Dave Beesley, Talent Director, Cohesion Recruitment
Recruitment market conditions are arguably the toughest we’ve experienced in social care. At the height of the pandemic, our application pools massively increased – people from other sectors wanted to do their bit and support our hard-working workforce. Post pandemic, we’ve lost a lot of the people that we “borrowed”, and at the same time some that have worked in care for years. Vacancy rates are above their pre-pandemic levels, but these jobs are not being taken (Skills for Care Workforce Intelligence Data). Quality is reducing in our talent pools and we’re behind the curve when it comes to bringing new talent into our sector.
So, what now? It’s time to take a deep breath and tackle our retention crisis head on. This is not just an opportunity, it’s a necessity. Engage with new talent and get them excited about the opportunities available. Sell the career pathways that do exist and inspire your future workforce. We hear time and time again about the Care Manager or Director who started in frontline care roles, but we often fail to talk about these success stories with applicants.
New ways of working
We cannot rely on online job boards and should be re-engaging with our local communities. We should ask our workforce to recommend caring people from within their circles. But it’s up to us to sell social care as the career destination.
Our assessment processes must be robust. Delays at any stage of the recruitment and onboarding process mean higher dropout rates. We know it’s important to recruit to values and should be looking for these at every stage. ‘Care Character’ (www.carecharacter.com), the definitive values-based recruitment tool which includes a validated online assessment, can help busy hiring managers to achieve this while also supporting the candidate do their best at interview.
We must get better at targeting underrepresented talent as a sector. Now has to be the time to offer support and flexible pathways into social care. Initiatives such as ‘Step into Social Care’ (www.stepintosocialcare.co.uk) has recently launched to offer just that for young people.
Time to change and re-engage
We regularly review our ways of working but have been even more critical here, ensuring we are maximising return on the applications we do receive. Re-engaging with candidates who have withdrawn, changed their minds or left, and sharing better content about the support and learning opportunities is a focus. We have refined our assessment methods; one example being altering the telephone interviews or ‘career conversations’ to be less formal. Candidate control and customer service training is regularly completed and refreshed by our Recruiters.
Moving candidates even quicker through the recruitment process has been vital. Virtual interviews taking place daily enabled us to achieve hires within single digit days during the height of the pandemic – and we don’t want to lose these quick wins. Support managers to interview without delay and you’ll be on to a winning formula.
Remaining viable in the new era relies on retaining a happy workforce. Do you know why your people leave? Do you know who is thinking of leaving before its too late? Retention interviews, exit interviews and stay interviews must be consistently completed and acted on. It’s time to fix the leaky bucket and close the back doors.
Quality begins at the very beginning of the recruitment process. Even before – when a candidate is deciding whether they should invest their time in making an application to you. And then you must continue to take care of them – as you do for the people you care for and support. Those getting this right will be reporting incremental gains that all make a difference – during the hardest market conditions care recruiters have known.
Image depicts Dave Beesley, Talent Director, Cohesion Recruitment