From my very first encounter with RCN Pay Delivery Officer John Flannery at my workplace - University Hospital Monklands - John's positivity spurred me on to apply for the band 5 review as a specialist nurse. It was during the RCN roadshow in the hospital, and when I told John that I worked in endoscopy and we discussed the role, he responded: "Are you looking forward to a pay rise, then?" Though I was unsure whether it would be worth applying for the review, John explained that if a nurse from another department could not come and do my role independently without direct supervision or having the additional knowledge and skills, then I am a specialised nurse and could be missing out on a salary boost.
There are fourteen members of my team, and John advised that our application would be stronger as a group. As I'd attended the information session part of the roadshow, my colleagues thought it would be best if I led our group application. This meant we all applied individually on the Agenda for Change re-evaluation portal, but we submitted the exact same answers.
Once the health board HR team had sent us our MJR (matched job report), which we’d requested, we were able to see what additional information was required. The result was we only needed to answer 15 out of the 75 questions, making the whole process less daunting A key phrase that we used often was “using highly specialist knowledge and skills, I am able to…”, followed by an example to highlight our specialist roles. One member of the team had their submission approved by our band 8, which meant that everyone else could cut and paste the same information. The only thing that each of us changed on our submissions was the length of time we’d all worked in our unit.
We could not have done our application successfully if John had not been in constant contact with me as the lead contact, offering help and advice whenever we asked. There were certainly glitches along the way - for example, on one occasion, the portal didn’t save after we had inputted for several hours. It also took a lot of effort and meant spending time after our shifts working on it, as we had to write our submissions at work using our health board emails.
The process took about a year and three months of back-and-forth and individual meetings with the band 8, but it has been worth it; so far nine out of the 14 nurses on the team have had a successful outcome – and we expect the others to follow once they submit given the submissions are the same and, as John has explained to us, the very high success rate for rebanding through this process across Scotland.
There are fourteen members of my team, and John advised that our application would be stronger as a group. As I'd attended the information session part of the roadshow, my colleagues thought it would be best if I led our group application. This meant we all applied individually on the Agenda for Change re-evaluation portal, but we submitted the exact same answers.
Once the health board HR team had sent us our MJR (matched job report), which we’d requested, we were able to see what additional information was required. The result was we only needed to answer 15 out of the 75 questions, making the whole process less daunting A key phrase that we used often was “using highly specialist knowledge and skills, I am able to…”, followed by an example to highlight our specialist roles. One member of the team had their submission approved by our band 8, which meant that everyone else could cut and paste the same information. The only thing that each of us changed on our submissions was the length of time we’d all worked in our unit.
We could not have done our application successfully if John had not been in constant contact with me as the lead contact, offering help and advice whenever we asked. There were certainly glitches along the way - for example, on one occasion, the portal didn’t save after we had inputted for several hours. It also took a lot of effort and meant spending time after our shifts working on it, as we had to write our submissions at work using our health board emails.
The process took about a year and three months of back-and-forth and individual meetings with the band 8, but it has been worth it; so far nine out of the 14 nurses on the team have had a successful outcome – and we expect the others to follow once they submit given the submissions are the same and, as John has explained to us, the very high success rate for rebanding through this process across Scotland.
Find out more about the band 5 汤头条污料 roles review and becoming a lead contact.
