Business Services Organisation
We are delighted to share the HSC Leadership Centre Strategic Plan for 2025-2027. Developed in partnership with our core clients and stakeholders, this plan sets out how we will contribute to meaningful progress and sustainable improvement across Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI).
Our strategic direction reflects the evolving needs of the system and is underpinned by three overarching areas of focus:
- Organisational and Leadership Development
- Championing Innovation and Best Practice
- Building Capacity and Capability
Together, these themes guide our work to support leaders, teams, and organisations to respond effectively to complexity, transformation, and future workforce challenges.
Our Strategic Priorities (2025-2028)
To deliver the vision, the HSC Leadership Centre will focus on four interconnected strategic priorities that enable system-wide improvement and workforce sustainability.
Improving Our System
We support organisations and leaders to improve how the system functions, ensuring that transformation efforts translate into tangible benefits for patients, clients, staff and communities.
Our focus includes:
- Digital Transformation – supporting organisations to realise the organisational development benefits of digital change
- System Working – enabling collaboration across boundaries and sectors
- Organisational Redesign – helping services get the fundamentals right to ensure sustainability
- Outcomes – maintaining a clear focus on who is better off as a result of change
We deliver this priority through:
- Development of organisational development toolkits to support digital transformation benefits realisation
- Acting as a trusted partner on organisational redesign
- Supporting the implementation of integrated systems at all levels
- Providing leaders with tools and approaches to improve productivity and outcomes
- Building capability in leading through complexity, including interdisciplinary and systemic approaches and the concept of leading beyond authority
Culture and Leadership
Creating healthy, high-performing cultures is central to effective health and social care delivery. We work with organisations to embed leadership approaches that support openness, learning, and accountability.
Our focus includes:
- Creating healthy workplace cultures grounded in open, just, and learning principles
- Health and well-being, resilience, and psychological safety
- Team development and performance
Key areas of delivery include:
- Regional senior leadership development programmes and collaborative workshops
- Strengthening core management and leadership capabilities
- Embedding human-centred leadership, including:
- Self-leadership: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and agency
- Leading others: mindful communication, connection, and trust
- Radical responsibility: continuous learning, accountability, and growth
- Supporting health and well-being through resilience and self-care initiatives
- Developing and sustaining high-performance teams through evidence-based models, use of local HSC data, and continuous evaluation
Workplace Investment
A sustainable, skilled, and motivated workforce is critical to delivering a transformed health and social care system. Our work aligns closely with Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy 2026: Delivering for Our People, which sets out ambiguous goals to address workforce supply, recruitment, retention, and capability.
Our focus includes:
- Workforce planning capability
- Succession planning
- Attraction and retention
We support this priority through:
- Developing regional workforce planning models and workforce intelligence
- Building capability to collect and use the right data for decision-making
- Supporting role redesign to meet future service needs
- Delivering targeted succession planning interventions (targeting, preparing, developing)
- Enhancing employment and training schemes, including graduate, intern, and apprenticeship pathways.
Through this work the HSC Leadership Centre supports organisations to attract, develop, and retain a skilled and motivated workforce aligned to future needs.
Professional Partnerships 
Partnership working is fundamental to expanding capability, sharing best practice, and strengthening leadership across the system.
Our focus includes:
- Strengthening strategic alliances
- Working with education partners
- Engaging with thought leaders
Key areas of activity include:
- Developing formal partnerships to enhance capability and capacity
- Expanding local development opportunities through partners such as HPMA, CIPD, and the HSCLC Charter
- Facilitating partnership and exchange arrangements with HSE and wider health systems
- Strengthening our delivery model as an accredited PeopleCert partner
- Supporting collective leadership through a re-invigorated five-nation approach
- Providing CPD-accredited learning opportunities through the HSC Leadership Centre
- Securing further accreditations and maximising the potential of educational partnerships, including HEIs and specialist providers
Strategic Alignment with Workforce Policy and the NI Health Structure
The Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy 2026: Delivering for our People sets out ambitious goals to ensure the workforce is capable, resilient, and aligned to the needs of a transformed health and social care system. It recognises the urgent requirement to address persistent challenges in workforce supply, recruitment, retention, and capability, while building long-term sustainability across the system.
The HSC Leadership Centre supports the delivery of these ambitions by working with organisations to attract, recruit, develop, and retain a skilled and motivated workforce. Through the development and implementation of talent management, workforce planning, leadership development, and organisational development frameworks, we help organisations respond to immediate workforce pressures while preparing for future demand.
Alongside workforce capability, we recognise the central importance of health and wellbeing in sustaining performance and engagement. The HSC Leadership Centre provides support to build on and consolidate good practice by embedding a ‘just culture’ – one that promotes fairness, learning, psychological safety, and accountability. Our approaches are grounded in the principles of equality, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability, supporting healthier workplaces and more positive experiences for staff across the system.
Our work is aligned with the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care structure, supporting leadership and workforce development across regional, organisational, and service-level settings. By strengthening system leadership, enabling collaboration across boundaries, and supporting integrated ways of working, the HSC Leadership Centre helps translate strategic workforce and service priorities into meaningful, practical action.
Through this alignment, we contribute to a more cohesive, people-centred, and sustainable health and social care system, supporting improved outcomes for staff, patients, clients, and communities across Northern Ireland.