This guidance document provides recommendations to country governments and implementing partners to improve human resource capabilities for the management of supply chain information system (SCIS) implementations.

Digital transformation in health supply chains has the power to improve public health systems through the provision of tools to guide decision making, planning, and data management. By focusing on aligning the skills of human resources alongside fast-evolving technology, countries can ensure the effective utilisation of digital tools being implemented for supply chains.

In this business case data collected from donors’ budgeted investments at country level for human resources for supply chain management (HR4SCM) over the period 2017-2020, coupled with questionnaire responses and interviews with supply chain managers in country, reveals the value of allocations in these four areas.

A Theory of Change diagnostic was carried out in Liberia to explore barriers related to the four pathways – staffing, skills, motivation and working conditions – from the perspective of community health workers (CHWs) and their supervisors. The report contains findings detailing the working conditions of CHWs and recommendations to improve their performance in line with the four pathways.

This diagnostic was conducted by People that Deliver (PtD) and supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It marks the first time that the PtD Theory of Change (ToC) has been used to examine CHWs in their capacity as members of the supply chain workforce.

The governance and workforce development (G&WD) framework is a set of principles and processes supplemented with tools and resources to support Global Fund staff to approach supply chain (SC) transformation from a human resources perspective. The framework is intended to support Global Fund staff to holistically design and plan the workforce development investments required for and often requested by countries.

For programs, governments and projects interested in implementing a pre-service training (PST) for the supply chain management of health commodities, this guide provides general information about the process, stages, steps, and activities required to initiate a successful PST program. The strategy outlined in this guide is based on experiences with PST by the USAID | DELIVER PROJECT and other projects implemented by John Snow, Inc. (JSI), in a variety of countries, including Benin, Bolivia, Morocco, Malawi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Zambia.

The USAID | DELIVER PROJECT has developed a short training module that introduces the basics of performance-based incentive (PBI) schemes for the public health supply chain. You can use the module to train yourself or others on implementing performance incentives to strengthen supply chains.

The Capacity Plus partnership has developed this human resources management (HRM) assessment approach to guide policy-makers, managers and human resources (HR) practitioners toward better understanding and responding to HRM challenges facing their health systems.

Outsourcing has historically been provided by public employees and has been done so with a largely consistent rationale: that applying market mechanisms and private sector expertise to the work of governments can increase efficiencies, ensure that more products reach the patients and ultimately improve the effectiveness of the entire health supply chain. However, for governments (ministries of health, central medical stores, vaccine stores and supply chain agencies) to outsource their supply chain services, they need to have the internal human resource capacity to effectively manage these outsourced activities.

The outsourcing toolkit comprises three resources that have been designed to complement one another and is intended to support governments and national supply chain organisations to successfully outsource from a “people” perspective.

Centring on the outsourcing roadmap, the toolkit allows users to assess the maturity of their supply chain and their current people practices, and defines the steps to be taken before outsourcing can be adopted. The roadmap builds on PtD’s maturity model for human resources in supple chain management, Kotter’s 8-step process for leading change, and is informed by interviews with health supply chain managers in Africa.

The jointly coordinated STEP programme, also known as STEP 2.0, is a professional development tool that is specifically tailored to the needs of health supply chain leaders and managers. Crucially, it blends elements of self-paced learning, facilitator-led training, on-the-job application of leadership skills and coaching support. What makes it particularly unique is that it pairs public sector supply chain managers – the delegates – with private sector supply experts – the coaches.

The COVID-19 pandemic puts increasing pressure on health supply chains. Preventing, detecting and responding to shortages of health products poses a significant challenge. The movement of goods across the global supply chain (SC) has been disrupted due to restrictions on movement (air, sea and land) and the operating environment has become increasingly complex. Health supply chain staff are doing their best to maintain the availability of critical supplies despite these hardships and are an essential part of COVID-19 response efforts. For the health supply chain workforce to safely procure and deliver supplies they must be given the same protections as all essential workers.