Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust transforms fragmented workforce development into a data-driven Talent Management system with RISE and Totara

Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust (RBFT) is a large acute Trust in the South East of England, supporting a diverse population across Berkshire and surrounding areas with more than 7,000 staff.

To support its ambition of having the right people in the right roles at the right time, the Trust partnered with Totara to develop RISE (Recognising Individual’s Success and Excellence)—an innovative digital Talent Management system transforming appraisal, workforce development, leadership planning, and staff engagement.

The Challenge

Before RISE, the Trust’s Talent Management and appraisal processes were fragmented, inconsistent, and heavily paper-based. Staff development conversations varied significantly across departments, limiting visibility of workforce capability, succession readiness, and leadership potential. Appraisals were often viewed as administrative exercises rather than meaningful development opportunities, and there was no single source of truth for workforce talent data.

The organisation faced several key challenges:

• Inconsistent appraisal completion and quality across services.
• Limited oversight of leadership pipelines and workforce capability.
• Significant administrative burden for managers and Learning & Organisational Development teams.
• Fragmented systems for appraisals, learning, talent management, and development planning.
• Difficulty identifying workforce inequalities and progression barriers.
• Lack of actionable workforce data to support strategic decision-making.

The Trust recognised the need for a digitally enabled, inclusive, and intelligence-driven approach to workforce development that could support retention, engagement, and future workforce planning.

The intended ambition was not simply to digitise an existing process, but to fundamentally redesign how Talent Management operated across the organisation. The Trust wanted a system that could:

• Create a consistent and meaningful appraisal experience for all staff.
• Empower employees to take ownership of their development.
• Connect objectives, behaviours, learning, and career aspirations in one place.
• Generate real-time workforce insight to support succession planning and leadership development.
• Improve accessibility, inclusivity, and transparency.
• Reduce administrative burden through automation and integration.

Importantly, the Trust also wanted to ensure the solution reflected organisational values and workforce diversity. Extensive staff engagement highlighted concerns around accessibility, digital confidence, fairness in progression opportunities, and inconsistent development experiences.

The organisation needed a platform capable of integrating learning, appraisal, talent management, reporting, and development planning into one seamless design, while remaining scalable, sustainable, and adaptable for future workforce priorities.

The Solution

Working in partnership with Totara (previously Think Learning), the Trust developed RISE, a fully integrated digital Talent Management programme.

Rather than implementing a standalone appraisal tool, the Trust used Totara as the foundation for a connected workforce development experience that integrates online appraisal, leadership behaviours, personalised development pathways, learning management, talent analytics, action planning, and ePortfolio functionality.

The solution was co-designed with staff across clinical, corporate, administrative, and operational services to ensure accessibility, inclusivity, and usability were embedded from the outset. More than 400 colleagues contributed through workshops, pilots, usability testing, and feedback sessions. Staff networks representing protected characteristics, including neurodiversity, Global Majority, and Pride networks, were actively involved in shaping language, navigation, accessibility features, and user journeys.

At the centre of RISE is the digital appraisal process, fully integrated within Totara Workflow. Staff complete appraisals online using the Trust’s Leadership Behaviours Framework, linking objectives, behaviours, career aspirations, and development conversations within one workflow.

A key innovation was the creation of automated RISE Pathways. Using Totara workflows, digital appraisal and talent management forms, and integrated learning functionality, the Trust designed tailored employee journeys that respond dynamically to the data gathered throughout the appraisal process.

Courses and development opportunities are automatically aligned to specific audiences, leadership levels, and organisational hierarchies through dynamic audiences. Tailored dashboards provide staff and managers with personalised visibility of objectives, development activity, progression, and workforce insights relevant to their role and level within the organisation.

Through capturing and utilising workforce data across the employee journey, the Trust created a platform genuinely designed around staff needs. RISE balances tailored guidance with open access to opportunity, enabling employees to clearly understand their own development trajectory while still exploring the full range of learning and career opportunities available through the organisation’s learning catalogues.

These pathways automatically recommend learning, development opportunities, and actions through Totara’s integrated learning functionality. Staff can also track their progress through Action Planner and ePortfolio, both designed through the workflow tool to be dynamic and interactive.

One of the most transformative aspects of the solution has been workforce intelligence. For the first time, the Trust can clearly identify where talent exists, where gaps remain, and where targeted interventions are required. Multiple reporting sources combine appraisal, talent, learning, succession, retention, promotion, and pathway data to provide rich workforce insight—all made possible because the data resides within a single platform.

For example, RISE data highlighted underrepresentation of Global Majority staff within leadership pipelines. This directly informed targeted interventions such as the Global Majority Aspiring Leaders Programme and targeted promotion of the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA). The platform has also enabled the Trust to identify areas of high engagement and digital development champions who support wider staff adoption, creating a positive cycle where increased platform use generates richer workforce insight and more effective decision-making.

The Results

RISE has delivered significant measurable impact across workforce engagement, operational efficiency, leadership development, and workforce intelligence.

One of the most significant outcomes has been the transformation of appraisal engagement. Prior to RISE, appraisals were predominantly paper-based with limited visibility and inconsistent completion rates.

Since implementation:

• More than 85% of the organisation now completes appraisals fully online.
• More than 80% of staff actively engage with their personalised talent dashboards.
• More than 95% of aspiring leaders (Bands 5–6) complete their appraisal online.
• Planned Care services now achieve more than 92% appraisal uptake and are piloting a new One Window appraisal model.

The automation and integration provided through Totara have significantly reduced administrative burden:

• Administrative processing time has reduced by approximately 30%.
• Manual data entry and duplication have been largely eliminated.
• Learning records update automatically through integrated workflows.
• Managers now access real-time workforce dashboards instead of manually collating appraisal data.

The platform has also transformed workforce planning and leadership development.

For the first time, the Trust has real-time visibility of:

• Leadership readiness
• Workforce capability
• Talent distribution
• Succession pipelines
• Workforce demographics and representation

This intelligence has enabled targeted interventions and measurable progress in inclusion and leadership development.

Since January 2025:

• 125 staff identified within the Trust’s Gold talent pool have achieved promotion or lateral career progression.
• The majority of progression has come from aspiring leaders groups, demonstrating earlier identification and development of talent.
• Representation of Global Majority staff progressing through promotion or lateral movement has increased compared to the same period in the previous year.

The Trust has also seen measurable cultural impact. RISE has strengthened development conversations between managers and staff, improved visibility of opportunities, and increased employee ownership of career development.

The Trust’s 2025 Staff Survey ranked the organisation second nationally for staff feeling “supported to develop their potential,” directly aligning with the purpose and outcomes of RISE.

The success of the programme has generated significant interest from NHS organisations nationally. The Trust has presented RISE through national workforce forums, shared best practice with colleagues across the NHS, and recently received Highly Commended at the HSJ Digital Awards.

RISE demonstrates how Totara can move beyond traditional learning management to become a strategic workforce transformation platform that improves engagement, retention, inclusion, operational efficiency, and workforce planning at scale.