Can values-based recruitment help find and retain care and support workers in tough times?
If all sectors are struggling to recruit staff, then what will attract workers to our social care organisations? Care homes, domiciliary care and other parts of the sector have all been feeling the pressure, made even more acute as a consequence of the mandatory vaccination of staff.
We know that recruiting adequate numbers of staff and the right mix of staff is a key focus of the CQC’s inspections to ensure that services being provided are safe. So, what can be done to achieve this?
Be Outstanding provides research into the evidence that CQC inspectors have consistently identified as Outstanding practice. Values-based recruitment is one of the main areas which their research has identified amongst care providers with Outstanding ratings.
Whilst we often talk about values based recruitment, what is it and how do organisations actually ‘do’ it?
Essentially values-based recruitment is the process of:
- Identifying your own organisation’s key values
- Expressing these values in your recruitment campaigns and all interactions with potential candidates
- Communicating your values with candidates in your interviews and follow up
- Employing those candidates whose values most closely align with your organisation’s.
Care organisations are much more likely to attract the ‘right’ candidates in the first place if they focus on ensuring their values are made clear to potential candidates through the entire recruitment process, from advertising to interviewing and follow up.
Each interaction and interview with a candidate allows your recruiters to explore the candidate’s values to ensure that these match your organisation’s values and the standards of care needed.
The result is that candidates join organisations that are more closely aligned with their own values and therefore provide high levels of care.
But how do we still find the staff?
Matching your care organisation’s values and those of your staff is consistent with advice from Neil Eastwood – a leading expert on the recruitment and retention of frontline care staff.
Neil has spent many years identifying and testing best-practice methods from around the world to find and keep care workers. He has also previously been a director at a national care home provider with 10,000 staff and his Care Friends app is used by over 30,000 care workers and by more than 500 employers.
The recent Be Outstanding Masterclass featuring Neil, identified that if you are looking for job applicants who will be high quality, long-lasting members of staff, then two valuable sources of quality candidates are employee referrals and family carers. These tend to be groups of people that have many of the values that you will be looking for and can therefore be untapped pools of the talent that is so urgently needed at present. Many of them may also not be actively job seeking through the ‘usual’ routes such as internet job boards.
Employee referrals
Those referred by employees or who already have a connection to someone who works in adult social care are more likely to understand what is required of the job and have the values that domiciliary care or residential and nursing home care organisations require. Conversion and retention rates therefore tend to be high.
Family carers
Family carers have already proven that they have a caring attitude! They may not have formal care experience however they often have many years of experience caring for relatives or others and given the opportunity, many can be empowered to transfer their skills into a formal setting. This group, therefore, offer a big opportunity to reach out to good candidates.
Moving to outstanding recruitment practices
Neil also provided additional useful guidance and steps to follow in the Be Outstanding Masterclass webinar, which was supported by McClarrons and Care Improvement Associates. You can watch the full recording by signing up here.
Values based recruitment can help you to reach the candidates you need in a difficult recruitment market. It can also help you demonstrate your outstanding practice and forms a key part of your evidence file to demonstrate how you are keeping robust and clear recruitment records of thorough recruitment practices – key to reaching an Outstanding CQC rating.
If you would like to find out more about how Be Outstanding’s software can help you manage your evidence and use its research to help you reach an Outstanding rating, visit www.be-outstanding.co.uk.
If you would like to discuss any of the above with us, you can contact McClarrons’ Care & Social Welfare Insurance Team on 01653 600477 or at care@mcclarroninsurance.com.
