NHS Workforce Solutions
Structurally neutral. Embedded in your organisation. Commercially aligned with the workforce outcomes you want to achieve.
Fusion People is an Approved Supplier for the NHS Workforce Alliance
Neutral Vendor 2.0
Contents
- Neutral Vendor 2.0 in Practice
- A Wider Choice of Interventions
- Structurally Neutral by Design
- Embedded in your Organisation
- Reduce Dependency Without Weakening Supply
- Start with what Already Works
- From diagnosis to delivery
- actively managed by a structurally neutral partner
- a distinctive position on RM6380
- Why choose Fusion People
- Build the right workforce model
Reduce agency dependency without compromising workforce access.
Fusion People provides NHS organisations with a new approach to Neutral Vendor: combining the control, governance and assurance expected from a managed service with a wider choice of interventions designed to reduce dependency, strengthen internal capability and improve workforce resilience.
Through NHS Workforce Alliance RM6380, we embed our solution into your organisation and work hand-in-hand with workforce, temporary staffing, procurement and operational teams to understand what is driving demand, improve root-cause visibility and co-create the right response.
Rather than simply managing transactions once a requirement has reached the agency market, we help Trusts remove avoidable demand, redirect it into more appropriate workforce routes, resolve recurring workforce challenges and actively manage and reshape the external supply that genuinely remains
Neutral Vendor 2.0 In Practice
Work upstream first to reduce agency demand. Optimise the supply that remains.
1
UNDERSTAND DEMAND
Embed | Listen | Diagnose
Identify the root causes of demand.
2
INTERVENE UPSTREAM
Remove | Redirect | Resolve
Resolve avoidable demand before it becomes an agency requirement.
3
ROUTE FOR BEST VALUE
Substantive Recruitment | Bank | Recruit-Train-Deploy | SoW | Agency
Route remaining demand to the best-value solution.
4
OPTIMISE AGENCY SUPPLY
Right-size | Engage | Compete | Perform
Right-size the supplier base to sustain engagement, responsiveness, competitive value and results.
“The next wave of workforce efficiencies will be unlocked upstream through smarter demand management”
A wider choice of interventions
Because not every workforce problem needs the same answer.
Traditional Neutral Vendor models tend to begin once temporary workforce demand already exists. Fusion can start earlier.
By working alongside Trust teams, we build a clearer picture of where demand is coming from, why it is recurring and what can be done before agency becomes the default response.
Through RM6380, we can bring a wider range of interventions to bear on the same workforce challenge.
The value is not simply having more services available.
It is having a greater number of interventions available around the same problem – and the independence to recommend the one that produces the best outcome for the Trust.
Staff Bank
Strengthen internal workforce participation and increase utilisation of existing capability.
Permanent Recruitment
Turn persistent temporary requirements into sustainable substantive capacity
Recruit, Train, Deploy
Build new pipelines into hard-to-fill and strategically important areas.
statement of work
Redirect suitable requirements away from contingent labour and into defined, outcome-based delivery.
Workforce Advisory & Discovery
Understand recurring demand, identify root causes and determine where intervention will create the greatest impact.
Agency Supply Chain Management
Maintain access to external workforce where agency remains the right solution.
Structurally neutral by design
Neutrality built into the model - not simply promised by the supplier.
Fusion People does not directly supply NHS locum doctors, nurses or allied health professionals. That puts us in a fundamentally different position.
We are not simply a supplier expected to act neutrally because the contract requires it. We are structurally neutral because we do not have a clinical agency workforce whose revenue depends on maintaining clinical agency volumes.
That means we can recommend whatever intervention delivers the best outcome for the Trust – even where that means reducing agency use, moving demand into staff bank, recruiting permanently, redesigning the requirement, using Statement of Work, building new workforce capability or removing the requirement altogether.
Our commercial interests can therefore be aligned with the outcomes the Trust is trying to achieve: lower dependency, better fulfilment, stronger internal capability, greater resilience and sustainable workforce cost.
Embedded in your organisation
We work with your teams, not around them.
Neutral Vendor 2.0 is not a remote service sitting outside the Trust. And it is not simply a technology layer or passive gateway between the organisation and its suppliers.
Fusion embeds alongside workforce, temporary staffing, procurement and operational stakeholders, combining the Trust’s organisational knowledge with our workforce and market expertise.
- Where is demand coming from?
- Why does it keep recurring?
- What can be prevented?
- What should be delivered differently?
- Where should internal capability be strengthened?
- What genuinely needs external supply?
We then co-create the operating model, mobilise the right interventions and remain involved in delivering and continually improving it.
Technology enables that model. It does not define it
Reduce dependency without weakening supply
Reduce dependency without weakening supply
A smaller agency requirement still needs a strong agency market.
Reducing agency volumes changes the economics of the supply chain.
If a shrinking requirement remains spread too thinly across too many suppliers, agencies can become disengaged. A Trust can become less commercially important, suppliers may prioritise other customers and the hardest-to-fill requirements can become progressively more difficult to service.
That matters particularly where the Trust still depends on external workforce across different locations, staff groups and specialist niches.
Fusion actively manages that transition. As demand changes, we continually assess the shape, size and capability of the supplier market required to support it.
The aim is to maintain a right-sized supply chain that works for the Trust in every location, every staff group and every specialist niche where external workforce remains necessary.
Start with what already works
Start with what already works
We do not assume an incumbent supply chain needs to be replaced.
We start with the Trust’s existing suppliers, understand where relationships are working well and preserve the capability, market knowledge and workforce access they already provide.
From there, we can actively reshape the market.
- Augment the existing supply chain where greater capacity or competition is needed.
- Introduce specialist, niche or local suppliers with stronger capability in hard-to-fill areas.
- Consolidate opportunity where fragmented demand is reducing supplier engagement.
- Create deeper supplier partnerships to improve commitment, buy-in and resilience.
- Contract strategically to access new economies of scale and make the Trust’s opportunity more meaningful to the market.
- Develop additional market capacity where existing supply cannot meet the Trust’s requirement.
The objective is not to have the largest possible supplier list. Nor is it simply to reduce supplier numbers. It is to create the right supply market around the Trust’s remaining demand.
From diagnosis to delivery
From diagnosis to delivery
Some workforce partners can identify the problem. Fusion can help do something about it.
Our role does not need to stop with analysis or recommendations. Through RM6380 and the wider capability of Fusion People, we can move from discovery and diagnosis into mobilisation, implementation and ongoing delivery.
That gives Trusts one partner capable of helping to understand why demand exists, selecting the right intervention and putting the resource behind making the change happen.
Actively managed by a structurally neutral partner
Actively managed by a structurally neutral partner
The remaining agency requirement is not simply passed through a platform. Fusion actively manages it.
That means balancing competition with supplier commitment; breadth with meaningful opportunity; cost control with sustainable supply; standardisation with specialist capability; and demand reduction with continued workforce access.
Because we are structurally neutral, we can make those decisions around what is best for the Trust rather than what protects a Fusion clinical agency operation.
As the Trust becomes less dependent on agency, we help ensure it remains a valued customer to the suppliers it still depends on.
Less agency dependency should mean a smaller, smarter and more committed supply chain – not a weaker one.
.
A distinctive position on RM6380
One framework. More ways to solve the problem.
NHS Workforce Alliance RM6380 Health Workforce Solutions creates the opportunity to take a broader approach to workforce challenges than traditional transactional temporary staffing models allow.
Fusion combines that breadth with something particularly important: structural independence from clinical agency supply.
That means we can use the framework to bring multiple interventions together around the outcome the Trust is trying to achieve rather than trying to fit every challenge into a predetermined product.
We can help the Trust understand the challenge, identify the root causes, co-create the intervention, mobilise the solution, operate the model and continuously refine it as workforce needs change.
For organisations with an incumbent workforce solution, we also recognise that mobilisation does not happen in a vacuum. Existing supplier relationships, workforce processes, technology, data, internal capability and incumbent arrangements all need to be understood and incorporated into the transition.
Our approach is therefore co-created with the Trust rather than imposed on it.
Why choose fusion people
Structurally Neutral
No directly supplied clinical agency workforce to protect, and no structural incentive to preserve unnecessary clinical agency demand
A wider choice of interventions
RM6380 lets us bring multiple workforce solutions to the same organisational challenge, rather than forcing every requirement through one route.
Commercially aligned with the outcome
Our success can be aligned to the workforce outcomes the Trust wants to achieve: lower dependency, improved fulfilment, greater resilience, stronger internal capability and sustainable cost.
Active market management
Where agency remains necessary, we actively shape and manage the supplier market rather than simply providing a technology gateway.
Right-sized supply
As demand reduces, we ensure the supply chain evolves with it – protecting access across every location, staff group and specialist niche.
Build the right workforce model
Whether the challenge is agency dependency, poor fulfilment, persistent vacancies, hard-to-fill skills, weak bank performance, recurring temporary demand or a workforce model that is no longer delivering what the organisation needs, Fusion can help establish what is driving it and what to do about it.
Neutral Vendor 2.0 gives NHS organisations more than a better way to manage agency workforce.
It provides more ways to reduce the need for agency in the first place – while ensuring the external supply you continue to depend on becomes better aligned, more resilient and more valuable.
Reduce agency dependency without compromising workforce access.
