NHS Electronic Staff Record

The NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) is the World's largest, single, integrated HR and Payroll system, empowered by McKesson.

This ground breaking project was delivered on time and on budget and currently pays 7% of the working population in England and Wales, a workforce of more than 1.3 million NHS employees.

As a national solution it has replaced no fewer than 28 Payroll, 67 HR systems and 1702 in-house trust specific systems with an integrated Oracle Human Resources and Payroll system.  ESR allows the NHS a clear view of its entire workforce enabling it to pay and manage their employees more efficiently and effectively.

As well as providing proven cash savings to the NHS through efficiency, ESR benefits include supporting national and local strategic planning, providing key and up to date workforce information in a consistent format which allows information based decision making.  ESR also supports the devolution of responsibilities to local, front line organisations, as well as employee specific benefits including improved payroll information and an accuracy rate in excess of 99.9%.  The system has evolved to support National Learning Management through e-learning delivered courses as well as managing more traditional classroom based offerings; this is combined with support for staff appraisals. 

The ESR project was earmarked as the solution for World Class People Management for a 21st Century NHS, indeed the mission was “to ensure that ESR is regarded as the master workforce and learning management system for the NHS and the central source of workforce information from April 2009.”  As April 2009 marked the first anniversary of ESR going live, it also marked the evolution in the vision for the project; ESR is central to the NHS workforce strategy, and provides the complete workforce solution.  Moreover, it continues to evolve to underpin the NHS and its Workforce, providing High Quality care to the people of England and Wales.