Care Home Recruitment: The Challenges
It’s no secret that care services across the world are finding it difficult to attract and hire qualified care workers for their businesses. The reasons for this struggle include but are not limited to:
- Increased demand – The ageing population combined with the rising prevalence of chronic illnesses has led to an increased demand for care services, putting a lot of pressure on providers to recruit enough employees.
- Competition – Even though many care services are understaffed, there are still tens of thousands of care services across the UK, which means there is stiff competition when on the search for talented and qualified individuals.
- High turnover rates – Caregiving is often a physically and emotionally demanding position that many people struggle with and some employers aren’t very understanding or supportive. With their own budgets – particularly for local authority funded care - squeezed ever tighter it is extremely difficult for care providers to offer pay fitting to the demanding and skilled nature of the work. This leads to high turnover rates among care workers.
- Skills and training – Recruiting the right amount of care staff that have the necessary skills, useful qualifications and relevant experience and training to provide personalised, high-quality and person-centred care can be extremely challenging.
Getting Recruitment Right
It's not uncommon for care services to get recruitment wrong, which can lead to them not being compliant or hiring the wrong people. Here are some things you should keep in mind when carrying out your recruitment process.
Relevant References
Often, people are advised to get 2 references but this isn’t the law! The actual law is that you must seek assurance about somebody’s suitability to work with vulnerable adults or children, in terms of any previous employment in health and social care.
For example, you would speak to the most recent employer and you would seek assurance of suitability by speaking to every single employer that involved you working with vulnerable adults or children, even if it was 15 years ago. Employers might not get much back due to records being deleted over time, but an attempt must be made.
Full Employment History
Another thing that can go wrong during recruitment is not getting the full employment history of the potential recruit. Care employers must get a FULL employment history from when you entered the workplace e.g. 16 to your age now. The candidate will need to explain gaps in employment and they must be questioned sufficiently, so that the employer can see whether they have been sacked and why, if they were just on maternity leave, etc.
A lot of times, potential employees may not highlight all of their history correctly. If this isn’t thoroughly investigated by the employer, it could lead to an unsuitable person being hired. A full employment history check should be in addition to a DBS check or the relevant background check for your region.
If your candidate is brand new to a workplace due to being young, they would need to highlight any work experience and may need to provide a character reference, one from the school, etc. It’s all about assuring themselves of their suitability.
If your candidate has had many jobs but none of them has been working in health and social care, you wouldn’t need to speak to all of their previous employers because they won’t be able to provide useful information on how they have worked with vulnerable adults. In this case, you as the employer would just do what’s reasonable e.g. request 2 references.
Protecting Your Service
If something happened to a service user and the care service has a full and satisfactory employment history and reference check, then the service will be less liable for a service user who may have been mistreated. Obviously, their liability will take other things into account, such as if it has happened before and the circumstances including whether they have been observed correctly, received the right training, etc. If you can demonstrate that you have tried to verify your staff, then you are compliant in terms of your recruitment process.
On the other hand, if a thorough investigation wasn’t carried out during the interview process and a new employee with a history of mistreating individuals does it again, this will make the care service fully liable for their employee’s actions. You can find more on required information in respect of persons employed or appointed for the purposes of a regulated activity by reading up on Schedule 3.
Recruitment Ideas for Care Workers
Having a recruitment plan in place will allow you to act strategically and ensure that you are targeting the right people while making the most out of a potentially limited resource. Making sure you take the time to support your staff and their development is crucial and should form a significant part of your recruitment planning.
Some questions you need to ask yourself include how many employees you need, the skills they should have and the best method of recruitment.
Calculating the cost of recruitment should also play a part in this planning. You need to make sure your process is cost-effective and you should find ways to identify which parts of the recruitment process are performing well. Here are 7 effective recruitment strategies for care workers that you should consider when hiring your care service:
1. Values-Based Recruitment
Values-based recruitment is becoming a go-to phrase in social care and rightfully so. Care providers with lower employee turnover rates focus on the values candidates have, including compassion, kindness, reliability and willingness to learn, instead of just their experience in the sector, qualifications and other traditional candidate selection techniques. While these can be important, they don’t equal success.
2. Employee Referral Programs
Encouraging your current employees to refer potential candidates can introduce you to reliable people who share the same passion for caregiving. You should offer incentives for successful referrals and rewards after their referred colleague passes their probation. This will help ensure that the right people are put forward for the position, as they need to be reliable to be rewarded.
3. Offer Competitive Compensation
The wages, benefits and career advancement opportunities that your care service has to offer should be good enough to attract and retain talented carers. Do some market research to see what your competition offers. You should also ensure that the compensation for referrals is competitive, as it may help you attract candidates who have a good network of people that they can refer to your business.
4. Showcase the Values of Your Service
Once you have carried out the research that will help your compensation stand out from your competitors, you will be able to see what makes your care service stand out from the others. To attract kind-hearted carers, you should emphasise your commitment to providing quality care to service users, and display how you create a supportive work environment and opportunities for professional growth.
5. Provide Flexible Scheduling
Something else that can make you stand out from the rest is being open to providing flexible working hours and part-time options to your staff. While this can be difficult for some services, especially if they are understaffed, it is something that can appeal to people who put a good work-life balance first. Remember, more flexibility could attract more candidates.
6. Offer Taster Sessions to Candidates
The most successful hirers and retainers routinely invite candidates in for taster sessions. This is a great way to test their commitment to working in care and allows them to see if they will enjoy the job if they are hired. Taster sessions also enable care providers to assess whether the potential employee’s values and abilities work in real-world scenarios.
7. Partner with Care Worker Recruitment Agencies
Collaborating with specialised care worker recruitment agencies can help with streamlining the hiring process while connecting you with a large number of qualified candidates. These people will be actively seeking positions in caregiving. Using a recruitment agency can also save you time when it comes to searching for candidates with the right qualifications.
Overseas Care Worker Recruitment
As the demand for care workers increases, many countries (including the UK) have become open to the idea of exploring the option of recruiting care staff from abroad. People from overseas can have the experience, qualities and qualifications they need to succeed, which can fill the gaps in UK services.
At time of writing social care roles, including care managers and care and support workers are on the UK Shortage Occupation List (SOL), which makes them eligible for Health and Care Worker visas. This means they only need to meet an annual salary requirement of £20,480 to apply and are exempt from the Immigration Health Surcharge.
Benefits of Recruiting Care Workers from Abroad
There are many benefits to overseas care worker recruitment. People from different cultures can bring diverse skills and new perspectives to the table, as well as cultural understanding to care services. This can be great for improving diversity and inclusion in your care service. Recruiting care workers from abroad also provides meaningful employment opportunities to people who may have less demand for their skill set in their home country.
Challenges of Overseas Recruitment
Like everything, there are some challenges that you may incur if you decide to go with overseas recruitment. These include navigating the immigration laws, language barriers and cultural differences. You need to make sure overseas employees understand UK legal standards, such as regulations and compliance. However, it’s essential that this process is approached ethically and that the well-being of recruited care workers is put first.
When hiring carers from abroad, you will need to consider visa and immigration assistance. Make sure you assist with visa applications and the immigration process to help offer your new employee a smooth transition into their new role in a new country.
It’s not as simple as just advertising a role abroad and filling those vacancies. For example you will need to obtain a visa sponsor license. This is not a lengthy process, nor is it prohibitively expensive (currently £536 for small businesses/charities and £1,476 for medium and large providers). You can also apply for fast track license processing for an additional fee.
Care workers hired from overseas will need to fulfil some requirements too, these are subject to change so please consult UK government advice online, however at time of writing the requirements for care workers include:
- A relevant qualification demonstrating English language proficiency
- Proof of funds to support themselves
- Paid a minimum salary of £20,480 (or 80% of the national pay scale for their occupation code, or 70% if they are under 26)
- Have a valid certificate of sponsorship from the employer (you)
- Typically be 18 or over and have experience of care work
Best Practice for Recruiting Care Workers
When recruiting carers, you need to make sure that you adhere to ethical standards. If you decide to go through a recruitment agency, make sure that they follow ethical recruitment practices. This ensures that care workers are not exploited and are provided fair wages and safe working conditions.
Monitoring and support should also be provided. If you hire a new employee with little experience or from overseas, assigning them a buddy or mentor will help them to adjust to their new environment and offers them ongoing support in their new position.
For Overseas Care Workers
If you hire people from overseas, you will need to take language and cultural training into consideration. Communication is key, so consider offering this training upon their arrival. Even if they are fluent in English and have relevant qualifications to show this, there is a high chance that there will be certain jargon or acronyms used by your employees that they won’t be familiar with. You should also offer sessions to familiarise your new care workers with the local culture, policies and regulations.
Use Software to Find the Best Candidates
Recruiting care workers correctly is an extremely important task that will require thoughtful planning and proper implementation of effective strategies. By addressing the challenges within care worker recruitment and considering overseas recruitment, care services can improve their chances of attracting the right candidates that possess the skills and dedication needed to succeed.
Investing in your workforce will ensure the provision of compassionate and high-quality care to those who need it most. That’s why you should consider implementing Access Health and Social Care Management Software. Our platform will help with the efficient management of staff, resources and services throughout your business. Whether you need to improve your care planning or compliance or refine your medication management and policies and procedures, our care management software provides the perfect solution for your care service.
We also offer a recruitment and screening service to help you attract and select the best candidates for your care service. This helps you to carry out fast, automated background screening and candidate compliance checks, so you can feel reassured that you are hiring the right people for your business. You can learn more about our automated screening solution for care management by booking a demo.