Partnership Working in NHSScotland

Partnership working is the approach to employee relations within NHS Scotland.  As an employer, NHSScotland has always worked with Trade Unions and Professional Bodies to negotiate terms and conditions for staff, but, for the last 10 years, NHSScotland has taken significant steps to develop and embed the concept and practice of partnership working.  This involves the Scottish Government, NHS employers, Trade Unions and Professional Organisations working closely together to ensure that the NHSScotland workforce are actively involved in the decisions which affect them.  This requires openness, honesty and a commitment to share information in a transparent manner.  Consensus is widely accepted as the best way of prioritising and achieving commitment to long term strategic change.  All HR policies for NHSScotland (PIN policies) are developed in full partnership.

Partnership working in NHS Scotland was acknowledged in an Independent review by Nottingham University as having ‘matured into probably the most ambitous and important contemporary innovation in British public sector industrial relations.

In February 2014 the Scottish Government commissioned an independent review of progressive workplace policies and practices in the public and private sectors in Scotland, focusing on measures that would optimise the relationship that link trade unions, employers and Government working.  The output of this review, the Working Together Review report recognises that in NHSScotland the Partnership Working employee relations model works well and there is a recommendation that the NHSScotland employee relations model might translate to other parts of the public sector.

The origins of Partnership working were set out in “Towards a New Way of Working” published in 1998 and MEL 1999(59). The partnership model detailed in the MEL sets out how all stakeholders should be involved in formulating NHS policy and not just in being consulted. Following a review of these arrangements in October 2005, the NHS Scotland Partnership Agreement was published as Partnership: Delivering the Future

Partnership Structure

The current configuration of Committees follows a stocktake of National Partnership working in 2005 and is described in this section National Partnership Structures.

National Partnership Groups

This section provides information on National Partnership Groups