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How EEAST and Omni optimised inclusive leadership hiring

The Challenge

The East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST), together with Omni’s Talent Strategy team, embarked on an extensive organisational restructuring for its Accident and Emergency Operations to improve inclusive leadership effectiveness, enhance operational efficiency and drive cultural change. The project required assessing and appointing employees to newly defined leadership roles, with a focus on evaluating their capabilities, identifying development gaps, and determining their suitability. 

While EEAST had already taken significant steps to improve its organisational culture by strengthening safeguarding policies and HR processes the Trust aimed to ensure that its leadership team had the capability to nurture an inclusive culture and set teams up for success.  

The Solution

  • 1
    Job Analysis
  • 2
    Assessment Centre
  • 3
    Assessor Training

Job Analysis

To address the challenges, a thorough job analysis was conducted to identify key behavioural skills required at each leadership level, aligned with EEAST values and the NHS leadership framework. This analysis informed the design of realistic behavioural simulation exercises for the assessment centres, developed in collaboration with senior stakeholders to address EEAST’s specific needs. 

Assessment Centres

In the span of eight months, a total of 21 assessment centres were conducted for three different leadership levels, involving the assessment of 109 individuals. Aligned with Omni’s human-centric approach to assessments, all candidates were invited to a pre-assessment briefing before the centre, alleviating any ambiguity and providing them with the opportunity to ask questions. Furthermore, transparency was ensured by sharing detailed documents outlining the day’s expectations and assessment criteria. 

“Best recruitment process I've been included in.” - Candidate feedback

Assessor Training

To ensure the sustainability of this process and facilitate its integration into EEAST’s business-as-usual (BAU) operations, we worked closely with their senior leadership team to develop and strengthen their assessment skills. Senior leaders participated in the assessment centres alongside the Omni assessment team, objectively evaluating each candidate’s capability against the predefined skills. As part of this initiative, we conducted assessor training for over 50 EEAST individuals. 

Following the assessments, all candidates received comprehensive feedback on each criterion assessed, highlighting their strengths and development areas. For senior roles, we facilitated coaching sessions with the candidates and EEAST’s Leadership Development team, assisting both successful and unsuccessful candidates in transforming their feedback into actionable development plans. 

“My reservations about the new process were unfounded, and I felt like it was a challenging but supportive and focused experience.” - Candidate feedback

The Impact

The restructuring and assessment initiative at EEAST yielded significant positive outcomes, both quantitatively and qualitatively.  

A total of 51 individuals were successfully appointed to the newly defined leadership roles, with their capabilities thoroughly assessed and matched to EEAST’s needs. The process itself was well-received, with 99% of candidates stating that the experience was positive and 94% expressing that they felt very comfortable knowing the process was completely objective and fair, allowing them to effectively demonstrate their skills. 

The results of the assessment centres were leveraged to create a lasting impact by collaborating with the Leadership Development team to identify themes and patterns across candidates’ results. This analysis informed strategic leadership development plans, ensuring targeted and effective leadership growth. 

Additionally, EEAST’s recruitment team underwent extensive training in inclusive and objective assessments, embedding these practices into EEAST’s regular operations. This training ensures ongoing leadership development and effective talent management, promoting a sustainable and robust leadership pipeline. 

Client Testimonials

“Our objective was to create a fair, objective and transparent process that could stand against high levels of scrutiny and that is exactly what we got.  

The new process is comprehensive, varied and thorough, allowing us to mitigate against individual biases.  

Our internal assessors are much more engaged in the assessment process, and they are more likely to focus on the specific needs of the role and the skills requirements. It has been a positive learning experience for all of us, and whilst it has provided us with structure, it has also allowed us to maintain a level of flexibility, which is ideal.  

Having Omni’s independent input has been really helpful in keeping us honest, both as part of the assessment centres and also having discussions with James/Medis when making certain decisions. More importantly, those challenges and honest conversations have happened in a highly supportive way, allowing for a really strong partnership to be built.  

 The outcome of the project exceeded the initial expectations. We were looking to get support on the restructuring of the Trust in a more objective and structured manner than our previous process. However, this has given us a process to integrate moving forward that has stood up under deep scrutiny.” – Jon Moore – Deputy Chief Operating Officer, EEAST  

Client Testimonial

“It has given me a different perspective on how to interview; I have done a lot of interviewing over the years, but after being part of this project, I have gained a much better understanding of how objective interviews should be conducted and scored. Recently when I have been involved in interviews for BAU roles, I have started having conversations with interviewers (who haven’t been part of this project) on how to prepare, probe, score, etc.  This process will definitely impact the Trust’s interview approach when we go to BAU.  

In fact, this process has impacted our BAU processes like no other process has in the past. We have worked with other consultants, e.g., PA consulting. Even our assessors and candidates have preferred these assessments as they find them more relaxed and comfortable.” Amy Antoni – Project Manager, EEAST  

 

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