Case Study:
Values-Based Recruitment & Retention Strategies for Adult Social Care Provider
Aware of the ongoing talent shortages and the impact of the pandemic on the adult social care workforce, Stockport Council engaged Grassroots Consulting to work with a cohort of independent Care Companies to develop values-based recruitment campaigns and advise on retention strategies to meet volume hiring targets for domiciliary adult care services.
The Challenge: Labour shortages and demand surge in adult social care sector
In addition to the impact of Covid in recent years, there exists a crisis in social care recruitment due to a range of factors including low wages rates and high competition, burn-out of care staff following the pandemic and challenges attracting new recruits, an existing ageing workforce, and poor terms and conditions amongst independent providers compared to NHS workers.
As employers, private Care Companies lack the time, expertise and resources to dedicate to complex recruitment activities and, due to high levels of churn within the industry, struggle to retain core workers or scale-up services to meet rising demand. In order to ensure adequate adult social care provision, Stockport Council needed to support ethically focused and accredited care practitioners to more effectively attract, train and retain a skilled workforce.
The Solution: Candidate Attraction, Values-Based Assessments and In-House Recruiter Training
Following a formal consultation with a range of Care providers and the Local Authority, Grassroots designed a series of coordinated recruitment campaigns and training programmes that would enable care providers to develop a more sustainable approach to talent acquisition, targeting both experienced and non-experienced care workers.
Using a values-driven approach to shift the focus to recruiting people with the right attitudes, soft skills and behaviours (including ‘blind CVs’ and anonymised application forms), we worked with 40 domiciliary care providers to deliver a series of three sustained recruitment campaigns over a 4-month period.
Each included creating advertising campaign, social media advertorials, videos and information resources to build awareness of social care careers, before coordinating virtual events (with c.60 attendees) and in-person careers fairs (with c.100 attendees) to increase engagement with local applicants.
We then designed branded job board advertising schedules and an integrated applicant-tracking system to manage c.350 responses, as well as providing first-stage screening, reference checks and interview scheduling for 120+ candidates. We supported employers with screening, selection and offer management, providing guidance on induction and onboarding processes to maximise outcomes.
Following completion of the programme, we delivered a bespoke training workshop to communicate best practice in recruitment and retention to equip providers with the knowledge and practical skills to replicate these campaigns in the future and deliver their own recruitment initiatives in-house.