Workforce Decision Intelligence
Diagonal is the system behind our workforce analysis, intervention planning and report generation. It reads the published NHS data your organisation already reports, produces the three-axis position our reviews and redesign work are built on, and organises intervention options against that position. Those options are options, not instructions. Each one needs local evidence and human review before anything is implemented. Where repeated measurement has a clear use, Diagonal can support a later monitoring service. The internal analytical engine exists today. The client application is in preparation, and client access is not yet available.
Why it exists
A structural review is a photograph. It tells you where you stood in the period the data covers.
The problem with a photograph is that the next one is usually taken with a different camera. Definitions change, the peer group changes, a new dashboard arrives, the person who understood the last analysis leaves. Two years later the board asks whether the workforce programme worked, and nobody can answer, because nothing has been measured the same way twice.
Diagonal exists to hold the method still. Same three measures, same peer group, same rules, at the cadence each source genuinely supports. The full three-axis position is re-cut annually. Measures published more frequently can be tracked at their source cadence.
What it does
Holds the yardstick still
The same three measures, the same peer group and the same method are used when the full position is re-cut annually. Measures that genuinely refresh more often can be tracked at their source cadence. If the method changes, the change is disclosed rather than presented as movement in the organisation.
Places you against peers who resemble you
Your position is scored against comparable organisations rather than against the whole of England, because a mental health trust and a large acute teaching trust are not doing the same job.
Anchored to when the data actually changes
The full position is refreshed when the NHS Staff Survey and trust accounts are published, not on an arbitrary quarterly cycle. In between, we report only the measures that have genuinely moved.
Reports the three axes separately
There is no single fragility score. We tested a blended score and it failed. Trusts differ in which pressure is elevated, and averaging that away destroys the only thing worth knowing.
What you receive
| When | What is genuinely new | You receive |
|---|---|---|
| March / April | NHS Staff Survey published | Annual Position Refresh: all three axes re-cut, peer group refreshed, movement against last year |
| July / August | Trust annual accounts published | Pressure Displacement update |
| Each quarter | Monthly NHS turnover, joiners, leavers and sickness returns | Movement watch against your peer group, with band changes flagged |
| Between releases | Nothing new published | A short note saying so. We do not manufacture a report to fill a quarter. |
| Annually | Annual | Review session with your executive team, and a named analyst throughout |
What moves monthly, and what does not. Turnover, joiners, leavers and sickness absence are published monthly per organisation, and Diagonal tracks them at that cadence against your peer group. Two inputs do not move monthly: the NHS Staff Survey runs once a year, and the agency figure comes from annual accounts. So your full three-axis position is re-cut once a year when the survey lands, while measures published more frequently can be tracked at their genuine source cadence. We tell you which is which, every time, and we do not re-present an unchanged number as news.
How Diagonal is delivered now
Diagonal runs as TLP’s internal analytical engine. Its output reaches clients through reports and review sessions. External platform access and client logins are not currently available. Current delivery includes:
- Your position against an anonymised peer group. You are named to yourself. Every comparator organisation is anonymised in the reports and review materials delivered to you.
- Measurement at the source cadence. The complete three-axis position is re-cut annually. Individual measures are refreshed only when their source data changes.
- A decision record. Review sessions record the action taken against each flagged position, so later work starts from an agreed baseline.
- Analyst-ready evidence. Findings are delivered with definitions, limitations and traceable public sources.
How leadership teams use it
- Board assurance. A workforce risk item that carries an external comparison rather than only internal trend.
- Programme evaluation. Evidence that a workforce programme moved the structural position, not just the operational metrics.
- Budget defence. An independent position when a saving target is proposed against a service already carrying pressure.
- Integrated Care Board oversight. A consistent view across providers where each provider reports differently.
- Executive handover. A continuous record that survives a change of Chief People Officer.
Why peer comparison matters
A trust can look stable against its own recent history and sit in the worst decile of comparable organisations. It can also look poor against its own past while sitting mid-pack among its peers, because the whole sector moved.
Internal reporting cannot tell those apart, because a trust only has its own data. Our panel covers 178 to 203 NHS trusts across 2021 to 2024, depending on the measure.
This is also the specific reason we advise against benchmarking against your own recent past. If your baseline is already elevated, nothing will ever look acutely worse.
The honest limits
- Diagonal does not forecast. It reports where you now sit. No product we sell makes a claim about your future position.
- There is no single score. We tested one. It failed. You get three axes because that is what the evidence supports.
- It cannot see inside your organisation. Published NHS data does not include tenure, age by trust, pay band in accounts, trust-level vacancies, off-framework agency rates, or survey results by staff group. Fifteen of our seventy-nine tests could not be scored on public data for exactly this reason, and six of those are blocked outright.
- That last limit is the honest case for your own data. Where public data stops is precisely where a client engagement starts. We will tell you which of your questions we cannot answer from outside.
Pricing
Where repeated measurement has a clear use, monitoring can be scoped to your organisation and confirmed in writing after a discovery conversation. Monitoring needs an existing baseline, so it follows a Structural Review rather than replacing one. Tell us on the call if you want it, and we will set out the scope and the price when it opens.
MOST ORGANISATIONS SHOULD START WITH A REVIEW.