Recruiting Men to Social Care

We’ve recently been featured in Care Talk, where we discuss the distinct lack of male nurses, childcare experts, and adult social carers in the Care industry today. Recruiting Men to Social Care needs to be improved. Take a look

Today’s recruitment crisis:

SkillsForCare state that 1,00,000 new workers will be required to work in social care by 2025. As recruiters, Cohesion believe that by attracting and recruiting more men, especially under the age of 25 could significantly help with closing the gap in Social Care Recruitment. Men can play an essential part in the Social Care sector, especially when caring for men from the older generation. However there is a significant lack of men actually working in the Social Care sector. At Cohesion, our recent analysis of 27,000 care applicants showed that approximately 25% of applicants to the sector are under the age of 25 and that only 40% of them are men. On Monday 12^th November 2018, Cohesion’s very own CEO – Will Shepherd and Talent Director, Dave Beesley attended the National Care Forum Managers Conference in Kenilworth and held a workshop session discussing attracting a more diverse workforce, specifically focusing on attracting men to work in Social Care.

Social Care Recruitment data:

We analysed the data of 27,000 applicants across a number of different types of organisations. All Care organisations, but different brands, roles, locations and cultures. We concluded that as well as needing to attract more male applications, we also need to support men throughout the entire recruitment process to reduce the likelihood of them dropping out. Our analysis shows that men tend to drop out of the interview process at a greater rate than women. It’s a no-brainer that there is work that can be done on the recruitment process. There are plenty of initiatives that a recruitment team can make to enhance how they recruit generally. Additionally here at Cohesion, we have started a series of trials that we think might make a difference to the recruitment of Men in Care. From interview feedback, video interventions to website/career site and advert reviews, these are just some of the ways that we are using to help and support applicants on their journey and potentially get more men on board to work in the social care sector. From our research and data it is evident that there are more men out there to attract. While there may be some merit in the argument that there is not a 50/50 split between Males and Females with the appropriate level of qualities to make good carers, we do not believe that we are at the current equilibrium. In conclusion, more needs to be done!