Values Based Recruitment: Why is it challenging to recruit and retain staff who care?
At a recent workshop with Social Care Wales, Kerry Cleary, a Values Based Leadership Coach, addressed the common challenges facing the social care sector.
In this blog, Kerry reflects on her years of experience as a recruitment specialist in health, social care and third sector roles. She discusses how challenges could be reduced by embedding Values Based Recruitment, and shares useful insights and resources to help support your recruitment process.
As you read this, you may be able to relate to some of the many challenges we discussed when considering the question:
"What are the barriers to finding and keeping staff who share our values and passion for the work we do?"
Key themes
We identified and discussed many key themes, including:
A shrinking pool
Across a number of caring professions, the pool of available staff is reducing for many reasons. Because of this, many organisations are fishing in the same shrinking pool.
Values Based Recruitment can support organisations to think outside of the box about the types of candidates they are trying to attract. By doing this, they can target a more diverse range of candidates who may not previously have considered a career in a caring profession, but who share the organisation’s values.
The profile of care
As a career, the profile of the caring professions isn’t as high as those organisations providing care would love it to have.
Competitive pay
One of the things I hear again and again is when many people are struggling with the cost of living, many can earn more by working for a retailer. Even though they love working in care, for some, this is the key reason they leave their caring role.
I also hear stories of workers returning to care because job satisfaction and working in a culture that aligns to their values is so important to their happiness.
Resilience and reality
Many people are talking about the current mental health crisis, and I see this first-hand every week in my work with schools, social care and health organisations. But it’s not just those who are being cared for that needs to be supported, it’s also the staff who are providing the care.
The reality of working in challenging roles and environments for some doesn’t match the image they had of working in care. That’s why we’re seeing increasing levels of reported stress and reducing levels of resilience in the workforce.
This is why it’s important that organisations:
- embed values into their induction and training
- support staff to make sure they’re equipped to meet the challenges of their roles
- through Values Based Recruitment, identify staff who have the values and motivations to succeed in a role in care.
What is Values Based Recruitment and how can you embed in your organisation?
Values Based Recruitment is an approach that focusses on identifying and understanding the values, behaviours, and motivations of your candidates. The approach looks at how your candidates aligns with the vision and values of your organisation.
It enables organisations to be more inclusive and widen their recruitment pool by looking beyond previous experience and qualifications. It helps identify candidates with the potential and passion to be amazing employees through their shared commitment to the organisation’s mission and values.
The five A’s model of Values Based Recruitment
While working with Skills for Care, I developed the five A’s model of Values Based Recruitment. This model supports organisations to understand how they could embed a values lens to every stage of their recruitment journey; from articulating what you are looking for, to assimilating new staff into your organisation.
The model highlights:
- Articulating your values. This is important because it helps you know what your values are and how to communicate them to others.
- Attracting candidates who share your workplace vision and values by targeted work.
- Apply looks at how you design your application process to ensure that you can shortlist candidates who demonstrate that they share your values.
- Assess how you use different selection tools to judge whether the candidate shares your values, and is the right person for the role.
- Assimilate - how do you induct, develop, supervise and manage staff to ensure they demonstrate your workplace values in their role?
More information
You can learn more about this work by reading the Values Based Recruitment toolkit: Values Based Recruitment Toolkit.
Also, keep an eye out for Kerry’s second blog on the Insight Collective that shares her top five tips to embedding Values Based Recruitment into your organisation. This blog will be published soon.