Health and social care recruitment processes
Rising demand and additional requirements (due to Covid-19) in 2020 have demonstrated just how important recruiting and retaining the necessary workforce for social care and healthcare is.
In fact, in a poll taken at Cohesion’s Virtual Social Care Forum “Recruitment during Covid-19: Making it Happen for Care”, 73% of attendees said they had adapted their recruitment process.
The need to respond swiftly and effectively to Covid-19 has meant that health and social care recruitment processes have been fast forwarded into the future to a more digitalised recruitment form.
With sickness levels and vacancies rising concurrently while applications soared, recruiters needed a solution for the challenge. How to harness the growing interest, and deliver the front- line social care recruitment required – with all the complications and safety issues that Covid-19 brought with it?
So how did Providers respond to change? And what adjustments are here to stay?
Video interviews
With rising applications and more interest in front line roles than ever before swift and efficient recruitment processes were needed. Zoom, Teams, Facetime, Skype and specifically developed video interview platforms all played a part in keeping staff, residents, and applicants safe during the recruitment process.
Many providers have made big investments into IT, in the form of laptops or tablets to accommodate these changes in the recruitment process.
Online training
68% of attendees to our Forum had already brought elements of training on-line. There are a variety of different options available depending on size, scope and internal capability. Remote online training was used in many instances to support Care Certificates ahead of starting in role.
More flexibility of contracts
53% of Forum attendees are offering more flexible contracts. Not everyone wants to or can work standard shift patterns. Considering how to accommodate alternatives can help to expand reach into less represented groups such as older workers who may want to return, students who want to “give something back”, furloughed workers who are interested in trying out a role in care and even allied health professionals interested in bank or annualised contracts.
Young people
Young people have found themselves without traditional roles in retail and hospitality at a time when Gen Z is underrepresented in the UK Adult Social Care Workforce. Many organisations are capitalising on interest caused by increased media attention by targeting students and young people who are headed to university.
Covid-19 has proven that recruitment processes can happen entirely on-line and be effective. The sector is making the most of the opportunities that technology and changes in candidate behaviour offer. What will the retention of these new workers be over time, and will we discover pitfalls to the new ways of working? Only time will tell. With Skills for Care reporting a need for 535,000 new frontline workers by 2035, let’s hope we can continue the process of futureproofing recruitment in care!