Webwatch – Finding and Keeping Workers online resource

A new resource to help adult social care employers tackle the challenges of staff recruitment and retention has been published by sector agency, Skills for Care.

The Finding and Keeping Workers resource identifies problems and solutions within four key themes to attract more people, take on the right people, foster talent and increase skills and keep your colleagues.

All the materials are held in a central, easy to use resources library which can be searched to find information that is relevant to your organisation. Employers will be encouraged to help grow this library with new resources and good practice examples.

Skills for Care CEO Sharon Allen said: “With up to 60,000 vacancies on any given day in our sector it is clear finding and keeping quality people is a real problem which this resource will help employers to tackle.

“It was created through a genuine partnership between Skills for Care, the Department of Health’s Recruitment and retention group and employers of all sizes from across the sector. This is a resource based firmly on real life experiences that I know will make a real difference to a problem that impacts on every adult social care employer in England.”

This is also the main resource to support the implementation of the Adult social care workforce recruitment and retention strategy 2014-2017 prepared by Skills for Care on behalf of the Department of Health’s recruitment and retention group.

Recruitment and retention group chair Sheila Scott said: “The Department of Health Recruitment and retention group committed to explore the development of Finding and keeping workers as part of the adult social care workforce recruitment and retention strategy 2014-2017 and we are very excited that it has come to fruition in the form of this new online resource.

There is no doubt that the sector produces a vast amount of resources to support recruitment and retention initiatives. However, employers tend to agree that what they really need is a simplified route to make sense of this information which will support their very unique recruitment and retention challenges.  We believe that this new online resource, based on examples of what works well for employers, will do just that.

“There is so much good practice out there and, over the coming year, we will continue to seek this out and add to our best practice case studies and library of resources.  We will also ensure that we continue to listen to employers to find out how Finding and keeping workers can continue to support emerging challenges. This is just the starting point and I look forward to watching it develop as more resources are added.”

To access the resource go to www.skillsforcare.org.uk/findingandkeepingworkers