your employer about any recruitment activity they have started or are planning for vaccination programme roles
- Make sure JE practitioners are aware of the JEG guidance on using generic job descriptions developed by other organisations
- Ensure that plans are in place for panels to match the JDs using the JEG guidance on virtual matching and evaluation where appropriate
Please contact health@unison.co.uk if you have further questions.
