Comment / Expansion pack

A great big HFMA welcome to all our new band 2 to 6 members reading Healthcare Finance weekly for the first time!

This week we emailed existing members with a link to an online application form, which we asked them to share far and wide with band 2 to 6 colleagues in their departments.  Having announced the new offer at our annual conference, we’ve already had a fabulous response. So a big thank you to all our members.

We currently have around 3,400 full members and, with the new offer for bands 2 to 6 finance staff, we hope to double the number of full members by the end of the year. Alongside this we also have more than 10,000 affiliate members – those with an interest in our work and events and who are given restricted access to some of our services. 

The HFMA is already widely seen as the voice of NHS finance. But when we are speaking on behalf on NHS finance, we want to ensure we are representative of the whole function. We are determined to develop a membership that looks and feels like the wider finance community. 

As HFMA president Owen Harkin said in his opening speech to the annual conference: there is a danger that ‘we are too old, too senior, too male and too white’.  We are looking to ensure we are representative of the diversity of the finance function in a number of ways, including committee membership. But we believe that encouraging greater membership from people at all stages of their finance careers will make us a more inclusive family, able to represent the whole finance function.

The move to bring in bands 2 to 6 is the latest in a succession of initiatives to widen membership.  When the HFMA was formed in 1950 it was called The Association of Chief Finance Officers in the Hospital Service in England and Wales. And it was just that, with only 250 chief officers in membership. 

When we made the switch to HFMA in 1986, all qualified accountants were able to become members, which opened it up significantly.  Then in 1998 all staff working in finance became eligible to join.  Making membership free for bands 2 to 6, therefore, follows a logical step in our development as an association.

The mass entry of band 2 to 6 colleagues will be a challenge for the HFMA. However, it is a challenge we are determined to meet. Branches, which could see their membership doubling, have been very supportive and are committed to developing services designed for the whole community. They are looking forward to being able to invite their apprentices to join up.  It was also nice to hear a spontaneous round of applause when the change was announced at December’s annual general meeting.

We recognise that providing services for a different group of people will not be achieved overnight, so we’re asking our new members to bear with us.  However, we are keen to hear from students who would like to develop a national student faculty and particularly ones who would like to join a student committee.  Please email me at [email protected] if you are interested in this new initiative. 

We had an excellent day at the 2020 conference for students and we want to make that a feature of the future.  The NHS East of England region also ran a competition to offer 10 places at the 2021 annual conference for aspiring finance professionals, designed to give opportunities to folk who wouldn’t normally attend such an event.  We’d like to see more regions doing that in the future.

Ironically, it is possible that some band 7 plus non-members will shortly find themselves with departments full of HFMA members when they themselves are not!  We simply cannot give free membership to everyone, so the subscription of £60 remains in place for band 7 and above.  

However, we believe it is important that all finance professionals should be members.  That’s why we’ve developed our Membership Direct offer. Under this scheme, an organisation directly contracts with the association and buys a block of membership on behalf of staff.  Organisations with more than 10 full memberships will receive a 15% discount on the whole bill. 

In addition, we will provide the quarterly hard copy magazine to all bands 2 to 6 working in membership direct organisations free of charge, so everyone benefits!  What better way to ensure that all your staff get the sort of high-level professional input that HFMA can provide?  A great inexpensive recognition for finance staff who have gone above and beyond during this pandemic. 

All enquiries about membership direct can be made to [email protected] then no-one will be missing out!