Jon Havelock

The Jon Havelock Award is made annually to recognise a significant contribution made towards finance skills development. It seeks to recognise best practice in the training and development of finance staff or the raising of financial awareness and skills within the wider non-financial workforce.

The Award was established in 1999 to commemorate the significant contribution Jon Havelock made to the NHS Finance Staff Development. Prior to his sudden death in 1998, Jon was the Deputy Director of Finance in the Department of Health. The award is aimed at sharing good practice and innovation in financial skills development.

Further detail on this Award can be found in HFMA’s 2008 Awards brochure.

Winner: NHS London

At the HFMA annual conference in 2007, director general of NHS finance, performance and operations David Flory raised concerns about the paucity of applications for top finance jobs, both at national and local level. A year on, an NHS London project that aimed to answer Mr Flory’s concerns and help develop the finance leaders of the future has won the HFMA Jon Havelock Award.

There is a dearth of high-quality applicants for finance director positions from within the NHS in the capital and the research aimed to find ways to enhance recruitment, retention and development of current finance staff on the career path to finance director and other senior positions. The survey and outputs were given at no cost to all finance directors in London, while the succession planning toolkit and related documents on developing local talent will be provided at no cost to all 10 FSD managers.

Judges were impressed by the research and its potential impact and use in other parts of the NHS. ‘It is a well researched and innovative project that can easily be transferred to other SHAs and NHS organisations. It provides excellent value for money and offers an extremely useful framework for future work in this area.'

Further detail on the winning entry is available in the HFMA 2008 Awards Supplement.

What the judges said:

“This piece of work provides excellent research on a key issue for the NHS finance function and provides clear messages for the future development of band 8/9 finance professionals, succession planning and talent management”

Further detail on the entry requirements, judging criteria and judges for this particular award can be found in the HFMA 2008 Awards Brochure.