Talking of Recruitment and Retention Payments, is there any news on them and to which staff groups they will apply?
I heard rumours when AfC started that Biomed Techs were on the official list as difficult to recruit groups so would have a long term RRP that would count towards pension etc. But it seems to have gone quiet on that front.
How does one tell if one is in the approved group? I expect I will have to go the long assessment form route which means that I will not have been judged to be a Medical Technologist of any description.

You only have one review/appeal of your grading if that fails you have lost all other routes.
I have been advised to get professional (union) help if you want to review/appeal to have a chance of going well.
But there is a sneaky trick I have been told of.. do not use the one official chance straight away, take out a grievance against the initial decission. You can have several shots at this, when all is well, go for the official appeal/review of your grading.
I do not know if this will work, I have just heard it as an idea (from a Union person on an assessment panel though!)
Robert

I believe Med Techs are one of the groups on the R&R list. However the actual level of payment is up to individual trusts, depending on local conditions/difficulties.

And I tought AfC was a national pay scale to harmonise things
Why have local comparisons to check you are not poaching from other local hospitals by offering a higher grade for the same job if a Trust can then just add on RRP to attract staff?
Robert

Good question. Ours not to reason why etc. etc.

Topper
We are a centralised EBME dept cover all equipment in the trust
The gradings we recieved are based on a comprehensive job description.

Medjcuh:

PPM - Planned Preventative Maintenance

Got the first question out of the way anyway!

Disco

How's about sharing your Job Descriptions ? Then we can all enjoy your AFC Gradings!!! We wouldn't even need to change them for here as we also a centralised EBME Dept that cover all equipment in the Trust. Anyway I am sure we could put your JD's infront of various panels and the outcome would never be constant, I cannot understand why people without any knowledge of our trade can judge our payscales .

We have had the following results so far:
MTO - 1 x Engineer AFC Band 4 and 1 x Engineer JAQ for the same JD but 2 different panels (Could be interesting if the JAQ brings out a different pay band)

MTO3 - AFC Band 5
MTO4 - Looks like a JAQ is required.

The best part is the comparison within out Trust a Dietician was given a Band 5 and a Snr Dietician was given a Band 6. How degrading is that ?

Any jobs coming up in your Department? ( Only Kidding )

I don't know, how degrading is that?

Karen

Why were the two identical JD's matched by 2 different panels? Surely if they are identical they would have been matched together!