Dr Laura Griffith, Deputy Director of National Embedding at IMPACT, the UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care, shares the outcomes of a year-long programme on values based recruitment.
Values-based recruitment is a relatively new term in the care sector, but has been used in retail and the health sector for some time. It essentially means working with people whose values align with the organisation or employer, rather than purely focusing on skills, qualifications or prior experience. At the centre of values-based recruitment is the idea that whilst skills can be taught, values are an individual trait that cannot easily be taught.
It is not news to anyone in the sector that adult social care has significant problems with recruitment and retention. One of the main issues identified by the Social Care Institute for Excellence[i] is that social care has difficulties in attracting individuals in the first place. Evidence [ii] has highlighted several reasons for a lack of interest in working in the sector, including: perceptions of care work, a lack of awareness of career pathways, low earning potential and the tendency for employers to ask for [particular] qualifications and experience. Values-based recruitment is often proposed as part of the solution to some of these issues.
IMPACT [iii] – a £15 million UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care – set out to examine this issue throughout the UK. In late 2022 and early 2023, IMPACT brought together Networks[iv], led by Dr. Kate Hamblin, to share evidence to explore values-based recruitment, and help define what activities appear to work best in practice.
In a recent podcast about this Network, Anne Pridmore CEO of Being the Boss [v], Dave Beesley, Talent Director at Cohesion Recruitment[vi], and Jo Parsons, Co-production Manager at Drive [vii]shared their insights.
“For me it’s more important that people come to the job with an open mind, and not having worked in a residential setting. […] if someone says to me, I have worked for the past 20 years in a residential home, I’m afraid that’s a no no. Because I’ve found that I cannot break down those barriers because it’s too much hard work.
I like someone with a go-to attitude, the last person I recruited has been with me for two years and it is the first time ever that I’ve let them go [from the interview] for 20 mins and told them that they’ve got the job […] I could just tell that this particular person was who I wanted on my team because she was just up for any adventure.”
Anne Pridmore, CEO of Being the Boss
Dave reflected that the use of values-based recruitment has been formalised within the sector within the last 5-10 years, but that it is not always practised consistently. He spoke about what it could do in terms of unleashing potential:
“Sometimes people are turned down by the sector, because they are too young, or because they don’t have enough experience, and I think what values-based recruitment does is opens up the door to have conversations beyond this. So, if someone has the right values, with the right support, the right guidance, the right training, the right development, we can foster those values and allow them to be great at what they do.”
Dave Beasley, Cohesion Recruitment
Through the IMPACT Networks, individuals and organisations discussed practical approaches to the “how” of values-based recruitment, helping people to lead good lives and the range of resources and approaches there are out there from the recruitment of individual PAs up to approaches that worked for large recruitment companies. What was common to all, however, was that values-based recruitment shouldn’t be seen solely as a recruitment issue but required much larger changes in how we value and perceive care work more widely.
Have a look at the suite of evidence, resources, videos and insights into how values-based recruitment works in practice on IMPACT’s new value-based recruitment webpage.[viii]
“Evidence has highlighted several reasons for a lack of interest in working in the sector.”
“Values-based recruitment means working with people whose values align.”
[i] scie.org.uk
[ii] scie.org.uk/almost-there
[iii] impact.bham.ac.uk
[iv] impact.bham.ac.uk/our-projects/networks/
[v] beingtheboss.co.uk
[vi] cohesionrecruitment.com
[vii] drive-wales.org.uk
[viii] impact.bham.ac.uk/our-projects/networks/values-based-recruitment/
