What is: The Talent Pipeline

What is the Talent Pipeline?

Metro North and Queensland Health are committed to creating a permanent workforce. Fixed Term (temporary) or casual employment is only used when permanent employment is not appropriate.

Permanent employees are normally appointed to a specific role. Appointing an employee to a role can happen many ways including open merit recruitment or transfer.

Sometimes Metro North Health has employees who are permanently employed but are currently not permanently assigned to a role: “unassigned permanent employees”. This situation can happen several ways including:

• Abolished roles due to workplace change
• Conversion of long-term casual or temporary employees to permanent employment status.

Unassigned permanent employees must be assigned permanent roles in a timely manner. Metro North Health locates and permanently appoints unassigned permanent employees to vacant roles using the “Talent Pipeline”*. Unassigned permanent employees are expected to quickly enter and exit the Talent Pipeline into appropriate permanent roles.

* Medical Officers have a profession specific process and are not appointed to the Talent Pipeline.

Why is this important and what’s my role in this?

Unassigned permanent employees in the Talent Pipeline are already permanent Metro North Health employees. As existing employees, they have already demonstrated sufficient merit to secure their appointment. All that remains for a permanent employee in the Talent Pipeline is to appoint the employee to a role suitable to their skills.

All managers have a responsibly to help place an unassigned permanent employee in a “suitable” permanent vacant role.

What do I need to do?

When you seek to recruit to a permanent or temporary/fixed term vacant role you may be contacted by Recruitment Services and asked to consider a candidate from the Talent Pipeline.

If you receive such a request, you must consider the candidate.

When one or more candidates are sent for your consideration you must decide if the candidates are likely to be able to perform and then:

• If you believe the candidate is suitable for the role you should appoint them to the role
• If you believe the candidate is not suitable for the role you must document your reasons and decision making and return this to Recruitment Services for further consideration.

As the employees in the Talent Pipeline are already permanent employees they are assessed on “Suitability” rather than “Merit”.

Suitability vs Merit

Employees who are part of the Talent Pipeline have already demonstrated their merit for permanent appointment and are permanent employees of Metro North Health. When considering a Talent Pipeline employee for a role you are required to consider them not on merit but on suitability.

Merit

“…the extent to which the person has abilities, aptitude, skills, qualifications, knowledge, experience and personal qualities relevant to the carrying out of the duties in question”.

Merit focusses on the immediate ability to perform the role.

Suitability

Suitability requires you to consider the extent which the employee

• has abilities, aptitude, skills, qualifications, knowledge, experience, and personal qualities relevant to the carrying out of the duties; and
• the extent to which the employee has potential for development.

Suitability focuses on whether the person could quickly and easily perform the role with a reasonable amount of support. You must assess what training and development the employee might require performing the role. If the training and development requirements are reasonable, the employee is suitable for that role.

Reasonable

What is “reasonable” will vary from role to role. As a Manager you will need to:

• decide whether the level of support is reasonable
• explain how you arrived at this conclusion

You should never accept an employee into a role that you do not believe they can perform. It is not appropriate or ethical to appoint a person to a situation where they will fail.

Useful Links

• Conversions Portal – Metro North Hospital and Health Service
• Department of Health Temporary to permanent & casual to permanent conversion guidance materials
• PSC Supporting employees affected by workplace change (Directive 18/20)
• PSC Casual employment (Directive 08/20)
• PSC Fixed term temporary employment (Directive 09/20)