Background In June 2016 the Board approved an ambitious five-year strategy with the aim of ‘Reaching more people’. The strategy depends on our ability to attract and retain dedicated, caring, skilled, high performing people across the hospice. We needed a Talent and People Strategy (T and PS) that would support our strategic aspirations.

Aims To develop a T and PS to ensure we have the right people with the right expertise, skills and values to meet our business needs both now and in five years’ time.

Methods We engaged a senior Human Resources/Organisation Development practitioner to work with us to develop the strategy. We wanted them to use a rigorous and participative approach to:

• Consider what our workforce may look like in five years’ time – including the potential to widen the role of volunteers

• Identify gaps in skills, expertise and competencies and plans to fill them

• Challenge pre- and/or mis-conceptions about structures, skill mix, role design, professional boundaries etc

• Consider talent management and succession planning so that we make best use of existing talent and capabilities.

Results 80% of our 406 paid staff (303 FTE) and many of our volunteers participated in a ‘Fathoming the future’ workshop, sharing ideas about what a future workplace might look like. The top ten priorities were shaped into five ambitions for our people that underpin the T and PS and provide the structure for a series of recommendations, actions and milestones for the next three years.

Conclusions By developing a T and PS in a structured and participative way we have a framework that enables us to make decisions around structures, skill mix, and succession planning and at the same time focus on the priorities that are most important to our staff, all in the context of an over-all plan which will best assure the success of our new strategy.