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Why is There a Recruitment Crisis in the Personal Care Sector?

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@revisesociology
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The care sector in the UK is currently struggling to recruit and retain enough staff to meet demand, and there is currently a recruitment crisis in the personal care sector, with around 6% of care jobs currently not filled.

Given that caring is one of the most crucial jobs in the UK, and given that there is nothing especially stressful about ‘taking care’ of people as a job in itself, why is it that we are heading towards a recruitment crisis in the personal care sector?

So why is so difficult to recruit people into caring roles?

The first reason is the most obvious - care jobs are low-paid, with three quarters of care workers earning less than the 'real living wage', and lower than you would get working in an unskilled job with Amazon.

A recent survey by CIPD found that those in the personal care sector reported some of the lowest levels of wage satisfaction, and in the context of looming inflation, this is only going to get worse...

Then there Is the problem of insecure working hours, with some staff being employed on zero hour contracts, unsure of how many hours they are going to be working from one week to the next.

HOWEVER, a quirk (read exploit for employers) of the social care sector is that the emotional rewards of caring compensate for the low wages - the kind of people who go into caring are more motivated by the emotional impact of making a difference - and receiving ‘hugs from residents’ acts as a ‘second pay check’ - and some care homes even use this in their recruitment literature. (Details of some research in this Conversation article.)

This approach may be cynical, it may allow employers to pay minimum wage, but it is also true - caring can be very satisfying.

Then came the covid-lockdown

The chosen political response to Covid applied to care homes was to socially distance as much as possible - family members from residents, residents from each other and staff from residents - which meant that a lot of the ‘emotional reward’ that went along with the job role previously was removed - so staff were in a situation of working an eight hour shift without even a thank you on some days.

And add to that the increased stress of working on the covid front-line - not only having to care, but to be the people enforcing the very rules that are making your job no longer worth doing.

According to the GMB Union, 75% of care workers' mental health worsened during the Pandemic (and probably around 25% of the rest left).

And of course wages didn’t increase during this time for social care workers.

It's no wonder (and this from the same survey as above) that this sector reports some of the lowest levels of mental wellbeing...

Vaccine Requirements and More pressures

Possibly the final nail in the coffin for our chances of filling the recruitment gap, at least from the domestic population, is the new requirement for social care staff to be vaccinated. (Yes that's not illegal!), which is going to reduce the potential new recruitment pool by at least 5-10% as there are at least that many people prepared to put their right to not be part of a medial trial before their wage-packet.

Going forwards we’ve got further recruitment pressures caused by Brexit and a growing demand for care workers due to an ageing population, all at a time when care jobs are less rewarding, more stressful and more underpaid than ever.

What a mess!

Final Thoughts...

'Personal care' jobs have now been put on the official jobs shortlist for the UK, which means anyone seeking to come here from abroad to do one of these jobs is more likely to get in, so our fall-back is to rely on people from poorer countries.

This current pressure I think is mainly down to the shock of the chosen social response to the Pandemic, and something which is under-explored about this is what I think is the real rub - the super-alienation of being in the front line and having to enforce the very social distancing rules which have made your previously and still underpaid job bearable.

I can't see this recruitment crisis being sorted out any time soon as Britain is a less appealing place to live now than ever before, and we'll need almost an extra 500 000 people working in personal care by 2035 due to the ageing population.

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